Author: Shane

Me, the Campbell Award, and a Whole Lot of Free Stories

/ Shane / Leave a comment

As it happens, I am in my second, and final, year of eligibility for the John W. Campbell “Best New Writer” award. The chances of me being nominated are essentially nil, but that’s not why I’m writing this post. No, I’m writing to tell you about the 2014 Cambellian Anthology.

Mr. Blake has been kind enough to once again compile a list of works from eligible writers, including myself, and provide it free of charge. This a MASSIVE tome of FREE FICTION from the best and brightest new writers speculative fiction has to offer.

As a final tally of what can be found within, this year’s volume includes contributions from 111 Writers, who supplied over 860,000 words of fiction. On a practical level, that breaks down to 29 novel excerpts, 15 novelettes, 113 short stories, 26 pieces of flash, and a poem…

I assume most of you reading this have read my contribution, “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation”, but here is your chance to read a metric ton of amazing stories from amazing writers, for free (limited time though, download now!). I know many of these writers, and they are all so incredibly talented. Even if you can’t read all 860,000 words, just jump around and pick a few at random. Maybe you’ll find a new favorite author, just before they break out.

The book is available in .mobi (kindle) and .epub (nook and everything else) format. If you don’t know how to open those files, there is additional information here, about halfway down. (DRM free, for those who care about such things.) I was able to open the .epub directly on my computer, without downloading any additional software.

Quote Monday has a purrrfect teacher

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Me: “Do you know my phone number?”
::Evie, saying my phone number::
Me: “How did you know that?”
Evie: “Nala taught me.”
Me: “????”
Evie: “It says it on her collar.”

Ollie: “I like it when people get dead.”
Me: “You do??”
Ollie: “Well, not people I like.”

Me: “Ollie, were you doing something naughty?”
Ollie: “I don’t want to tell you if I was or not.”

Ollie: “I’m going to tell a story! Once a pot of time…”

That would make a great beginning to a time travel story.

Bad Lip Reading

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Football players have a bad reputation for not being the sharpest crayons in the box, possibly from taking too many hits to the head. That reputation is clearly unfounded. Let’s let the players themselves respond in (I assume) their own words:

I am literally crying at work I’m laughing so hard.

(Bonus link for more bad lip reading!)

Link via Sylvain

Worst Gift Ever

/ Shane / 2 Comments

So, recently I got to pick out something from the “employee gift catalog” for being employed for 5 years. Now, aside from the fact that I’ve actually worked there for more than 7 years, these catalogs. Yeesh. Have you seen these things? You browse through a glorified Oriental Trading Company catalog and pick from one of several cheap gifts. I’m sure they’re paying a lot of money to this company, but why? They’d be better off giving you a paper “certificate of appreciation” or something.

Nevertheless, I picked something out, because apparently free junk is better than no junk at all.

It turns out they were fresh out of my gift-of-choice, but I opted to wait. I mean, I didn’t really need a multi-tool all that bad in the first place, so I wasn’t in any rush. Finally, the magnificent day came, and there was my fancy new $5 multi-tool.

Shortly after taking it out of the package and playing with it, my eye caught a little warning on the package:

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“WARNING: This product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm”

What the? It’s entirely made of stainless steel, how does it cause cancer? Does it cause cancer just by touching it? IS IT CAUSING CANCER RIGHT NOW??

Now that the package had my attention, I gave it a little closer inspection. There are several other warnings, including “Do not run or make sudden movements when holding or using this pocket toolbox”. I assume sudden movements cause the cancer to spread faster.

There was a big picture of an American flag on the back, right next to the “Made in China” label. So which was it, USA or China?

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I feel downright patriotic knowing the package was designed right here in the USA. Wait a minute, it doesn’t actually say USA on there…in fact, that’s not even a real picture of the flag! It’s bad enough enough that they tried to take credit for the nation of package-design origin, but it turns out they might not even be truthful with that dubious honor!

The multi-tool features 14 useful functions, including 3 types of screwdriver and a “Heavy-Duty Plier Handle & Pry Bar”

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Don’t believe everything that you read:

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“WARNING: This tool is not designed for pounding or prying. Strong impacts or twisting forces may damage the implements”

What good is a pry bar that can’t pry? A screwdriver that can’t twist? Pliers that are only good for causing cancer? I’m not sure, but I do know I’m going to be working extra hard at work this week in appreciation of my amazing gift!

Regarding Giveaways

/ Shane / 7 Comments

So, it’s not Sunday anymore (or even Monday when you get right down to it) so it’s time to announce the winner of the double giveaway!

The winner of the custom headband from ThreadAbell is Anna, which just goes to show you, enter early! Random number generators take notice on that sort of thing.

The winner of the copy of OOMPH: A Little Super Goes a Long Way is none other than my mom! This is not surprising, because my mom was the *only* entry for the book giveaway.

(As a reminder, OOMPH is available in paperback, as well as for the Kindle or Nook. If you’ve already read the book, please leave a review on Amazon!)

I’ve never really had a giveaway here on the blog, so this was a bit of a learning experience. Twitter is the social network in which I interact with the most writers, so I was thrilled to see the link retweeted and retweeted again, by people with *many* more followers than me. I was sure the response was going to be huge, but none of the people who saw that link ultimately registered for the giveaway.

Some of it just might be the nature of the beast. The blog didn’t register a significant amount more traffic than normal that day, which means most people didn’t click on the link at all. I should say that going into it, I didn’t expect a lot of interest. I know a lot of writers who try to give away books that are pretty unsuccessful (if any of you out there are interested in getting free books, you could seriously make a killing entering these drawings).

However, I think at least some of it was that perhaps it was a little too complicated (read this, go there, do that, come back here, etc.). Lots of text. I think that would be my big takeaway: if I ever did another giveaway, I would try to make it as simple as possible. I don’t know how to solve the apathy problem (people not clicking on the link), but if they do click over, I can perhaps at least solve the second part of it.

Oh well, it was interesting at least, I’m glad I tried it. Anybody have any thoughts on the matter? Do you like the giveaways? Is there a reason you entered/didn’t enter? Did anybody even read this far?

Is this thing on?