Wasa

Via Boing Boing:

Wasa from Mathias Lachal on Vimeo.

Perks

The daughter and I saw The Perks of Being a Wallflower last night. Being a bookstore guy, I've sold many dozens of copies of the book over the years, many of them since the film came out. Not having a TV, however, I only saw the trailer for the movie about a week or two ago. I mentioned to my daughter that I wouldn't mind seeing it. It magically appeared in the mailbox soon after (Though I'm pretty sure she planned on watching it before I said anything).

To my surprise and delight, I discovered in the opening credits that the book's author, Stephen Chbosky, not only wrote the screenplay, but directed the movie! I can't recall ever seeing something like that before. How wonderful that an author could be given the opportunity to interpret his own work for the screen. Other credity magnificence: Joan Cusack is in it! I'm sold, buddy!

It was one of those wonderful movies you sort of wish you could have lived, especially if you were one of the millions of teenagers that didn't get invited to a whole lot of things, or, like me, lived in a place where you were surrounded by cows and corn. I watched it, wondering if any of the characters in my novel could stand up to the movie's characters. Some of those in the movie were really good, especially as an ensemble. Ezra Miller truly shone as Patrick, our wallflower's outgoing gay friend. I'm convinced I've seen him in something else, but I haven't seen any of his other work. What's left is that he either reminds me of someone I've known, or his acting was so strong, I felt a sort of déjà vu.

In a cast of fucked up characters, Charlie, the protagonist, stands out as powerfully fucked up and we're drawn in, watching the complete depths of his inner mess unfold throughout the movie as he struggles with dealing with anyone and everyone.

If a film makes me want to hang with its characters, like Whip It did and like this one did, I've got to call it a great film. I haven't yet read the book, but purchased it today. Go watch or read or whatever you want to do with it.

Audio Love With Chaos Motor

Okay, remember that story I told you I wrote for John Mierau's anthology, Walk the Fire? Well, now you can listen to it for free. Or at least the first part for now. The second part will be coming soon and it too will be free. In fact all the stories from the book either are or will be available in audio on John's site.

To refresh your memory, my story is called Aborted Love with Chaos Motor at Lucky Pierre's. It's a fun little story about Congolese feminist revolutionaries, teleportation, a machine that does a bunch of crazy crap, a relentless fiancé, and a shitload of snails! Click the book cover up above to buy your copy of the e-book and/or click the link below to listen to the first part of my story:

Aborted Love with Chaos Motor at Lucky Pierre's, part 1

I'll post a link to part 2 when it's up!

StarShipSpider

Only one day left to join StarShipSofa's latest event and learn from the legendary Spider Robinson! Here's a link to my post that has the details: 

http://theonethousand.blogspot.com/2012/11/write-with-spider.html

After you register, don't just sit around and wait all day, listen to the latest episode of StarShipSofa!

StarShipSofa No 273 Jack Vance Part 2

Fact: Hugo Review Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by Andy Tomaswick

Main Fiction: The Moon Moth Part 2 by Jack Vance

Promo: Rompod

Narrator: Josh Roseman

Or, start with the one before this, since it is the second part of a two-parter.

A Writing Update

So, as I said, I finished the beta version of the novel. I'm waiting to hear some feedback on that so I can fix any problems. I've asked my beta readers to get back to me by February 15th. As I'm waiting, I'm tinkering, however, making little improvements to chapters as they occur to me. I hope to have the final version done and off to an editor by March 1st.

I got the latest Mango out late and looked over what needs to be done between now and the end of May. As you may know, I do an episode a day in the month of May. Then there are the regular episodes between now and then, including an April 30th episode, which I don't normally do, but since I still owe you folks an episode for last October 15th, I'm doing one. So, I think I have to produce thirty-eight episodes between now and the end of May. I haven't figured out when I'll record, but if I spend an hour a day on the writing, it'll be no problem. An episode usually takes about three hours to make. Two to write, one to record, edit and post. Those are rough numbers. Maybe I'll record, edit and schedule them as they're finished. That would produce a little over two episodes a week, which would work.

Then there are the short stories. I've got eight-hundred and sixty-two short stories to write in a little over six years and three months. That means a short story every two and a half days. Hmmmm. I'm trying to figure out a system that could make this happen. I'm working on it. If you're curious, the novel will count as a story.

That's it for now. I have some stories to write.

Steamunk!

Hey, gang! Check out episode 145 of Beware the Hairy Mango! Steamunk!

http://bewarethehairymango.com/episode-145-steamunk/

Drool

A writing update and excuses for all of you. I finished the novel early this morning and have sent it out to my beta readers. Far from my first novel ever started, it is my first ever finished. Yes, I know I have more work to do. Shut up.

 In order to finish the novel for today, I slept for two and a half hours last night and three and a half the night before that. I had an episode of the Mango due today. I haven't even started writing it. The plan was to write, record and post it this evening. Even after a forty-five minute nap, I am staring at the screen and drooling. I'm betting it's not happening tonight.

Sorry.

Call He Maybe

One day I'll get back to normal posts. You probably like these better anyway!

Shakin' It

Found on Facebook. Laughed like hell. http://dogwork.com/

I Can't Stop Playing This Video

Much thanks to Jonah Ray who turned me onto this song when he appeared on the Sklar Brothers' Sklarbro Mixtape 2012. I have been playing the hell out of this video tonight around novel editing.

DAYUM!

The Ferryman

Hey, you guys, remember when I told you about the Walk the Fire anthology which contains a swell story by me? No? Click here. Well, my friend John Anealio wrote and recorded a song for the book called The Ferryman. Click through to listen and download it for free! Who's that Matthew guy, he mentions? Hmmmm . . .

Read the book, listen to the song, immerse yourself in the world of Walk the Fire!

http://johnanealio.com/track/the-ferryman

Write With Spider!

StarShipSofa does a lot of cool webinars that hook up people like you and me with folk who are successful in creative fields and Tony has sent me some info on the latest. Spider Robinson is going to be talking to participants about writing science fiction and he's a guy who knows how it works. He's been writing professionally for forty years and has won three Hugo awards and a Nebula. He's probably best known for his novels and stories featuring Callahan's Crosstime Saloon.

If you're a writer or are thinking about becoming one, you may want to check this out. Even if you're not a writer, as a listener of Spider's podcast, I can tell you that the guy's a great storyteller with a beautiful voice and you may want to sit in on this for the sheer entertainment. Click the picture above or this link http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/event/4880911939/Spider1/47219574345 and you'll be whisked away to a page where you can learn more and sign up. If you can't make it to the webinar, you can still sign up and get a recording of the show about a week later. Blast off!

Dad Was A Veteran

Dad was a veteran. He fought from Pearl Harbor to the Philippines, re-upping again and again because he didn't want to leave his brothers behind. Unlike a lot of vets, he talked about the war. He talked about it enough to shape me, to make me realize how bloody evil war is. He told me about the guy who got his head blown off and the six feet that the guy's decapitated body walked before it collapsed. He told me about Japanese soldiers who strapped landmines to their bodies and threw themselves under tanks. He told me about rape, murder and cannibalism.

Dad was 100% disabled by government standards. He once showed me the paperwork that confirmed 60% of that disability was psychological. I can't believe that anyone could come out of a ground war like that without being psychologically damaged.

He also taught me - without meaning to - that there are no heroes in war. Soldiers can do heroic things. My dad did heroic things. He saved lives and I don't just mean here on the homefront. I knew a guy who owed my father his life. Dad pulled him from the burning wreckage of a plane. My father escaped after two weeks in a Japanese prison camp when he and two others overpowered guards and took their weapons. One of those two others died during the fight. The other took a different direction outside the walls and dad never knew what happened to him.

My dad also did evil things, stuff that I won't share here and stuff that was in no way unique to him. Accepted policy and procedure during wartime that you won't find written anywhere as well as some things that weren't so accepted. He told me two or three years before he died that if there was a Hell, he was going to it. That sort of thing was a rare admission from him.

People do what they feel they need to do in war. It brings out the worst and the best in people, in individuals. I don't vilify my father in my heart. He performed acts noble and vile. He was human in a nightmarish situation. And I understand that the things that he and his fellow soldiers did preserved our way of life here at home. 

I'd like people to educate themselves on what wars are really like so maybe we'll have less of them and we won't need to put human beings anywhere in the world through the meat grinder. I hope one day we see a Veterans Day where there are no veterans of war to thank because there haven't been any wars in a lifetime. 

In the meantime, my thanks to all our veterans for their incredible sacrifices.

WTF!

Walk the Fire! That's the e-book in which you'll find my latest story, Aborted Love with Chaos Motor at Lucky Pierre's! That's number 138 of The One-Thousand. You can get it here:

http://www.amazon.com/Walk-The-Fire-ebook/dp/B009GQYF6E

Or just click on the cover above.

So the book is a shared world anthology set in a universe in which there are certain fires which can each trace their origin back to one eternal fire discovered in a cave in France long ago. If you step into one of these fires, you might step out from another one, whether it's miles or light years away. You might also get lost forever, unless you're escorted by one of the Ferrymen, people who are able to navigate the space between fires safely. My fellow authors have come up with a wide variety of scenarios for stories set in this world, some of which take place in the past.

My story takes place in the future on planets far from Earth, wherein a trio of feminist revolutionaries from the Democratic Republic of the Congo are on the run, having stolen a very valuable artifact. The guy that's after them has a strong and complicated connection to one of the three. And one of the others seems just a bit insane. There's also a robot, a sociopath and snails. Lots and lots of snails.

As I post this, you have about six and a half hours left to grab a chance to win a free copy of the book from me. Hop on Twitter and retweet one of the contest tweets I've posted this weekend and you're entered to win. That's all there is to it. You can find me here: twitter.com/upwithgravity. You don't even have to follow me, but it would be swell if you did.

To top it all off, here's the beginning of the story to prime your pumpiness:

ABORTED LOVE WITH CHAOS MOTOR AT LUCKY PIERRE'S

by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The ocean filled her head.

Saltwater packed Shoksi's skull air-foam tight. It filled her gaping mouth and trickled down into her throat, toward her starving lungs just so. A little more. A little more.

Indroid! Shoksi's mind screamed to her onboard systems. Which way is up? Eight hundred and ninety three arrows, fluorescent orange in the green sea, swam past her vision like a school of fish. They pointed toward her feet. She flipped over and pushed her cold sluggish muscles for whatever they had left.

Shoksi broke through the skin. Her sinuses were on fire, her hearing bubbled and muted. Her throat spasmed between sucking in air and coughing up water in spatters and glugs. Through dripping curls she saw Tambi's head bobbing along the dark waters. They weren't far from a beach, thank god. Crowds hooted from the shore. The sky was pink.

“Where's Asha?” Tambi cried.

“I'll find her,” Shoksi said in a phlegm-choked voice. But as she fought for breath for the dive she saw a large form rising up beneath them. A mini-sub? Standing on top of it was that fool of a Firewalker. Asha's gloved fists broke the surface first, then her head with a great sucking gasp. Whatever she stood on knocked Shoksi off balance as it caught up all three of them. Shoksi fell back down, soaked her head again before her rear end hit the platform. She came into the air once more, wiped her fingers across her eyes and pushed her heavy hair aside. What the hell was going on?

“Yes! Yes!” Asha was shouting to the sky. She turned to the people on shore and pumped her fists. They ate it up. Whatever had rescued the three women had raised edges and began to resemble a raft as it drained. Bone white and navy blue, it sported a texture like a basketball. Shoksi felt lighter, even out of the water. Less gravity here. A low-flying seabird swooped close enough that the air smacked her as it passed.

The raft said something to them in what sounded like English.

“Lingala,” Shoksi said with a cough. “Or even French.”

"Sorry about that, ladies," the raft said in accented French, as it swept them toward the nearby shore. "People here like to exercise what they think is a sense of humor." It extended a bit of its edge into a hand shape, pointing into the air opposite the shore. A thin plastic pipe rose about six meters above the water. A Flame erupted from a brass fitting at its top. Across the sky beyond that was projected a replay of the three women emerging from that Flame and falling into the ocean below. Then idiot Asha rising from the ocean like a rockstar. The people on the beach were lined up waiting for them.

Shoksi instinctively went for her collapsible automatic. Kill them all, men first. But sadly, her hand slapped empty webbing on her pant leg. That's right. Tambi had said no weapons. Damned Tambi. Shoksi vomited a little sea water, only partially over the edge of the raft. She felt the alkaline burn of bile up inside her nose.

“What the hell kind of piece of shit Firewalker are you?” she shouted at Asha.

“Are you kidding?” Asha asked, looking down at her. “You should be thrilled! I had no idea we were going to come through alive!”

“What?”

“She's not a real Firewalker,” Tambi said. Her long horse face wasn't looking at Shoksi, but toward their reception committee.

“You're telling me this now?”

“You can't let a real Firewalker in on a Church heist! You know that!”

“I'm almost a Firewalker!” Asha said.

“Almost?”

A cloud of odd insects converged around the raft, each one hovering rather than buzzing about. Cameras. To Shoksi there was no such thing as good publicity. There were others higher up in the Culture Clash that handled that better than she did. She didn't know what this was, but she did know it wasn't part of the plan.

“Tell me you still have the motor!” Shoksi said to Tambi, remembering what had brought them to this point.

“I don't have your strength,” Tambi said holding up the little device by the handle, “But nothing would make me let go of this.”

“Thank god! Let's hope the water hasn't ruined it.”

“If it was that easy, it would have been ruined already.”

“Everybody's white.” Asha said, studying the shore. She still stood, as if this raft was her personal chariot. “I mean everybody.”

"We must be far out," Tambi said. "These people's ancestors probably left Earth when North America and Europe were still wealthy.”

“Australia,” the raft said.

“Same thing. Boat, we need to get back to that Flame. This isn't the world we wanted."

“There are plenty of other Flames on shore,” the raft said. “A lot easier to reach too.”

“Plenty?”

“Welcome to Pearth,” it said. “P-E-A-R-T-H. I guarantee you haven't seen anything like it before.”

If you want to read the rest of the story, enter to win a copy of the book on Twitter twitter.com/upwithgravity or just go buy the darned thing! http://www.amazon.com/Walk-The-Fire-ebook/dp/B009GQYF6E

Thanks, folks!