Radio silence

My apologies to my internet friends for the relative silence this past week, but after getting back from the convention in Dallas I've had to deal with a week missing one staff member at the day job. We had an employee whose last day was Feb. 21, and the person we hired to start on Monday changed their mind, so I've been short-handed all week.

ConDFW

Just spent the weekend at ConDFW in Dallas. I drove in Friday night after work and shared a room with my friend Keith West. I had five panels in two days, plus a signing and a reading. Overall, things went well. I've unpacked and I'm pretty tired, so I won't be long this evening, but I will post more during the next few days.

Good Review for "The Clock Struck None" at Amazing Stories

Via Keith West:

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Lou Antonelli has been writing short fiction for just over a decade. Most of his work falls into the subgenres of alternate history and secret history. The Clock Struck None collects some of his best work to date.

Antonelli is a transplanted northerner who moved to Texas a few decades ago and calls the northeast part of the state his home. He’s been a newspaperman all his adult life. Both of these things inform his fiction. Reporters are the protagonists in more than one of his stories, such as “Hearts Made of Stone”, in which an editor revives a golem during the Civil Rights Movement in East Texas.

Many of the tales herein are set in his adopted state. But it’s a Texas most nontexans wouldn’t recognize. Texas is a big state, with a long and varied history, a history that Antonelli mines for gold nuggets. A great deal of alternate history focuses on the major turning points such as battles, assassinations, and the like. Antonelli looks deeper than that.

There are 28 stories in this book, so I won’t try to summarize all of them. They range from novelettes to short-shorts. Instead, I’ll highlight some of my favorites and why I like them.

“The Great White Ship” is a combination of steampunk and alternate history in which an airship from a parallel timeline arrives in East Texas. “Meet me at the Grassy Knoll” is Antonelli’s take on the Kennedy assassination.

Famous literary figures make appearances in stories such as “Across the Plains”, “Twilight on the Finger Lakes”, and “Pirates of the Ozarks”. I find a lot of alternate history stories involving famous people annoying because they’re downright silly, with little to no extrapolation of what could have happened. Antonelli’s tales are logical, believable, and thoroughly enjoyable. In some cases, you don’t know the famous person the story is about until the end. The characters referenced in these stories include Gilgamesh (“Tell Gilgamesh I’m Sorry) and The Three Stooges (“Re-Opening Night”).

While in college, Antonelli studied South African history. He puts his education to use in “The Centurion and the Rainman” and “The Amerikaan Way”. Both of these stories deal with apartheid but in entirely different ways.

Several of the stories make reference to a prehistory in which Atlantis and a rival nation destroyed themselves in a thermonuclear war. These were some of my favorite bits. I say this apart from any connection to the stories in which they appeared. I have no idea if Lou intends to write a whole series of these stories or if he was using convenient story device. I hope it’s the former.

I found the stories in The Clock Struck None to be fresh and original, and most importantly, entertaining. None of them were like anything I’ve read recently. Antonelli has unique voice. It’s easy to see from reading the stories in The Clock Stuck None why he was a finalist last year for a Sidewise Award.

The release date for The Clock Struck None is February 14, so it’s just hit the shelves. Check this one out.

My Nebula nominations

Saturday at midnight was the deadline for members of the SFWA to nominate works for the annual Nebula awards. I nominated five short stories in that category:

The Gods That Men Don't See, Amy Sterling Casil

Smoke and Feathers, Juliette Wade

Waiting for Medusa, Jack Dann

I Come from the Dark Universe, Cat Rambo

A Brief History of the Trans-Pacific Tunnel, Ken Liu

I also nominated in the Novella category Wakulla Springs by Andy Duncan and Ellen Klages.

All of these, except for the Ken Liu story, were brought to my attention by the authors themselves, either independently or in response to my own outreach effort for "Hearts Made of Stone". I felt they were all worthy efforts. I found the Ken Liu story in a search for something clearly alternate history. All great stories.

Research material

The 1975 World Almanac next to the current edition.

Back on Jan. 25 - the last weekend before this when I didn't have a book signing for "The Clock Struck None - my wife and I visited Marshall. I had a very successful book store at a small independent book store then in 2010 for "Texas & Other Planets". But the book store, Prospero's, subsequently closed down.

Otherwise, there is no place to have a book signing in Marshall. There is only one small bookstore in the mall in Marshall. While in Marshall on Jan. 25 I visited it. I introduced myself to the proprietor. This was the third used book store I approached in preparation for the release of "Clock" - the others were in Gladewater and Longview.

I know used book stores generally don't host signings for new releases - Prospero's was a pleasant exception - but in all all
three cases - in Longview, Gladewater and Marshall, too - I got a rude brushoff.

To make it worth my while, while I was at the Marshall store, I picked up a few used books. One of them was a copy of the 1975 World Almanac. I thought it might come in handy in research. As it happens, I found the contemporary references to the Watergate Scandal fascinating. It's interesting to see what the affair looked like to the public immediately after the fact. That helped me when I wrote 'As Tricky as Dick's Hat Band".

So the trip to the Marshall book store turned out to have been more useful than first thought.

ArmadilloCon 36

I have been invited - and accepted - an invite to be a panelist at this year's ArmadilloCon. It will be held July 25-27 in Austin. That makes my fourth convention planned for this year. I will be at ConDFW Feb. 21-23, SoonerCon in Oklahoma City in June, and FenCon in September.

Anyone have any other convention suggestions?

"As Tricky as Dick's Hat Band"

Finished my latest short story, "As Tricky as Dick's Hat Band", and sent it off to a slush pile. It's the 111th short story I've written since 2002. It's both a secret history and an alternate history. Right now I have 11 stories in 12 different slush piles.