Randomness for 6/12

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1) 20 Terrible Real Estate Photos. It’s hard to believe some of these are real. via Beth Pearson

2) Man Builds DIY ‘Hidden Pool’ In His Backyard That Disappears Under a Grass-Covered Top When Not in Use.

3) Man trolls Craigslist ad searching for “disguisable” weapons.

4) The Holy Taco Church. It’s funny, but I just sold a story to John Joseph Adams about a (mobile) taco church for his anthology of sff kickstarters. You think you’re being outlandish….

5) Tracking Detroit’s Decay Through Google Time Machine.

6) A review of Ancient Germanic Warriors: Warrior Styles from Trajan’s Column to Icelandic Sagas.

7) Know your double. <-- Funny

Anthology Walk The Fire 2 is out

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I have a story in Walk the Fire 2, edited by author and podcaster John Mierau, which is now available. It’s a rare story (for me) since it’s set in the diiiiiiiiissstaaaannt fuuuuuuuuutuurrre. I’d call it a science fiction story, but it’s a shared world anthology based on the conceit that special bonfires allow limitless teleportation. Calling it science fantasy suggests there are buckles being swashed, so I think I’ll call it un-science fiction (which makes it very like most of the stuff being published as sf, but never mind).

You can listen to the first story of anthology 1 if you’re an audiobook-phile.

Sorry, Amazon-haters and pbook lovers, but right now it’s Kindle-only. Hopefully, it’ll be available elsewhere at some point in the fuuuuuuuuutuurrre. Update: alternate way to get the book!

People name their favorite ebook fonts.

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So I asked folks on various social media sites this question:

If you read ebooks, do you have a font preference? What font do you change to?

Only two fonts received more than one vote.

Serif:
Georgia / / /
Caecilia / /
Dutch /
Times New Roman /
Droid Serif /

Sans Serif:
Futura /
Arial /
Century Gothic /
Lato /

That’s a pretty small sample size (all self-selected), but 7 8 – 4 serif over sans serif is a pretty strong preference. And, since Georgia comes already installed on my computer (while Caecilia costs $35 or whatever) I might as well publish upcoming books with that font as the default. People can always change it to ::shudders:: Futura if they want.

Anyway, I like Georgia. The serifs are a little heavy compared to something like Cambria, but the letters have a nice size to them, which my aging eyes appreciates.

UPDATE: I’m going to keep changing the votes as people weigh in.

Story Seeds

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1) Job Listing: ‘$40K a Year to Attend Harvard University as Me’ (This is a real Craigs List ad mentioned in The Atlantic)

2) It’s rare for me to do this, but:

3) Everyone has done and redone A CHRISTMAS CAROL, but I don’t think anyone has done it found-footage style, like BLAIR WITCH. Give Scrooge Google Glass, and there you go.

4) “[X] IN SPACE!” Heart of Darkness in Space. The Grapes of Wrath in Space. On the Road in Space. Great Expectations in Space.

5) A young scribe is sent to the wizard-king’s kitchens to create a cookbook, and discovers a whole secret world of pantry-spells, strange inhuman suppliers, and possibly a plot against the throne. Actually, I don’t like the plot against the throne, thing. Better if the scribe is just really determined to made a fully-comprehensive codex, even with the most obscure and difficult recipes.

6) The Seven Habits of Highly Cheerful Reapers. It must suck to be so grim all the time. I envision a whole section of the bookstore devoted to helping Reapers be more upbeat and deal with stress.

7) Title: THE CHOSEN ONE WINS THE FIGHT

Both hilarious and important

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Maybe other people are talking about this all over the web and I’m not seeing it, but LAST WEEK TONIGHT has been really great right from the first episode.

Net Neutrality is an incredibly important principle and Oliver drives that point home while being 100% hilarious. He really is great.

Vox.com has a series of their explainer cards laying out the subject, and I’ve been waiting for an excuse to post these two links:

Yes, Your Internet Is Getting Slower: Your provider likes it that way. And the government doesn’t care.

Why The Government Should Provide Internet Access.

But even if you don’t agree that the internet should be treated as a public utility, you should watch the video. It’s damn funny.

I’ve already shared my opinion with the FCC right here.

New Kickstarter update

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Is here.

The manuscript for The Great Way (the entire trilogy) has been turned over to the copy editor, which is good news for me. I’m pleased to be working on something else for a while.

The update also includes a (very) rough schedule for Kickstarter rewards.

Anyway, I’ve been superbusy–so busy, in fact, that I can’t even keep up with my Twitter timeline when I open it during “down” moments.

Back to it.

Yesterday was a day off writing.

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Usually, Saturdays are the biggest writing day of the week for me, but yesterday I had the day off. We celebrated my wife’s birthday, and I put aside all the usual stuff I’m supposed to be getting done so she does not have to cook, clean, or loiter around waiting for me or the boy to start doing what she wanted to do.

So I made her favorite breakfast, took a quick library run to pick up the books she had on hold, then went to Lincoln Park for a picnic, a game of Qwirkle, and some general hanging out.

After we returned home, we have Asian take-out, she blew out the candles (on her crustless sweet potato pie) and we played a game of Bohnanza.

She won Qwirkle by a wide margin, but I kick butt in Bohnanza. I keep telling my family that they should always trade if they can. Never try to hurt another player by denying yourself a trade, but they keep playing defensively.

Then, best of all, she went to bed super-early and slept hard for 10 hours.

It wasn’t exactly a tennis bracelet/fancy restaurant birthday, but she had greenery, sunshine, and family time, which are her very favorite things, so we’re calling it a win.

Oh, yeah: I got her a nice, wide-brimmed straw hat for summer sunshines and being a little dressy. She was pleased.

But that was yesterday. Today I’m struggling with Scrivener once again. In a few minutes, I’m going to say fuck it and watch some Person of Interest.

Help Fund My Robot Army Table of Contents

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Remember when I said I’d be in an anthology with a bunch of great authors like Seanan McGuire, Tobias Buckell, Mary Robinette Kowal, and many more? Well, now you can see the whole Table of Contents here:

http://www.johnjosephadams.com/robot-army/table-of-contents/

Check it out, you guys. It’s pretty cool. Expected sale date: July 1, 2014

Randomness for 5/27

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1) A comparison of Zulu and Filipino stick fighting. Video.

2) The Oatmeal on the wonderfulness of the Tesla Model S electric car.

3) Five Details They Cut From My Season Of The Biggest Loser. We all knew this show was complete shit, but it’s even worse than I thought.

4) What happens when engineers own dogs. Video.

5) The 10 Commandments of Typography.

6) San Francisco “real estate magnate” hides $100 bills around city and leaves clues to their location via twitter account.

7) “In my view, the parties do not need a judge; what they need is a rather stern kindergarten teacher” Spiteful upper-class twits drive each other wild.

Upcoming anthology appearances, with an awkward note

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Let’s start with the good news. I’m going to be in two anthologies coming out this summer, both of them funded via Kickstarter: Help Fund My Robot Army & Other Improbably Kickstarters, and the shared world Walk The Fire, Vol 2. Don’t worry, no one is asking you to back a campaign, I promise. These projects were closed months ago.

Again, the books will be available some time this summer, and believe me I’ll post links to buy them when they’re out.

The complicated part is this: I’m glad both books are coming out and I’m pleased with the stories I sold them, even though both rejected my initial submissions.

The WALK THE FIRE antho is a shared-world deal, centering on a future where people can travel via special fires. That’s right, fire. You step into the flames in one place and emerge in another. It’s teleportation with a few complications added in.

Anyway, the first story I wrote, “A No Without A Thank You”, was basically a slam on Doctor Who, because I thought the fires allowed people to travel through time and space. The anthology bible even said “time and space” in one spot. Feedback from the editor insisted that I hadn’t followed the guidelines correctly, and I had to read the bible several times before I worked out that it was supposed to be “time and space” only. The guidelines as a whole only made sense if they were space-only. Oops.

At that point, with a rejected story, I could have withdrawn; I do have a shitload of work to do to fulfill my own Kickstarter. But! I’d also promoted the campaign to my readers and thought it would be unfair to them if I back out of the project now. So I set everything aside and wrote a second story, called “Sterile Oceans”, which was accepted. And I’m proud of that story. Plus, “A No Without…” is ready to go into the short fiction collection I listed as a stretch goal for my Kickstarter backers. So that’s all good.

HELP FUND MY ROBOT ARMY… brought up a similar situation, although the reasons behind it were different. That anthology is a collection of stories told in the format of a Kickstarter campaign–with a sales pitch, stretch goals, comments, the whole deal–and my original submission was a parody of the “Above the Game” campaign, (which I won’t link) that PUA manual that supposedly advocated sexual assault. My story was about a PUA who planned to sell (short-acting) love potions, and who insisted they were completely different from roofies.

It was dark, yeah, but the editor decided it was too dark and bounced it. Once again, I had a choice of disappointing backers or writing a second attempt. The followup story was accepted, and it’s fun (but deliberately slight) and technically, this also frees up the PUA/love potion story for my own story collection.

Except, now that this loser in UCSB (I’m not posting his name online) has had his rampage, I’m tempted to yank it all together. The original story was supposed to be darkly funny, but I’m not feeling it anymore.

Anyway, two new anthologies mean four new stories from me this summer (or maybe just three, who knows.) I’m also thinking I need to take a break from Kickstarter anthologies.