I'm terrible:

About letting folks know when I've got stories appearing, but I did want to get this one in here while I'm thinking of it. For folks who were following the stories about Gus and El Brujo that I was doing for the Thursday Prompt a couple years back, http://www.amazon.com/Neighbors-Mic.....dp/1502438844/ is the page on Amazon where you can find the paperback edition of the whole Neighbors saga including stuff--like the ending--that I never posted here.

Mike

And again:

I've pretty much forgotten that I can post stuff here for people to see. Several upcoming things of note would be my novel Morning, Noon & Night, available now as a Kindle-original. It started life as a My Little Pony fan novel, but I've replaced the ponies in various ways--all unicorns are now humans, all pegasi are sapient hawks, crows, or eagles, and all earth ponies are now sapient dogs. Take the link there, and it'll let you read about two-and-quarter of the book's three prologues. 'Cause you can never have enough prologues, right?

I've also got a short story in the just- released Music to Your Ears anthology from the Furry Writers' Guild and will have another Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel story in vol.29 of the Sword and Sorceress anthology, scheduled for publication in November.

Then, after 15 years of waiting, Rat's Reputation, the sequel to my 1998 novel The Blood Jaguar, should see print from Sofawolf next January. I'm planning on making the trek up to Further Confusion for the official release.

There's always so much going on!

Mike

I just realized:

That the journal entry that's been sitting at the top of the page here was thirteen months old. The only trouble with writing a newer one, of course, is that I would feel obligated to think of something useful or at least interesting to say. I suppose I could mention the Pony stories I've been writing over on FiMFiction and mostly not posting here, though I am putting the mini-epic up as I get it put together!

Or I could mention the two Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel stories that will see print this year, the one in Furplanet's What Happens Next anthology and the other in volume 28 of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword and Sorceress anthology: for those of you keeping track, the Furplanet one will be the immediate sequel to "Familiars," the first story about Cluny and Crocker, and will therefore be the 2nd story in the overall sequence of their adventures while the S&S 28 one will be the 8th story in the series. Enough for a fix-up novel, I would think. Hmmm....

Or I could bring up that at some point in the next six months, the novel-length version of Rat's Reputation will be seeing print after nearly 15 years in development courtesy of the fine folks at Sofawolf. The sequel--more or less--to The Blood Jaguar, this one will also feature lovely, lovely illustrations from louvelex and will be all new--except that it contains rewritten versions of the two original Rat adventures, "Rat's Reputation," which first saw print in the FurVersion fanzine back in 1989, and "Rat's Reckoning," which was published on one of the very first online magazines, the wonderful but almost-completely-forgotten tomorrowsf back in 1997.

So, yeah. Maybe I'll just mention all that. :)

Mike

Because I tend:

To scatter information about me like rose petals, I often find myself looking through several different sites when I'm trying to locate something I'm sure I've written or some link I'm sure I've made a post about. So in this journal entry, I'm gonna collect the links to the four publications I've got coming out this month. So when I want to tell people about them, I can just point them to this page rather than to four separate pages.

Please forgive me, then, if you've already heard all this. :)

Mike

1) The illustrated edition of my novel The Blood Jaguar

2) The story Thoughts on Early Spring in the anthology Bronies: For the Love of Ponies

3) The story River Man in the anthology Already Among Us

4) The story Familiars in the Ursa Major Awards Anthology

When I began writing this entry:

I wanted to start it with a breezy little, "So, I just got off the phone with John DeLancie." But I quickly realized that I'm not nearly cool enough to make something like that work. So instead, I'll just try to relate the facts.

Now, as I've mentioned previously, learning Mr. DeLancie would be providing the voice of the main antagonist confronting Our Little Pony heroines in the first two episodes of the 2nd season of that particular cartoon show made me quite happy: "Geeking Out," was, I believe, the phrase I used, for reasons that I explain in the post you'll find behind the link at the top of this paragraph. But I don't think anyone could've foreseen how much Mr. DeLancie's subsequent encounter with the burgeoning world of MLP:FiM fandom would affect him.

After all, the man played the featured antagonist during the entire course of "Star Trek, The Next Generation," so he certainly knows from rabid fanbases. But by all accounts, the genuineness of Pony fans, the creativity displayed throughout the various branches of the community, the way a not-insignificant portion of those watching this children's TV show are actively trying to take its lessons to heart to improve the way they look at the world, this all seems to have impressed him to a fair extent. By which I mean he and some filmmaking friends of his started a Kickstarter campaign last week to fund a documentary that will center around Mr. DeLancie's journey at the end of June to the Meadowlands of New Jersey for the 5th Bronycon, the fan-organized convention dedicated to all things Friendship is Magic--the campaign, by the way, reached 100% of its goal after three but is happily accepting further donations to make the documentary as definitive as possible.

Since my duties on this side of the country wouldn't allow me to attend the convention, I kicked in a few bucks with the thought that I could at least watch the film when it came out. This got me a nice "thank you" note through Kickstarter from one of the producers, and in my reply, since I wanted to say something more than just "you're welcome," I mentioned that I'd written this review of the show last year for the Strange Horizons webzine.

The producer wrote back saying he'd found the article well-written and had passed the link on to John DeLancie. He then sent me another note saying Mr. DeLancie had asked if he could contact me directly.

Little parts of my brain spinning around, I answered that I wouldn't mind at all, included my direct e-mail address, and not long afterwards found myself in receipt of an e-mail from a gentlemen whom I'd once watched performing one of my favorite roles in one of my favorite plays: Jack Tanner in Bernard Shaw's "Man and Superman." Not to mention the Star Trek and My Little Pony stuff.

We exchanged a few more e-mails during the course of that Thursday afternoon, and in the last one, Mr. DeLancie included his phone number and asked me to give him a call.

Practicality, alas, reared its ugly head at that point: I was working the front desk at the library the rest of the day, then going out to dinner with Dad and my two brothers who'd arrived the night before for a weekend of mid-spring frivolity. I would be off all day Friday, though, I wrote back, and would be happy to call him then.

Turned out, though, that he was leaving Friday at noon for a Star Trek convention in Dallas--but, he said, he could call me from the airport if I'd give him my phone number.

So late Friday morning, I spent twenty minutes or so chatting about My Little Pony with John DeLancie. And when I say "chatting," I mean I tried not to stutter too badly or pass out while he told me what he hoped to do with this documentary and asked me my thoughts on the subject. I told him he really needed to talk to Shaun, a.k.a. Sethisto, the guy who runs Equestria Daily, and he asked me if I could arrange that. I could and did and apparently the two of them had a conversation Friday night.

Whether that will conclude my participation in all this, however, well, only time will tell. Further bulletins as events warrant.

Mike

The submission period:

For volume 27 of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress anthology closed on Saturday, and on Sunday I got the e-mail from editor Elisabeth Waters with contract attached for the sixth adventure of Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel, "Airs Above the Ground."

The first story about Cluny, "Familiars," originally published in volume 19 of the anthology ten or so years ago, is available at the link earlier in this sentence for anyone who'd like to read it and will also be reprinted later this year in a collection Fred Patten is putting together of stories that have won the Ursa Major Award. It's about Cluny and Crocker getting to know each other during the Fall Quarter of their first year as students at Huxley College, your typical institute of magical learning.

The second story, "Squirrel Errant," takes place during the Winter Quarter and can be found in volume 23 of Sword & Sorceress as well as in the 2006 Further Confusion program book. The third story, "Three on a Match," moves ahead to the Spring Quarter and is in the anthology's volume 24 while "Matriculation," story number four, is in volume 25 and concerns our heroes completing their novice year and becoming sophomores.

The fifth story, "The Raw and the Cooked," found in volume 26, deals with the beginning of their summer vacation, and this latest story shows how they spend the middle of that summer.

Y'know, I really oughtta stitch these all together into a novel or something...

Mike

Let's see:

I finished up the whole AugieDog novella and submitted it to Kazka Press's Flash Novel Contest--that's the same outfit that's publishing the Bronies Anthology next month with the first AugieDog short story in it. I also finished "de-ponifying" my big Pony novel, added 20,000 words to it, and sent it to Strange Chemistry for their two-week-long "open door" period, and I have another month to finish the next Cluny the Sorceress Squirrel story for possible inclusion in the next Sword and Sorceress anthology. So we'll see what comes from all that.

In more certain news, I signed the contracts with Sofawolf for the re-release of my first novel The Blood Jaguar, newly illustrated by  louvelex, and I also signed the contracts for a reprint anthology that Fred Patten's putting together: he wants to use my story "River Man," originally published in Asimov's SF magazine back in 1993.

Other than that, though...

Mike

Back in November:

I saw a notice over at the Furry Writers' Guild about Kazka Press putting together an anthology to be titled Bronies: For the Love of Ponies. The editor, L. Lambert Lawson, said he was looking for "stories set in a speculative fiction setting" about "a man who likes ponies." By man, he went on, he meant male, female, human, robot or otherwise, and he specified several times that submissions could not be My Little Pony fanfic.

As it happened, I'd just started hammering out the things I've been slapping together every week since February 2011 as part of  poetigress's former Thursday Prompt program to form them into an actual novel I'm calling Neighbors, and the beginning of it, I thought, would fit the anthology's criteria perfectly. So I submitted a short story called "Thoughts on Early Spring" that reworks and combines part 1 and part 2 into a 1,000 word first scene titled Dancing With Crows, has an entirely new 1,000 word second scene titled Domesticity, and concludes with a 1,000 word third scene titled Some Words of Advice: it's an all-new section where Gus recalls how he and El Brujo first met, and it ends with a rewritten version of part 5.

And Sunday morning, I got the acceptance e-mail. More bulletins as events warrant.

Mike

Another one:

For folks who have been around a while.

My short story "Familiars" won the 2002 Ursa Major Award--the link there will take you to my Livejournal where you can read it for free if you're so inclined.

Since then, I've had four other stories about Cluny, the sorceress squirrel, published in successive issues of Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress anthology: volume 23, volume 24, volume 25, and the new one, just released a couple weeks ago by Norilana Books, volume 26.

So if you're looking for something to do this Cyber Monday and would like to support one of those venues that's consistantly been open to talking animal stories, please consider clicking the appropriate links. :)

Mike

Folks who have been around a while:

Might remember this book of mine called The Blood Jaguar that Tor published a baker's dozen years ago. There'll be more news about that next year if all goes well, but for right now, how 'bout some short stories set in that same talking animal world?

Specifically, A Curial Quartet, four stories about the Twelve Curials, the pantheon of deities who watch over Ottersgate and environs. Four stories and Twelve Curials, a little math will tell you, means each story focuses on a different group of three, and each story also features an appearance by the Thirteenth of the Twelve, the Blood Jaguar herself.

Three of the stories were published previously--one on Watts Martin's old Claw & Quill website, one in the first volume of Sofawolf's New Fables anthology, and one in issue five of Black Gate magazine--but the fourth is entirely original to this collection. And the whole set's available for one thin dollar over in Amazon's Kindle store: A Curial Quartet for your dining and dancing pleasure.

Mike

I've got a new pony story posted at The Equestria Daily called "Pinkie Pie's Evil Twin." I did it as part of their "WriteFriend/DrawFriend" event for Monday, so after that I'll probably post it here, too.