my friends page

With the new Nebula Awards rules in place, nominating season is upon us. I thought I'd mention my works this year, highlighting my own favorites, for those interested in considering them. My favorite picks are in bold.

2009 Published Science Fiction:

* "On the Human Plan"; Lone Star Stories; February, 2009 [short story]
* "Rolling Steel: A Pre-Apocalyptic Love Story" (with Shannon Page); Clarkesworld; April, 2009 [short story]
* "To Raise a Mutiny Betwixt Yourselves"; The New Space Opera 2, ed. Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan, Eos, April, 2009 [novelette] [in Sunspin continuity</em>]
"Leopard"; Jim Baen's Universe, June, 2009 [short story]
"Black Heart, White Mourning"; Grant's Pass, ed. Jennifer Brozek and Amanda Pillar, Morrigan Books; August, 2009 [short story]
* "Chain of Stars"; Subterranean, October, 2009 - [novella] [In Mainspring continuity]
"Last Drink Bird Head"; Last Drink Bird Head, ed. Jeff vanderMeer; Ministry of Whimsy Press, October, 2009 [flash]
* Death of a Starship; MonkeyBrain Books, November, 2009 [novel]

2009 Forthcoming Science Fiction:

"Bringing the Future Home"; Global Warming Aftermaths, ed. Eric T. Reynolds, Hadley Rille Books; Fall, 2009 [short story]
"Looking for Truth in a Wild Blue Yonder" (with Ken Scholes); Tor.com, Fall, 2009 [short story]
"The Starship Mechanic" (with Ken Scholes); Tor.com, Fall, 2009 [short story]

2009 Published Fantasy:

* "Golden Pepper"; Flash Fiction Online; February, 2009 [flash]
"The True Secret of Magic", as Joe Edwards; Crime Spells, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Loren Coleman, DAW; February, 2009 [short story]
"Witness to the Fall"; Crime Spells, ed. Martin H. Greenberg and Loren Coleman, DAW; February, 2009 [short story]
"To Stone" (with Shannon Page); Morrigan eZine, May, 2009 [short story]
* Green; Tor Books, June, 2009 [novel]
"People of Leaf and Branch"; Fantasy; June, 2009 [short story] [in Green continuity]
"Tale of the Poet and the Dog"; Japanese Dreams, ed. Sean Wallace, Prime Books; Summer, 2009 [short story]
"An Elderly Pirate Recalls the Death of Love"; Electric Velocipede Issue 17/18 [short story]
* "Red Dirt Kingdoms"; Realms of Fantasy, October, 2009 [short story]
Madness of Flowers; Night Shade Books, November, 2009 [novel]

2009 Forthcoming Fantasy:

"Bone Island" (with Shannon Page); Interzone, Fall, 2009 [novelette]
"In the Emperor's Garden" (with Shannon Page); Fantasy, Fall, 2009 [short story]
"The Passion of Mother Vajpai" (with Shannon Page); Subterranean, Fall, 2009 [novelette] [in GREEN continuity]
"Shedding Skin; Or How the World Came to Be"; Shimmer (Clockwork Jungle Issue), Fall, 2009 [short story]

calendula_witch had her friend Notorious G, and NG's swain, over for lunch today, in connection with orientation on care and feeding of the extensive Witchnest orchid collection whilst she is up in Oregon for my surgery and recovery. I volunteered to cook. Apparently, madness descended, because I seemed to think that everybody needed about 7,000 calories for lunch.

I made lasagna, for some value of the term "lasagna". This originated with a meal I had somewhere in my recent travels (possibly in San Jose) where I was served a deconstructed lasagna. Ie, big flat pasta in layers with sauce and whatnot, but simply built loose upon the plate rather than laid down in a pan and baked. This seemed kind of neat, so I went for it, using no particular recipe but random inspiration.

My sins:

Chopped and lightly sauteed in butter an entire head of garlic, which I mixed with about a tablespoon of finely chopped fresh oregano, then with a stick of butter to make garlic butter for the baguette and pugliese I bought fresh this morning.

Made a salad of arugula, mixed greens, onions, tomatoes, cheese, and chow mein noodles. (This was not particularly heinous, but did serve as a grace note of plausible deniability for the nutritional blast crater that was the lasagna.)

Chopped and lightly sauteed in butter another entire head of garlic, which I split into two portions. Cooked down a pound of sliced cremini mushrooms in butter. Lightly sauteed in olive oil a red bell pepper and half a purple onion. Combined all of the above in a plain storebought red sauce base with the garlic set aside from before, along with about four tablespoons of minced cilantro and two tablespoons of finely chopped fresh oregano. Let that sit and steep for a few hours.

Meanwhile, I sauteed in olive oil eight green onions chopped down, and four serranos. I melted a pound and a half of fontina cheese in heavy cream, added the onions and serranos, the balance of my garlic, a quarter cup of green olives sliced in half, a tablespoon of truffle oil, heavy black pepper and moderate paprika.

Also for giggles I pan fried a pound of chopped prosciutto.

I then boiled a large pack of lasagna noodles, laid them down flat on four plates, spooned out a generous helping of red sauce, a couple of tablespoons of ricotta, and a portion of the prosciutto. Another layer of noodles, a generous portion of white sauce, more ricotta, and more prosciutto. Another layer of noodles, an artistic mix of red and white sauces, then topped with grated parmesan.

Served hot with garlic bread from the oven and the salad on the side. I'm not sure why all four of us didn't wind up in the cardiac ward, but zomg was it good. Deeply heinous, but stupid tasty. Pretty sure I should be banned from kitchens for life, or at least for a while.

But I ain't sorry. Nuh uh.

I hope it's ok to post this since I have been burning for 6 years. If not feel free to delete it.

A letter to the public in case I am murdered

I can't believe I'm about to turn 26. This has been the worst year of my life. Never did I think it was possible to receive so many threats against my life for attempting to create social change within a tiny subculture. Never did I think that I would get raped and that this would cause people in this tiny subculture to turn this traumatic experience into a joke.

Two weeks after I was raped this "big time producer" was threatening to have me gang raped. I guess he found it funny. I called the police and they said the same thing that they usually did. "We can't do anything because it's out of state." Of course it's out of state. It's a violent gang of neo-nazi's who have physically attacked me before. One of them set my clothes on fire and then violently beat the shit out of me. I was told that if I did anything about this I would be murdered.

These people aren't simply in New York. Or Los Angeles. Or Pittsburgh. They're scattered like fleas. It's not just internet drama. Quit saying that it's just internet drama. It's massive industry mobbing. It's playing with my life. It has happened at my own gigs. It has happened at clubs I've attended. My own mother has received death threats.

"Just ignore them." Just ignore threats against my life? Just ignore one attack after another? How is that supposed to solve anything? "Just focus on your music." I am focusing on my music but I'm afraid to release it. The better I do with my music the more these people attack me. "Just move on." I'm sorry but that's weak. How am I supposed to move on after all of this? Why should I? Would you?

People say that I'm making everything up and that I've gone psychotic. What have I made up? Even the police have looked at the evidence. They feel bad for me. That's what they say. "We feel bad for you but unfortunately there is nothing that we can do to help you." This is not a publicity stunt. It's the legal system unwilling to help me because this gang is scattered throughout this entire country: because there isn't enough money to be made in such a tiny industry: because I don't have enough money to give.

My friends are worried about me. They send me messages of support. They mean the world me. They tell me to keep going. That I shouldn't let these people bring me down. That they know what this is like. I have an entire army behind me but who is going to stop this gang from playing with my life? When is it going to end? Will it ever?

People say that by making posts like this I am "giving them what they want." Maybe yes and maybe no. Does that mean I don't have the right to express how I feel? People say that I am "playing victim." Where is the act? Where is the stage? I don't see myself playing anything.

All I want for my birthday is money. Maybe that sounds selfish but until I get a certain amount of money I will have no way of getting any legal assistance. I have exhausted every possible option. It all comes down to me not having enough money to receive legal help. What if they actually kill me? What if this could have been prevented by the authorities? Who will be to blame?

If I end up getting killed I will have this post as a final record of what has been going on. People will know the truth. The only thing I can hope is that the truth will not be drowned out by this violent gang that has been fucking with my life and career for the past 4 years. Even now I am afraid to say who they are. Yet many people know who they are. If I end up getting killed these people will go to jail for the rest of their lives. I don't want to get murdered (does anyone?) but these people definitely deserve to go to jail. Will they? Who knows? They seem to know how to manipulate the law pretty well. They have done this to other people. I'm definitely not the first. I would like to be the last but not at the expense of my own existence.

Yesterday was a good day. calendula_witch and I got in a terrific walk up some mondo hills, spent some good quality couple time together, both got writing and reading done, then eventually went out. Our itinerary included Good Vibrations, Borderlands Books, Tacqueria Cancun (one of my favorite Mexican restaurants on the West Coast), and of course, The Make-Out Room for Writers With Drinks. Borderlands Books produced some unexpected bonus in running into Greg and Astrid Bear. I also got a phone call on the store phone, from sdn, which was surprising but fun.

We ran into Kat Richardson on the sidewalk, who was killing time before reading at Writers With Drinks, so we pulled her along. Once there we met up with maryrobinette (another reader) and Mr. maryrobinette, along with two friends of calendula_witch's. Afterwards, out with the WWD crew for crepes and fries at Frjtz. Whoever thought of putting truffle oil on french fries ought to be sanctified.

After WWD, we wound up talking to blakecharlton and therinth quite a bit. Blake's a medical student with both a personal and professional interest in cancer, Erin is a nurse. They had a lot to say, especially Blake, which was very helpful to me in my ongoing process of sorting my perspectives on my cancer, its recurrence, and my fears both rational and irrational. One thing Blake talked about was the survivorship community. The point he made, in reference to a close family member who'd survived a very bad experience with cancer (much worse than mine looks to be, frankly), was that there were conversations that Blake could not have with his loved one. There's a shared experience and an emotional vernacular which cancer survivors only find in other cancer survivors.

This of course made all kinds of sense. You see the same phenomenon in veterans, law enforcement, survivors of a disaster, or people who've shared any complex, high stress experience.

Which made me realize that one reason I'd written "The Specific Gravity of Grief" was to try to frame that cancer experience, that cancer mindset, for people who haven't taken that particular journey. To some degree, it's why I blog so extensively and thoroughly about my cancer journey, but the story (just finished, now in revision, due out from Fairwood Press next year) is a way of communicating the essentially incommunicable. Or so I hope.

A lot of streams crossed last night, and it wasn't dangerous so much as enlightening. It reminded me that while I stumble a lot, I also continue to progress. Sometimes I remember to be proud of myself, and the people around me.

Your Sunday moment of zen.



Flower along Williams Lake trail, about 11,000 feet, Taos Ski Valley, NM. © 2006, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

jaborwhalky with Jay Lake Dorito noodle doom mac and cheese — A recipe in honor of my cancers.

Charles A. Tan with a takedown of International Science Fiction Reshelving day — What he said. (Via Andrew Wheeler.)

Superconductors to Wire a Smarter Grid — More than you probably wanted to know about the US power infrastructure. Still, cool stuff.

Bad Science on the Iraqi bomb detection wands — This is as insane, and in its way deadly, as Thabo Mbeki's AIDS denialism. US conservatism have their global warming denial and evolution psychoses, liberals have their antivaxers, but it's nice to know that antiscience lunacy is not just for Americans.

China's fear of a black president

?otD: Which way to Pismo Beach?

  

Just yesterday finished reading an ARC of the new Daniel Fox book Jade Man's Skin, Del Rey, February, 2010. This is the book two of a trilogy begun with Fox's 2009 Dragon in Chains.

This is a fantasy based in a secondary world analog of Medieval China. Many readers may be familiar with Barry Hughart's brilliant Bridge of Birds as an example of Sinocentric fantasy, but where Hughart was telling a very Westernized, tongue-in-cheek story, Fox has chosen to follow a much more traditional Chinese path with the story and his characters. These books cover the range from Imperial intrigue to ocean-spanning magic to the smallest lives. Brutal, brilliant, complex and startlingly clear all at once, this series does a magnificent job of taking the reader into a culture, a time and a place that most of us have never considered.

I'm eager for the third volume, and these first two come highly recommended.

Your Saturday moment of zen.



My high school dorm room, Hill House, Choate Rosemary Hall, ca. fall, 1979. © 1979, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

I am interviewed by Michael Ventrella

calendula_witch on why we blog

scarlettina documents, among other things, my remarkable forebearance at Imaginary WFC 2009

Greenland's ice sheet lost 1500 gigatons of mass from 2000 to 2008 — Another liberal traitor in the global warming conspiracy.

NASA finds reservoir of water ice on the Moon! — In case you missed this. Big news!

Sunrise over DIA — A nice image from APOD.

?otD: How much up would an woodchuck upchuck if a woodchuck could chuck upchuck up?

( 3 panorams )

About to hop on a plane and head west to San Francisco. Don't take any wooden pickles while I'm gone.

Your Friday moment of zen.



Williams Lake trail at Taos Ski Valley, NM, about 11,000 feet of altitude. © 2006, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Call for masks — A way of sticking it to my cancer.

Strange Horizons reviews Green [ Powell's | Amazon | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Borders ] — Not so much with the liking of the book. No, no, not at all. In great detail, at length with the not liking.

Mercado de San Marcos: 1890s

The Speed of Online Conversation — The Web, Twitter, and you.

Rosetta takes home some pictures — Bad Astronomy with some serious wow factor.

Backward star ain't from around here — Fun with astrography. (Snurched from the Twitter feed of @jstephenyork.)

Hoekstra Helps Al Qaeda — A Republican congressman gives aid and comfort to the enemy. Waiting for the media explosion... waiting... waiting... (Just as a thought experiment, imagine if Barney Frank had done this.)

?otD: How many dances can an angelhead pin?

Well, today was not exactly made of win. We drove 50 miles in the remnants of Hurricane Ida to reach our client. We arrived early, made a coffee stop to kill a little time and prep for the meeting. Driving into the client site, my co-worker spilled a 16 oz latte on my pants and shoes. This was not good meeting prep, frankly. (Though the meeting went just fine.)

On the way back, we stopped for gas near the Philadelphia Airport. Weather was still wet and raw, and so due to my continuing efforts not to catch a respiratory illness, my co-worker got out to pump, and nearly got rolled by a dude in a black parka.

So, erm, just as glad to be safely back in my hotel room. Tomorrow, San Francisco and calendula_witch!

When I'm very stressed out, I show it in specific ways. For example, I can't work a Sudoku puzzle. I make a lot of arithmetic errors. My sleep habits get wonky.

This is to say, I've been diligent about exercising lately, and I wake up on time, without the alarm clock even now, and can still work Sudokus. That's how I know that even in the face of emotional anguish, nonstop talking about it, and comfort eating, still much of the cancer stress is me processing stuff, rather than me cratering in the face of it.

When I stop being able to wake up on time is when the shit will really have hit the fan.

Your Thursday moment of zen.



Howard Waldrop at Rio Hondo. © 2006, 2009 Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Call for masks — A way of sticking it to my cancer.

Interzone 225 ToC announced — With a novelette by calendula_witch and me. Also, she and I have sold a flash piece to Electric Velocipede.

A reader reacts to Green — At the bottom of their summary of recent reading. Some very nice things said.

Early 1970s ad for After Six men's fashions — My eyes! My eyes! Augh!

Google and realtime search — "There were five exabytes of information generated from the dawn of mankind to the year 2003," he said. "That amount of information is now generated every two days." Wow.

Mimicking the Building Prowess of Nature — Scientists build new materials using inspiration from complex biological forms. Some wild photos, and really neat materials science here.

Humanoid dinosaurs? Maybe not so much. — Some arguments about evolutionary paths from Tetrapod Zoology.

Mini ice age took hold of Europe in months — Something to think about in these days of climate change risk.

Why did HAL sing "Daisy"? — Fascinating. (Snurched from the Twitter feed of @jstephenyork.)

?otD: Why was the band on the run?

My flight left Portland this morning in the pre-dawn darkness, and landed in Philadelphia this evening in dusk's last failing light. I spent almost eight hours sitting on airplanes, with a 40 minute break in the middle in DFW. Talk about your lost days... On the other hand, I did Day Jobbery work, got 3,900 words in on "The Specific Gravity of Grief", answered a couple of interviews, and took two naps, as well as reading a good chunk more of The Jade Man's Skin.

I did wear the stupid fricking mask. Boy did that get old after a while. I also pretended to OCD and used hand sanitizer frequently. We'll see if any of this helps stave off respiratory infection. Much like the city's alligator watch, we'll never know unless it fails. My state of mind in this regard is left as an exercise for the reader.

Dinner tonight with klingonguy, valverdi and their friend D—, who likely has an LJ handle but I'm not smart enough to figure it out. Quite nice an evening.

The Philadelphia Airport Marriott, on the other hand, is yet another Marriott property without wireless. I don't get it. For what these rooms cost, they shouldn't have any problem doing what every Motel 6 and mom-and-pop coffee house in the country can do. I'm done staying at Marriott properties, given how many other hotel chains seem to manage this minor issue just fine. I can't believe they don't get constant pushback from their business travel customers over this.

Tomorrow is a roadtrip from Philadelphia to the Pennsylvania hinterlands for Day Jobbe meetings. At least I'll see the sun tomorrow. And then off to San Francisco Friday, and my sweet calendula_witch.