Alastair Mayer’s T-Space Blog

Sorry about the delay between posts — I was wiped out for most of a week with the flu. Fortunately the only symptoms were high fever and extreme fatigue (to the point of sleeping 20+ hours a day), but it pretty much precluded me from doing anything else. Except perhaps dreaming a few weird fever-dreams, which may be where the rest of this post came from…

In elementary school, at least in the three English-speaking countries I’ve lived in, we’re taught that the vowels are “A, E, I, O, U and sometimes Y”. That’s drummed into us. Y has only second-, maybe even third-class status as a vowel. It’s not a real vowel. But, why the frack not?

Recently I used the word “syzygy” — it’s an astronomy term meaning that three or more bodies are in a line, like the Sun, Earth and Moon when the latter is new or full — in a discussion about the effect of multiple moons on tides. There aren’t many other places to use a word like that – even Scrabble doesn’t have enough Y tiles, you’d have to use a wild card. But look at the word: S Y Z Y G Y. By the strange classification of the letter Y as only “sometimes” a vowel, that word only sometimes has vowels in it.

Technically that’s not correct, of course, all the Y’s in syzygy are all vowel all the time. The vowel-ness of the letter is like the alive/dead-ness of Schroedinger’s cat; in the abstract it is neither a live vowel nor a dead consonant, it is only until it is observed in a word that the wave function collapses and it resolves to one or the other.

Or such, it would seem, is the thinking of whoever came up with the “and sometimes Y” in the list of vowels, and all those who believe and teach this particular dogma.

But, just at the moment, with probably neither enough sleep or caffeine in the wake of my Schroedinger’s-cat-like flu-induced zombie state, I’m having difficulty thinking of a word in which Y is ever unarguably not a vowel. So why the second- (or third-) class status?

(And don’t get me started on W. It should be twice the vowel that U is. But perhaps there’s some Welsh in me.)

Pubit
I spent a bit of time last night getting three e-books up on Pubit, the Barnes & Noble Nook equivalent to Amazon’s Kindle store. This went pretty quickly, since I’d already prepped the files for Smashwords. Basically I just needed to change the line “Smashwords edition” to “Nook edition” on the title page. A reminder, you can get versions for Kindle (.mobi) and Nook (.epub) from Smashwords too, if you want to take advantage of the coupon offer in the update below.

Small Penalties
My story in the current (April) issue of Analog seems to have struck a chord, with a 4.5 (of 5) star review on cxPulp, and a strong recommendation from a commenter in the Usenet group news.admin.net-abuse.email. The latter says I write like I’ve been lurking in that group for years. 😉 (No need. I’ve dealt with more than enough spam on the job and on my home systems.)

Fun astrophysics
Last week a paper on arXiv suggested that black holes may not be affected by dark matter. Since spiral galaxies are now believed to all have massive black holes at their center, and since dark matter was “invented” to explain the otherwise anomalous rotation of such galaxies (they rotate too fast for their apparent mass to hold them together), this is a puzzlement … or an argument for Modified Newtonian Dynamics.
This week, an analysis by cosmologists suggests that the universe may be 250 times bigger than the mere 14 billion light-year distance we can see. So much more room to play in! (If we could only get there in something less than the age of the universe.)

I have finally started to make some of my stories available through Smashwords, for those with non-Kindle e-readers or who just don’t like Amazon. Smashwords also makes the files available through other outlets; I’m still sorting through the details on that. The process for uploading the books was fairly painless, and I like how fast Smashwords makes the work available on its site.

Three titles up so far. My first ever sale, Snowball, and two Jason Curtis stories, Into the Fire and Renee (aka Renee and the Space Raiders. Click any of the cover images below to get to the Smashwords page. Smashwords also makes possible discount coupons. Stay tuned for details, I’ll be putting something together a (time-limited) opportunity to download a complete book for free. You can already download samples (the first 20%) of each, to whet your appetite.
    

For those interesting in the publishing side, I’ll be posting stats when enough have accumulated to be interesting. One data point, I sold a copy of Snowball within a couple of hours of making it available, without any publicity on my part! (Smashwords links new books on their home page. I’m guessing somebody saw it and liked it.) If you want to prep your own books (or stories), Smashwords Book Marketing Guide is a free book that tells you how.

UDATE – Limited time free offer: I’m offering a coupon good for 100%-off the retail price of Into the Fire (which, for any of you doing math on an old Pentium with the floating point bug, makes it free 😉 ). Click on the red cover above (the middle one), and use the coupon code TM58S at checkout to get the deduction. The coupon expires on February 11 (2/11/11), so act soon. If you enjoy the story, you might consider leaving a review to that effect on Smashwords or Amazon.

Tags: smashwords e-book publishing

Amazon announced recently that Kindle e-book sales have now surpassed paperback book sales (they did that to hardcover books late last year). That’s faster than anyone expected, no doubt propelled by many new Kindle owners who received readers for Christmas.

As it happens, I’ve just made my story Light Conversation, which appeared last year in Analog, available for the Kindle. I hope to make it available for other e-readers soon, but I used a typography trick in the story that makes it a little harder, at least from my experimenting so far. Note that this is flash fiction, only a thousand words, so I almost feel guilty putting it up for sale as a standalone. On the other hand, it’s about the same price as a candy bar, has zero calories, and won’t rot your teeth. 😉

I’ve also overhauled the covers of the two Jason Curtis (early T-Space) stories, Into the Fire and Renee (the full title is now Renee and the Space Raiders, to give a better feel for the story). I think they look much better and hope they’ll attract more readers. (Old saying notwithstanding, almost everyone judges a book by its cover.)
I’ll be updating the cover of my collection Starfire & Snowball too, but I may add a story (probably “Light Conversation”) first, to round it up to five.

Finally, the Colorado court recently granted an injunction suspending the Colorado law that requires internet businesses to report sales for the purpose of collecting sales taxes. That law prompted Amazon to end their affiliate program with anyone in Colorado (so that they could claim no physical sales presence, a tactic they’ve pulled elsewhere), meaning no referral bonus if you buy through one of the links on this site (although if it’s one of my books, I’ll get a royalty). If that law gets overturned, perhaps Amazon will resurrect affiliate status for Coloradans. Here’s hoping.

Tags: amazon e-book publishing

I got the happy news the other day that Analog bought another story, “The Sock Problem”, for Probability Zero. That’s my third PZ sale, and my fourth overall to Analog. It’s in the same vein as my first sale to them, “Light Conversation”, this time with a dryer not a refrigerator, and no slime mold. You can probably guess the theme, but Stan Schmidt, Analog‘s editor, said of it: “a neat variation on the theme that I haven’t seen before, so I’m buying it.” Music to my ears 😉

Hugo Nomination Updates
A reminder that there are only a few days left to register for a supporting or attending membership for this years World SF Convention in Reno (Renovation) in time to be allowed to nominate for the Hugo and Campbell awards (see below). Deadline is January 31.
I’m nominating Howard Taylor’s Shlock Mercenary: Massively Parallel for “Best Graphic Story”. Schlock Mercenary is a fun SF daily webcomic, it is literally the first thing I browse to in the morning. I’m also nominating the podcast Writing Excuses (Season 4) in the “Best Related Work” category. Howard, along with Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells, is co-host of Excuses. I’ve mentioned WE before, it’s an excellent resource for writers or even just hard-core fans of the science fiction and fantasy genres. (At fifteen minutes long, I like to listen to the podcasts when I’m getting my daily walk in — alas, they don’t do a daily ‘cast, only weekly.)

More to come, and I’ll post my complete list of nomination when I have it. Fortunately we can nominate up to five candidates in each category, because deciding between some of the excellent choices this year is going to be a bear.

Update: While I’m thinking about it, I want to add Vylar Kaftan’s “I’m Alive, I Love You, I’ll See You in Reno” as one of my faves for Best Short Story. It’s a rare combination of an emotionally powerful story with hard science and some great physics metaphors.

It’s been an interesting week.

CoSine
This weekend is the CoSine SF convention in Colorado Springs, which I’m currently missing, but I’ll be there tomorrow. GOH is Sharon Shinn. Several well known Colorado writers will also be there: Connie Willis, Ed Bryant, Wil McCarthy, Sarah Hoyt, and Kevin J Anderson, among others. CoSine always seems to be at a chaotic time for me (two years ago I ended up in the hospital that weekend) but always fun … when I can get there.

Award nomination season
As I mentioned a couple of days ago, it’s nomination season for various SF awards. I found out this week that I have at least one nomination (no, not by me) for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. It takes more than that to get on the final ballot, of course. I discovered Campbell’s Analog when I was thirteen, and it had a profound influence on me (and now I’m selling to Analog, how cool is that?). It’s cliche, but it really would be an honor to make it to the ballot.

Hunting the day job
Earlier this week I was called about a follow-up interview for a systems administrator position, a technical interview that apparently includes hands-on work to see how much I know my stuff. I’ve been brushing up on obscure corners of Solaris and Linux, the kind of stuff that fades from surface memory if you’re not doing it on a regular basis. Thank goodness for VMware, it let me set up a bunch of virtual Solaris computers on my Linux desktop; Solaris has outgrown all the spare physical computers I have sitting around. (By the way Sun/Oracle: if the minimum install memory is 539 MB please don’t say that it’s only 512 MB — it’s most annoying to go all the way through the install only to have the kernel panic on first boot because it can’t lock a (non-existent) memory page.) The interview is Monday, should be interesting and even fun.

With the new year comes nomination season for various SF/F awards for stories, books, movies and other works that first appeared in 2010.

The Hugo awards and the Campbell award nominations can be made by anyone who has registered as an attending or supporting member of Renovation, the 2011 Worldcon, by January 31st , or who was a member of Aussiecon 4, the 2010 Worldcon. You can always update a supporting membership to full membership later (I believe you need a full membership for the final voting), but that deadline is coming up. (Much as I like the two short stories I’ve had published in 2010 — “Light Conversation” and “Poetic Justice” — I realize that they’re competing against hundreds if not thousands of other new short stories, many by very well known writers. It really would be an honor just to be nominated.)

The John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer is open to anyone whose first professional sf/f story was published in 2009 or 2010. The nomination is for the writer, not for any specific work. My publications this year put me in qualification. (Note that there’s another Campbell award, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for best science fiction novel. This is not that.)

Nebula nominations are also open, and is limited to SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) members. Associate members can nominate but only active (full) members can vote. If you’re a member, you’re probably getting the reminder emails.

Nomination suggestions
I’ll be posting my nomination suggestions when I’ve had more chance to consider them. Meanwhile, Codexian author Jason Sanford has posted his list of suggested nominations for the 2010 Hugos, Nebula, Locus and other awards. I’m particularly pleased to be included among his choices for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Thanks, Jason! Of course, it takes more than one nomination to get onto the final ballot. If you’re a member of this year’s Worldcon and you like my writing (or, hey, even if you don’t 😉 ), please consider me when putting your nomination list together. Thanks.

Reading copies
If you’re eligible to nominate and you’d like to read any of my published stories, just ask and I’ll be glad to email you a copy. Contracts won’t let me just post them publicly here yet.

The April 2011 issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact just arrived in my mailbox, and I was pleased (well, that’s an understatement) to see my story “Small Penalties” in it as the Probability Zero piece. I’d been expecting it, but I just didn’t know when. I’m sharing the table of contents with several Big Name authors, including Larry Niven. His story “The Flare Weed” (another in his Draco Tavern series) is in the magazine immediately before mine. I think that’s neat.

“Small Penalties” is a suggestion as to what to do with spammers. It’s unlikely to ever be implemented, hence its designation as Probability Zero, but it’s such a small penalty . . . per piece of spam. It should be on the stands soon, keep an eye out for it.

There’s more in the works. A longer story will be out in another month or two, and I have a couple of submissions in the queue. And now I need to get back to writing more.

I hope you all had enjoyable solstice festivities of whatever sort you celebrate, and that the new year is starting off well for you. My usual year-end chaos ran long this time around, aside from the usual (Christmas, my birthday, New Years, Jill and my anniversary). I had two separate job interviews this past week (which went well, but competition is tough; we’ll see) and a deadline for galleys to be proofread. Also a couple of doctor appointments (family and eye) — just routine checkups, although my eyeglass prescription is changing a little. All of which means I’m behind where I wanted to be on new writing and overhauling this website. (Although the more observant of you might have already noticed a minor change to the banner above.)

The writing/publishing industry is abuzz with the news of how well e-book readers sold over the holiday, vastly exceeding expectations. This (and the precarious fiscal position of Borders Bookstores) has a lot of writers, including yours truly, excited because all those new e-readers are going to need e-books (and e-short-stories) to fill them up. I’ve been prepping a couple more of my previously published stores to go up Amazon (here’s what’s available so far. I also mentioned them in an earlier post). I want to change a couple of the covers and also make the stories available for other e-readers like the Nook.

Among other resolutions, I’ve committed to finishing and submitting forty short stories and three novels this year. That’s not quite as daunting as it sounds, as some are in progress already (and is nothing to Dean Wesley Smith’s challenge of 100 stories on top of his usual novel writing schedule). I’m tempted to add a couple of Young Adult novels to my project list — they’re shorter, my kids are in the target age range, and I have a few ideas. But first I need to finish what’s in progress.

How about you? Taking on any interesting challenges in 2011?

Happy solstice! For those of us north of the equator, the sun has stopped heading south and is coming back, hooray! (Okay, for the pedantic, the Earth has just passed the point in its orbit where its axial tilt points the north pole furthest from the sun. Either way, it means more daylight and eventually warmer temperatures.) For those in the south, hope you’re having a great summer.

Things have been a little more chaotic than usual this season, with my two boys working up toward their black belt exam this past weekend. They passed, but not without a lot of sore muscles. Part of the point of black belt is to push you to the limit and then a bit beyond. The exam started with 100 push-ups in less than four minutes, then 100 v-ups, then … but you get the idea. It finished with board breaking – 14 one-inch pine boards, some two at a time. But that was the fun part.

Between one thing and another I’m behind on posting here. I’m looking at overhauling the design of this site; I think it’s a bit too T-Space centric. I have more to offer than just that. More about what I have in mind as I get closer to relaunching the site. I’ve got some big plans for 2011, and some serious challenges to overcome to get there — but as my boys’ sensei says, the bigger the obstacles, the greater the sense of accomplishment.