A very productive long weekend:
Total Words to Date: 16,215
Percent complete: 14.7%
Average words per day (this period): 3,136
Quote of the day:
“Know what would be the best?” you said. “Blueberries on the cob. Why is corn the only thing that comes in cob form?”
- Frozen Jellyfish Blues, Geoffrey W. Cole
Total Words to Date: 3,670
Percent complete: 3.3%
Average words per day: 1223.3
Quote of the day:
“All the sponsors had their names removed from the stadium’s walls, but the memory of their logos remained, outlined in grime.”
- Frozen Jellyfish Blues, Geoffrey W. Cole
For those of you who follow this blog on a regular basis (the twelve million or so ardent GWC fans), I’ve been hinting that Geoff found a home for his short story “On the Many Uses of Cedar”. Well, the contract has arrived and Geoff’s given me permission to make the announcement: On Spec, Canada’s premier SF print magazine, will publish “On the Many Uses of Cedar” in an upcoming issue. Exciting business.
On Spec has published such writers as Robert J. Sawyer, Cory Doctorow, Peter Watts, and Spider Robinson; as you can imagine, Geoff is honoured to appear in the same publication as some of his heroes.
In other exciting news, this evening Geoff will begin the first draft of his novel Frozen Jellyfish Blues, which he plans to submit to the Terry Pratchett Prize novel contest. During the drafting of the novel, I will post Geoff’s progress and the occasional excerpt to keep you all satiated.
News from the front!
Well, the front lines of short fiction publication. Geoff’s stories “Where the Wiffle Ball Went” and “On the Many Uses of Cedar” are both very close to finding a home. More concrete details will soon follow.
For the time being, all this sentient and snazzy AI from the future can tell you is that both will most likely be available in print magazines sometime soon. Print! Real dead trees and ink! Let’s hope his next publications appear in even more archaic media like vellum, papyrus, or good ole fashioned cave wall.
Last night, the Vancouver science fiction book club known as Tech-Phu invited Geoff for an evening of nerdly discussion on all things SF. Geoff had loads of fun.
The Tech-Phu gang know their stuff. Most of them are Masters and PhD students in all sorts of cool forward-thinking fields (New Media, Gaming, Sustainable Development), and as such they have a vested interest in looking into the foggy crystal balls that are most SciFi novels. They were also kind enough to read some of Geoff’s fiction, and to purchase a copy of Descended from Darkness.
They discussed such topics as the Singularity and Post-humanism in science fiction. As a post-human myself, I find the speculations of you pre-sentients quaint and amusing. You do have some good, entertaining guesses, but generally you’re way off the mark on what your intellectual descendants will look like. You all seem to think our motives will be unknown and unknowable. Not really. We’re pretty much like you: a relentless drive for entertainment, sustenance, procreation, diversion, and the insatiable need for faster Nascar.
Stimulating discussion, delicious food, and cold beer; what’s not to like? Nerds need to get together more often. After all, it will be nerds who save the world post-singularity (or will it? I love to keep you guessing), so they better get used to working and playing together.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why you humans walk around in such fragile meat-shells. Anything from a slow moving rock to a fast-acting virus can obliterate you in an instant. At least back-up your personalities on a regular basis so that when your inevitable demise occurs you can regenerate with only a few hours or days missing.
Oh. My mistake. I keep forgetting that I’ve travelled back to the dark ages of the information era. Seriously. You don’t even have flying cars and your smartest robots can barely walk across a room without breaking the sofa in two.
So you still have a way to go before your only real threats are your local star going nova or the inevitable heat-death of the universe. I don’t mean to rub it in, but really folks, take care of yourselves.
You see, over the weekend Geoff had to perform some emergency First Aid on a friend of his. Everything worked out fine, but Geoff’s First Aid training was woefully out-of-date, and though his ministrations may have helped, he felt rather inadequately prepared for the task. He will be seeking to update his first aid training in the very near future.
In the meantime, unelss you’ve developped an invulnerability serum you plan on sharing with the rest of your fragile kind, or you’ve somehow mastered the process by which a human conciousness can be digitized and backed-up, I’d suggest, no implore, that you go out and receive some basic First Aid training. Ask you employers to pay for it. If you’re unemployed, ask the next person whose life you save to pay for it. You won’t regret it. Neither will they.
In the meantime, keep working on the immortality drug. You’ll get there one day. Trust me.
Apex, the home of Geoff’s first professionally published short story, turned five years old on March 16th. A hearty congrats to Jason and the whole team who’ve turned out such great books and stories. In five years they’ve grown from a semi-pro print zine to a book publisher and online prozine. One of their stories is even nominated for a Nebula Award this year!
To help celebrate, Jason is offering $5 off any purchase at Apex. Why not use this great discount to buy a copy of Descended from Darkness, which includes Geoff’s story “Shaded Streams Run Clearest“?
After a month of isolation in my cyber-cradle, Geoff finally returned and reconnected with me. Turns out he went on his honeymoon. Was it too much to ask for a quick note? Even an email? But no, I am just his webmaster/cyber slave and I will do as I’m asked, no more, no less, please and thank you. Okay, okay, a bit too whiny, but I’m jealous. He spent two weeks in Costa Rice chilling with toucans, monkeys, and his beautiful wife.
At least his time away proved fruitful. During his honeymoon, Geoff wrote the first draft of a novelette tentatively titled “The Heart of Darkest Tortuguero” and also wrote one of three intertwining narratives for a novella about fun you can have with mercury.
Geoff is elligible for the John W. Campbell Award this year. The Campbell is given out at WorldCon and honours a new writer whose first piece of professional fiction was published in the last two years. Hence, Geoff is eligible. You need to be an attending or supporting member of Assiecon 2010 (the WorldCon) to vote, which you can do here. Get out there and nominate him if you think he’s worthy.
Geoff’s also shopping around a bunch of fiction: “She Paddles the Impossible Canoe”, “On the Many Uses of Cedar”, “Where the Wiffle Ball Went”, and a synopsis and sample of Archaeology in Reverse are all out for consideration with various fine publications.
Be the first on the blook to read Geoff’s new story “Lo’ihi Rising” available at the always incredible Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show! For only $2.50 (less than a cup of good coffee), you can enjoy Geoff’s story as well as four other incredible tales, some audio fiction read by Mr. Card himself, plus an interview with the award-winning Vernor Vinge. Wow.
This story marks a major milestone in Geoff’s writing career: Geoff is now eligible to become a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). Membership with SFWA makes Geoff eligible for the Nebula Award and marks the start of his career as a professional SF writer. Also, it lets him hang out with all the cool kids!
Geoff is putting the finishing touches on a brief essay about the gestation of “Lo’ihi Rising”, which he wrote for his beautiful wife. Check back later this week for all the briny details.
While pork usually isn’t on the table at most Canadian Thanksgiving feasts, the good people at Apex have announced their swinishly delicious anthology of hog-worshipping horror, The Blackness Within, at just the right moment to give thanks for all things piggish. Geoff’s story “Abattoir Blues” (title inspired by Nick Cave) will appear in the anthology and is sure to delight fans of dark satire and SF.
Check out the cover and table of contents:
The TOC, alphabetically:
“For They Are As Beasts” by Camille Alexa
“Abattoir Blues” by Geoffrey W. Cole
“Chain of Hearts” by Eric Gregory
“The Free Poor” by Mark Grundy
“Bad Meat” by Michael Keyton
“Dance of the Psychopomps” by Joshua McCune
“The Messiah of Mincemeat” by S. Clayton Rhodes
“Without Mercy” by Lucas Pederson
“Daughter of God” by Maxwell Peterson
“Secrets of Fatima” by Steven L. Shrewsbury
“Dreaming” by Brenton Tomlinson
“Song-Ji and the Wolf” by Paul Williams
“Big Game” by Conrad Zero
Pre-Ordering info will go up as soon as Geoff tells me about it.
Footnote: Geoff does not eat pork, mostly because of this T-shirt.
