Honorable Mention

Thanks to Amazon I learned today that I made the list of Honorable Mention stories for 2010 printed at the back of 2011 edition of "The Year's Best Science Fiction 28th Annual Collection", published by St. Martin's Griffin. This is the annual anthology put together by Gardner Dozois. I had one of two stories stories cited from GUD's issue No. 6 (Summer 2010). In addition to "Dispatches from The Troubles", Caroline Yoachim was cited for "What Happens In Vegas".

This is the 11th time I've made the list since I first appeared in 2004. I missed out last year; the last story I had was "The Witch of Waxahachie" in 2008.

Forthcoming

I spent some time today working on a Twilight Zone-like story with a twist ending to the Titanic disaster. It is slated to be published in an ezine next week. It's come back twice for revisions, and quite frankly, it's become a distraction now instead of fun. It simply isn't an important enough story to agonize over. I'm falling behind on getting some other chores knocked out.

New fields

I've accepted my first invite for 2012, I will be a Guest Author at Galaxy Fest 2012. It is the media and literary convention held in Colorado Springs the last weekend in February. Next year it will be held Feb. 24-26. ConDFW will be the weekend before that. Ordinarily I wouldn't book two cons on two successive weekends, but Con DFW is so close I don't think it will be an issue.

I've never been to Colorado Springs (except for a visit to Pike's Peak in 1989 while on vacation), so I look forward to the proverbial 'new horizons'.

A rare foray into horror

"Flashes in the Dark" will be publishing my horror flash story "Ghost Writer" on June 16. This is one of my few forays into straight horror. "Flashes in the Dark" bills itself as "Home to some of the best horror flash fiction on the internet and the only every day flash fiction site that specializes in HORROR stories!" Thanks to Editor Lori Titus for the acceptance; this will be my 55th published story and my first in "Flashes". I also have another story lined up to be published in an ezine June 23rd, I'm working on the edits. This is a more typical Antonelli-type short story with time travel and alternate history.

Give my regards to OKC

I'm sorry I missed Soonercon in Oklahoma City this past weekend, but I needed to stay close to home; both high schools in the county had their senior graduation this past weekend. We also had a nasty thunderstorm roll through Saturday night; one of those schools lost its roadside signage right after graduation (someone commented it was God's way of saying school was REALLY out!)

I've picked up CONtraflow, which is in New Orleans Nov. 4-6. That brings me back to six cons for the year, which is my limit. I've never been to that con - heck, I really don't think I've ever been to New Orleans - so it should be a learning experience. It will be a seven-hour drive from here in East Texas.

SLF Awards Older Writers Grant

I mentioned last week that I had been informed about the outcome of my application for the Speculative Literature Foundation's Older Writer Grant. The SLF put out the news release yesterday - June 5th - about the outcome. Here it is:

Press Release #33

The Speculative Literature Foundation is pleased to announce that its eighth annual Older Writers Grant is to be awarded to Shauna Roberts. The $750 grant is intended to assist writers who are fifty years of age or older at the time of the grant application, and who are just starting to work at a professional level.

Born in Dayton, Ohio, Roberts grew up in nearby Beavercreek. From childhood, she dreamed of writing fiction, but that dream took a back seat to her nonfiction writing career and other activities when her mother was diagnosed with cancer in 2000 and died soon after. With a keener sense of her own mortality, Roberts joined the New Orleans chapter of the Romance Writers of America and a critique group. There, she began squeezing in time between magazine articles to write short stories and work on a novel.

In 2009, Roberts attended the Clarion Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers’ Workshop. Just a couple of years later, she was accepted as an associate member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Recurring themes in her novels and short stories include loss, prejudice and tolerance, and social issues such as class, sex, and religion. Roberts also enjoys reworking old ballads and folk tales. A former Katrina refugee, Roberts has recently written several short stories set during the aftermath and failure of the federal levees in New Orleans. “Bosphorus Dreams,” which was Roberts’ entry for the Older Writers Grant, will be the first of those stories to be published. Slated to appear in the anthology, A Quiet Shelter There, it is scheduled for publication in fall of 2011 by Hadley Rille Books. The anthology is edited by Gerri Leen and will benefit an animal shelter.

Grant Administrator Malon Edwards said of Roberts’ entry, “Bosphorus Dreams”: “Judith is an emotionally-fragile woman in the beginning of the story, but through curt and witty dialogue with cats and a gradual bolstering of her confidence, she gains emotional strength. By the end of the story, she’s more than just a grieving woman who has fled New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina for Istanbul. She’s a woman who has saved a city.”

Honorable Mentions for the Older Writers Grant go to Marcelle Dubé, Anne Pillsworth, Ada Milenkovic Brown, F.J. Bergmann, and Lou Antonelli for their intriguing and entertaining submissions, which made the selection of the winner a competitive but enjoyable process.
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“Speculative literature” is a catch-all term meant to inclusively span the breadth of fantastic literature, encompassing literature ranging from hard and soft science fiction to epic fantasy to ghost stories to folk and fairy tales to slipstream to magical realism to modern mythmaking–any literature containing a fabulist or speculative element.
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"Governor Shivers and the Golem Army of Texas"

The death this past weekend of former Gov. Bill Clements, who was the first governor to serve two full four-year terms in office, reminded me of Allan Shivers, who held the previous record of service at seven and a half years (Rick Perry has subsequently eclipsed them both).

When I drove into Texas on Jan. 15, 1985, in my little blue Gremlin, the radio was full of talk of Shivers, who died the day before. I had no idea who the man was.

I later learned that Shivers played a pivotal tole in the evolution of modern Texas. When the Democrats nominated Adlai Stevenson for president in 1952, and again in 1956, it was Shivers who led the "Democrats for Ike" with the reasoning that Texans should support the more conservative candidate, regardless of party.

Thanks to the Governor and his "Shivercrats", the habit of voting yellow dog Democratic each election was broken (Eisenhower carried Texas in both elections). Bill Clements was the eventual beneficiary, being elected the first Republican governor of Texas since Reconstruction in 1978.

Thinking on it, it occurred to me that Shivers is simply a cool name, and one of those flashes of inspiration that occasionally hits me, a title came to me, "Governor Shivers and the Golem Army of Texas".

I started writing Monday, and so far I'm up to 3,100 words. It's a welcome break from my Rebuild Series, and a great opportunity to weave in some crazy secret history set in the Civil Rights Era, the same milieu as "The Fontane Sisters are Dead", which also features a golem.

The picture I've used to illustrate this post is the cover of Time magazine from Sept. 29, 1952, when Shivers' going over to Eisenhower was making waves nationally.

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Thanks to John DeNardo on listing my previous post, "Paean to a Pen", over at SF Signal. I received a few nice comments.