Christopher Rowe

Warms my heart on a cold, cold night

When I was a teenager, I had a summer job through some kind of youth program in Columbia and I would ride my bike into town from our family farm off the old Campbellsville Road. It was a pretty sure bet that on both my morning and evening commutes, two or three folks in passing cars (or, more likely, trucks) would stop to ask me if I needed a ride. They really couldn't imagine that I would be riding my bike to town by choice.

Now there's a United States Cycling Federation sanctioned road race in Adair County, and I hope something happens to you soon that makes you feel the way that this makes me feel.

A Rationality of Teds

When our friend Ted was here over Thanksgiving, he pulled my copy of An Exaltation of Larks off the shelf and was surprised to see, as people usually are, that the James Lipton who wrote it (maybe "compiled" is a better word) is, in fact that James Lipton. The book is about terms of venery, collective nouns like gaggle of geese and murder of crows.

So, I was not surprised to see his contribution to the comments in an entry from a couple of days ago. I'd pointed out that three of the commenters on the post shared the name Christopher (the others, besides me, being Big-Headed Canadian Whiskey Man and the Shihan of Youngstown) and I wondered what the collective noun for "Christopher" would be. Ted wrote:

Since "Christopher" means "Christ carrier," I suggest "procession" as the collective noun.  Either that, or "apocalypse."

Clever, clever Ted.

My Year in Fiction, plus Year's Besteses and other News

2006 was a pretty busy year for me in terms of seeing new stories published. Which, for me, means three. Hey, we all work at our own pace. I read that on a blog.

So, to review.

I was much honored when my teeny-tiny story, "Two Figures In a Landscape Between Storms," was chosen as the lead piece for the fab Twenty Epics anthology, edited by David Moles and Susan Marie Groppi. I wrote about the book and the story in this post. If you don't have a copy, well, your relative level of indie press street cred is none of my business, but I should tell you that you can still order it here.

At the very end of the year, the horror anthology Aegri Somnia, edited by Jason Sizemore and Gill Ainsworth, included my story, "The League of Last Girls," which Jonathan Strahan recently called "darkly odd." Which is not at all the same thing as oddly dark. I wrote about the story in this journal entry, which includes a link to a free, that's free, zipped PDF of the piece. The book itself can be ordered rightchere.

The story of mine from 2006 which enjoyed the most (and most varied) critical attention was "Another Word For Map is Faith," in the August issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Gordon Van Gelder. If you're a fan of parallel structure, you won't be surprised to learn that I wrote a journal entry about the story. That entry also points to a downloadable PDF of the first half of "Map." You can still order a copy of the magazine at Clarkesworld, or alternatively, you can wait awhile and read it in convenient book form.

I've been told that "Another Word For Map is Faith" will be reprinted in these fine venues:

• Science Fiction: Best of the Year 2007, edited by Rich Horton for Prime Books
• The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 1, edited by Jonathan Strahan for Night Shade Books
• The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin Grant for St. Martin's Press

I'll have more to say about reprints as I learn more about 'em myself.

Bonus material! 2007 sneak preview! I just signed the contracts on a new science fiction story, "Gather," which will appear in a forthcoming anthology edited by Ellen Datlow for Del Rey. Here's to four stories in 2007!

Reader, I Disappeared

Y'know, I dig Ambush Bug fan fiction and pictures of other people's pets just as much as the next guy, but sometimes it takes the folks at a major academic research library to remind me just how crazy alltime everything these tubes are.

To wit, this afternoon I've been browsing through the electrified letters of Charlotte Brontë, and discovered that she did a meme even before This American Life came up with it. From a letter to George Smith, dated 26 December, 1849:

I think if a good fairy were to offer me the choice of a gift, I would say--grant me the power to walk invisible; though certainly I would add--accompany it by the grace never to abuse the privilege.

It's that second bit that gets you, eh?

From tonight's homework

This is from Interdisciplinarity, by Joe Moran.

One of the principal aims of theory is the questioning of interpretations of the world that are usually taken for granted. For example, it is regarded as common sense that language is always secondary: that it neutrally describes phenomena, and that as independent, autonomous individuals, we can use language as a way of expressing ourselves and our relationship to others and the world. This belief, which has been disputed by certain kinds of theory, allows most people to get up in the morning and live their everyday lives without constantly questioning the nature of individual identity or external reality.

Most people.

How to sell me a tech gadget

On the Apple site, the demo for the phone fuctionality of the new iPhone consists of three people arranging to meet up for an afternoon bike ride.

The League of Last Girls

This is still not a year in review post. This is a one-little-bit-of-the-year in review post.

I saw three stories published last year, the most recent of which was "The League of Last Girls." I don't think many people would identify me as a horror writer, but this story is meant to be more about horror (or horror tropes, maybe, specifically the tropes of a certain flavor of horror movies) than it's meant to be actually, y'know, horrifying.

The story was published last month in a book called Aegri Somnia, which can be ordered here as either a trade paperback or as a signed, limited edition hardback. I'm told there's a free shipping dealie going on right now. (You can also order it from a bunch of other places like Amazon and Clarkesworld, and the links to the appropriate pages are helpfully included on that page).

If you'd like a preview of the book, the editors have given in to my whining and posted a copy of my entire story, gratis, on their website. It's not a webpage, though, it's a zipped PDF, so be aware of that before you click on the title below. Please do let me know what you think of it, it's a quick 3500 words or so. The critical reaction (mostly in the horror press) has elicited a higher number of "What's this meant to be?" type reviews than I usually get.

Even higher number, I guess I should say.

Download The League of Last Girls.

Yeah, yeah...

I don't want to hear about it. I'll post a "what's been going on, there, hoss?" type entry in the next day or so. The short version of events is that over the last couple of months of the semester, in the mindblowing crossover team-up that nobody predicted, James Baldwin and Geoffey Chaucer combined their unworldly talents in order to kick my ass.

To make up for it, I have these goodies. Those of you in the science fiction world (or, possibly, in the billiards fiction world) might have a greater appreciation for these snaps than some other folks. Emma the Dog Girl and I discovered these two bits of local color on our afternoon walk yesterday.

First, it's possible that the people who've opened up this new pet grooming salon might get some calls they don't expect.

And here's something that's a little bit spooky and a whole lot interesting, spotted among the castoffs in the back of a stonecutter's shop.

Tevis is, in fact, buried one county over from here. A possible explanation is that the birth year on the stone (obscured by a leaf in this picture, but it's carved as 1927) doesn't agree with the birth year of 1928 I've seen elsewhere.