The Machine Stops

Well, that turned out to be a longer hiatus than I'd intended.

Various occurrences occurred twixt then and now, not least of which was a two-day bout of Rampaging Kelvin Scale Coldy Cold immediately after I finished finals. I wound up spending 48 hours in bed, with about 38 of those spent asleep, so I guess it wasn't completely awful. Worse than that, though; as predicted, my computer has gone to the computer graveyard, or at least into the weird little storage cubby in the end-table next to my reading chair. So yeah, I haven't answered your e-mail. Or done much else of note on the internet either, unfortunately. Lack of computer has presented some hurdles in my big "Write at Least Two Novels and a Half Dozen Short Stories During Holiday Break" plan, but it's just within the realm of possibility that my plan was overly ambitious to start with.

There is some good news. First of all, I aced all my exams, which in turn led to grades of all As for my first semester back at college. So there's one goal met, anyway. Also heard that the Czech magazine Ikarie will be reprinting "The Voluntary State," which I believe brings the number of translations for that piece to six, which is very cool. But where are the French? I want to be translated into French, as it's the only language I have half a shot at actually reading the story in! Other than English, I mean.

Some more writing stuff: a few members of my local writing group decided, as a group exercise, to write stories for the recent Apex Digest "sci fi ghost story" contest and my entry bronzed, as we supporters of the Olympic movement euphemise. I'd also just placed a reprint with Apex, and now it turns out I'm going to be their on-line version's featured writer for...I'm thinking February. Being the featured writer means I've also agreed to contribute an as yet unwritten story to an as yet untitled, as yet unthemed themed anthology that Apex will be putting out in December. So, the Christopher Rowe Apex Digest summary sheet looks like this:

• A new story by me, "Queen of the Moon," will appear for free on the Apex website...sometime in the near future. I just realized I'm not sure when that will be, exactly. I'll link to it when it goes up, though, for sure.
• An interview with me and a reprint of "Men of Renown" (originally published in the chapbook Bittersweet Creek) will appear on that same website in February.
• A reprint of "Whether to Go Through," which originally appeared in Electric Velocipede #7 in Fall 2004 and was Honorably Mentioned in the Honorable Mentions section of the most recent Year's Best Science Fiction anthology, will be in Apex Digest #6 (Apex is quarterly and #4 is shipping today, I believe, so I guess that means June or so).
• That as yet unwritten story will appear in an original anthology from the editors of Apex in December 2006.

That's about it for now. Hopefully I'll have a computer to call my own again sometime in the next couple of months, but until then things are likely to remain sporadic around here, sorry.

Comments

[Ted]

Why would the lack of a computer slow your writing? You use a manual typewriter for composition, don't you?

[Steph Burgis]

Congratulations on all the Apex love! But huge sympathy on the death of the computer...good luck finding an even better replacement!

[Chris Barzak]

Hey, Happy Birthday! Sorry I'm late, but I'm stuck at this island airport the size of a hut, though it has an internet terminal, and as I am waiting for my plane back to Bangkok, I thought I'd drop in and say Happy Birthday! Hope it was a good one.