My first piece of fiction has been published!  It is called Valentine, and you can check it out over at Flash Scribe.  I won’t say too much more, other than to thank my awesome wife, without whom this never would have happened.  Enjoy

I have officially sold my first story!  It is a piece of flash fiction that is slated to run on Valentine’s Day, over at Flash Scribe, which should be officially launching today.  In any case, they seem to be an awesome group of people (AND they bought a story from me), so you should definitely go and check them out.

My 27th birthday was about a week ago, so this is as good a time as any to do a quick assessment of my goals, and how they are coming along.  Without further ado, here we go:

1. Write Fiction – I think that this one is an obvious yes.
2. Sell Fiction – Two stories of mine have been accepted in the last week, so yes.  More on that later.
3. Finish Novel – Working on it.
4. Sell Novel – What do I look like, a banker?  I need to finish it before I can sell it.
5. Woman of My Dreams – I married her.
6. Socialist Revolution – One day.
7. Free  Crab!!! – Provided by woman from #5.  And it was delicious.
8. Everything Else – It can wait, I have crab.

I probably don’t need to tell you about the dismal state of publishing these days, so I won’t.  What I do want to tell you about is where I see hope.  Mainly that is the in electronic publishing.  First, let me tell you about what brings this up.

I recently submitted a couple of pieces of flash fiction to a new publication called Flash Scribe.  Although they do not offer vast sums of money as I would prefer, I really like flash (my favorite piece that I have written is Bob: Employee of the Future) as a format and figured, ‘what the heck?’  So a couple of days go by.  Then I get an e-mail saying that they couldn’t open one of the files that I sent them.  Two things.  One is that it only took them two days to reply.  I realize that flash is, by definition, very short, but they still have to be on the ball to have that sort of response time.  The second is that they did not automatically reject it, which would have most certainly been much easier.

This is the sort of behavior that I simply would not expect from traditional media.  Why?  Because they are traditional, and therefore, by definition, established.  To them, innovation is not an opportunity, but a threat.  It is innovation that will save the industry, but for innovation to occur, people must take risks (especially on unknown writers like myself .  In short, I want to say that innovation is a necessary condition for hope, as it is rarely the past that saves the present from the future (quite the opposite, but that is a different debate).  In addition, I want to wish the best of luck to the various people and groups that are making a go of doing things differently.

Disclaimer – I have yet to get word on my submissions, and I am not writing this as an attempt to flatter my way into anyone’s good graces, I just thought it needed to be said.

Just read an interesting article about people doing genetics work in their homes.  Imagine tattoos that, instead of injecting ink, inject genes into skin so that it changes texture or color or becomes fluorescent.  Imagine custom bony outcroppings on elbows and knuckles.  Imagine super-ramped metabolism.  The future, if not here, is certainly on its way.  Sometimes I feel that as a science fiction writer, the struggle is to keep up with the pace of progress.

Apparently, the RIAA is changing its strategy. Instead of filing lawsuits, it will be trying to get ISPs to cut off people who are making illegal music available online. In short, they are attempting to control demand by controlling supply. These people are lousy capitalists.  Has it worked for the “war on drugs”?  No.  Will it work for music?  No.  At least they aren’t suing dead people anymore, I guess, but still . . .

I’ve reregistered pawnstorm.net, and it is up (although seriously incomplete). I like how it looks so far, and eventually will move the bulk of my internet presence there (I plan on keeping this blog, though, so no need to fret). Anyway, go and check it out.

After a not-so-brief hiatus, I have returned to writing.  Currently, I have several projects in the works, a couple of which are still in the rough draft stage, and one of which I plan on submitting for publication after I get some feedback.  I also plan on revamping this page, so look for changes here, as well.  Finally, as an expiriment, I have placed one of my previously unreleased short stories, Succession, for sale on the Amazon Kindle.  So we will see how that goes.

Just posted a new segment over at Uprising, Coffee Shop.  Sorry that it has taken me so long to write, but the first few attempts were . . . boring.  One of the things that I’m trying to do with this story is to simply cut out the parts that people can easily figure out on their own.  If a character needs to get from point A to point B, and one scene ends with him leaving point A and the next starts up with him at point B, then why write about the middle part?  The trouble, then, is getting something interesting into every scene, even when the scene could be extremely short.

In other news, I introduce an eye color body modification, which I call iris doping, basically injecting a colored polymer or something into the iris.  It would be really cool looking, but also be quite difficult to reverse.  If it worked well enough, I’d probably do it.

CNN has an interesting interview with Iain M. Banks, author of the Culture series of books.  I have personally wondered about a post-scarcity world for some time (I am a socialist, after all), and someone who associates himself with Ken MacLeod sounds like a good place to start.  In any case, go read it, its short and good, I will get back to writing.