The last thing "to go off" last night: a shot from Orion's grandpa's homemade cannon.

The video doesn't do it justice...but you can compensate by turning up the volume! ;)

Eric Nylund and Syne Mitchell put on a fabulous party yesterday with yummy BBQ and fun and games. Here, Orion takes on the new zip line that Eric & Syne's son Kai got for his 6th birthday.



Friends


And later, at Orion's grandparents' house...sparklers!

Ken Scholes' collection Long Walks, Last Flights & Other Strange Journeys has just been announced as a finalist for this year's Endeavor Award. Woot!





And take a look at the full field of finalists. That's quite the list!

FINALISTS FOR 2009

Anathem by Neal Stephenson
Ill Met in the Arena by Dave Duncan
Long Walks, Last Flights and Other Stories by Ken Scholes
Space Magic by David D. Levine
A World Too Near: Book Two of the Entire and the Rose by Kay Kenyon

More info about the Endeavor Award can be found here.

Both upcoming Fairwood titles pictured below are now available for preorder at a discounted price on the website: www.fairwoodpress.com.

Marching to the beat of a different drummer? Orion? Why say that? Here are the birthday cakes from his last 3 birthdays. The themes were his choice.



5th Birthday: Theme: 1950s War of the Worlds





6th Birthday. Theme: Doctor Who




7th Birthday. Theme: Little Big Planet

I sent off a good chunk of ARCS, about 30, to various review venues and VIPs, for The Radio Magician and Other Stories by James Van Pelt, and Harbinger by Jack Skillingstead.

Jim Van Pelt is doing a giveaway of a good number of ARCs that he received to those who are willing to post reviews on their blogs. See his post about it at http://jimvanpelt.livejournal.com/209821.html.

Jack Skillingstead will soon be coming to you in an interview in Locus (he's being interviewed this weekend during the Locus Awards weekend).

Yesterday, after finishing my last day of school and checking out, I picked up Orion from daycare and we headed home.

We stopped on the way at a park on Lake Tapps near home because Orion wanted to swing. (We also played King of the Hill, rollercoaster, and blazed through the woods on some little trails.)

On the way back from that, I looked on my phone's Google Maps and saw that we were not that far from ... Bonney Lake. I mean, Bonney Lake the body of water. It does exist. It's a tiny thing, surrounded by nice homes, and a one-way road that circles it.

But it is not Bonney Lake. The town is Bonney Lake. The truth lies here in this sign:




Lake Bonney!  

Anyway, it was a nice spot to stop and breathe in a little and hang out. Ahhh, a nice summer to be had. More pics below. The camera phone did a decent job, anyway.







(Oh, and Orion lost his first upper tooth the day before!) 

Subscriber copies (via bulk mail) went out in the mail today. This was after some trouble...I only use it twice a year, and by the time I go back to the Post Office, their rates have changed, their forms have changed, their rules and regulations have changed...I had to break most of my packets of flats in half, re-rubber band them, label the new ones, blah t blah. Annual fee hadn't been paid yet either, so that was another chunk-o-change.

Foreign and store copies get shipped out tomorrow. I have to do a customs form for every foreign copy that goes out. Time consuming!

Then I'll be reclaiming my living room, which is cluttered with boxes, piles of mags, packing paper, and all that.

There's a snow make-up day on Monday. A few hundred students will bother to show up for the two hours. Then teachers spend the rest of the morning working/cleaning up, and sign out after the annual teacher luncheon.

Then I'm free.

Although there's plenty to do, of course. Just no school stuff to do.

Because of budget cuts and all, there will be no 1.2 contracts given, so I won't be teaching all 6 periods. In many ways that's a relief. I've almost forgotten what a planning period feels like. The bad news is that since I teach lot of singleton classes, I won't have one of the classes I normally teach next fall: creative writing. Argh. It's one of my favorite classes to teach, of course, and since I'm the adviser for the school literary magazine, it makes it doubly hard to organize that. At the moment, my classes will be: AP Literature, Science Fiction, Newspaper, Journalism and Honors 10 Literature.

Woo hoo! 

$78 refunded to me from a surplus escrow account.

Thanks WaMu/now Chase.

I missed a window of opportunity today getting the new Talebones out due to my inability to get the bulk mail to the P.O. Looks like it won't go out until Tuesday now. Hang on!

Anytime after 6 pm Wednesday. Stuffing and labeling at Townhouse Talebones. All welcome!

Thanks for all the kind words regarding the closing of Talebones. I know I've only added to writers' concerns about the short fiction market.

Those of you who missed last night's late announcement about this, it is posted here.

In a somewhat timely turn of events, copies of issue #38 were stacked on my doorstep this evening when I got home from work.  Funny (maybe not), but I'd decided early on in the process of getting this issue put together to shrink down the logo and the author names on the cover a little, to give the artwork more room to breathe. And now...well, I'm not sure yet what I'll be doing for #39. . . 

I shouldn't post this late on a Sunday night, but I'll certainly be reposting as time goes on. I figured that my close-knit LJ community should be among the first to know.

Talebones the magazine is closing up shop. There are many reasons, some of which I've mentioned before in earlier attempts to close the magazine (I thought I was out...but they dragged me back in!). Subscribers are hard to come by. I could throw numbers at you, but why bother? They're not pretty. Talebones has stayed afloat for the last few years only because of (a) the Save Talebones drive two years ago and (b) other funding from Fairwood Press, the Rainforest retreat, and my pocket.

But even so ... money is not the main reason I'm ending the mag. I need just a little less stress in my life, and more time for other things. My son. My health. My job. My writing.

And even so ... Talebones is not dead. Oh no.

Talebones #38 will be out within the next month. Issue #39 before the end of the year. (Decisions were made not too long ago on that issue.)  I am returning all submissions that come to me, unread, with a note attached regarding the closure. I will take all of 2010 off from Talebones ... except for the work/planning needed to put out the long-awaited Best of Talebones anthology. By the end of this year, Talebones will be owned by my book company, Fairwood Press.

Starting in 2011, Talebones will become an annual anthology. It will be all fiction, no poetry, probably no artwork other than the cover. It will have broader distribution (I hope). Submission guidelines will go up sometime in late 2010, and I will probably do some invites for that first anthology to get a good jump on things. I expect the guidelines to be fairly similar to the magazine guidelines. I also expect that submissions will be accepted during a limited window of time each year, and probably all online. Down the road there might be guest editors and themes. Don't hold me completely to all these expectations, though.

So Talebones isn't really going away. Just entering its chrysalis phase; when it comes out, it will hopefully be changed for the better. There's no guarantee it will survive that way, either, but I've got to give it a try.

Subscribers...I'll be contacting you about your options. You can certainly beat me to the punch and email me (or send a note to my LJ inbox) and I'll get right to you. Some subscribers will have one or two issues left, some four, some even more. I'm not taking in any more subscriptions (the subscription option is gone from the website), but in the meantime, anyone, subscriber or not, can consider buying the last two issues individually, and even consider picking up some back issues. This will be extremely helpful, as it will not be an easy road financially getting subscriptions paid back and getting #39 out without any subscription money coming in.

Please do respost this or parts of it, wherever you will, amongst the writing/SF community.

Well there it is. It's been a good run. A little rest, and I'll run again, but down a completely different road. Cuz, you know. I've got miles to go...

~Patrick

The first 11 days back on my diet, I lost 7 pounds. Friday morning, I was down 10. I wasn't so good this weekend, though, so Monday morning I'll restart my cycle. This time I'm also getting back into the workouts, and that's helped, even when I'm not always so good on the eating front.

Usually, something happens to pop me out of my "good" spells. This time, it's this crappy cold that I've had since last Monday that's making it difficult to work out and stick to a better eating schedule. But I'll hopefully keep plugging away, now that summer's almost here for me.  My official start weight was 245. This morning I was 237. I can tell you I'm not that right at the moment, having had a student's grad party and the usual grad party food to wade through, plus a family get-together, and then a late evening meal.

Maybe I'll bring back the weight meter a little later on ...

A few folks will get together at Townhouse Talebones for some good old-fashioned envelope stuffing and labeling for issue #38. Any time after 6. Anyone who's around is welcome. We'll eat something, even. Let me know. 

Talebones #38 shipped from the printer early this week. If not delayed, the shipment will arrive on Monday.

Now comes the time where a few volunteers might be handy for stuffing and labeling. Tuesday eve comes to mind, but I can delay a number of days depending on when would be best for folks.

For the San Jose WFC, I've been moved to information gathering and to passing down material from last year (Calgary). Another designer has taken the reins for the program book itself.

We're at The Ram...about a dozen of us, with more coming. We'll be here a number of hours, so it's okay to come a little later!