Deborah Layne (wheatland_press), publisher and proprietor of the wonderfully excellent Wheatland Press, has just posted the following message on her blog:

In 2002, the Polyphony anthology series debuted. Conceived as a short fiction venue for stories that would skate gracefully across the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, magic realism, and literary fiction, it was quickly recognized as the standard bearer for cross-genre work. Since then, the series' six volumes have become a vital, unique collection of voices in literature of the fantastic.

Polyphony has been twice nominated for a World Fantasy Award and the stories therein have been featured in several "Year's Best" anthologies, along with garnering accolades from several award judges and committees. Polyphony authors range from multiple-award-winning seasoned writers to the previously unpublished. The series is truly a melodic interweaving of many voices: old and new, speculative and literary, heralded and unknown. Polyphony has not merely crossed literary boundaries, it has reformed and redefined them.

The harsh economic climate threatens to kill this vital series. Wheatland Press is asking for your help.

The authors have graciously made concessions to make Polyphony 7 a reality. They've agreed to a reduced pay rate to see the volume published. Now we need readers.

In order to publish Polyphony 7, Wheatland Press must receive 225 paid pre-orders via the website by March 1, 2010. If the pre-order quantities cannot be met, Polyphony will cease publication. It's that simple. The preorder link is here: http://www.wheatlandpress.com/order.html#polyphony7.

If the preorder number is met, then Polyphony 7 will be published on or about July 1, 2010. (The fine print: If we do not receive enough orders by March 1, then all preorders will be refunded immediately.)

We have heard from many in the SF/F literary community that Polyphony is a vital part of landscape. We agree, but we cannot continue without your support. We hope that you will support our fine authors and their art by becoming part of the Polyphony community and pre-ordering a copy of Polyphony 7.

Do feel free to buy another Wheatland Press title while you are stopping by the website! Those will, as always, ship immediately.

And, also feel free to repost this announcement with impunity.

I'm reposting this for two reasons, both of which are selfish.

One: The Polyphony series is perhaps my favorite anthology series of all time. It was the first time that I could see a concrete example of what was just beginning to be called "slipstream" fiction, and each volume consistently provided phenomenal stories from some of my favorite writers as well as others whom I'd never heard of before. I discovered Vandana Singh in P1 and Dora Goss in P2, both of whom went on to the top my list of favorite short story writers. The possibility that the series may not continue fills me with utter disappointment and bitter sadness.

Two: Polyphony 7 contains my story "Strange Mammals," which imho is one of my best stories to date (though the author is never the best judge of his or her work). I really want it to see publication, and furthermore, I really want it to see publication in Polyphony 7. Ever since the series began, it has been a goal of mine to sell a story to Deb and Jay Lake; it wasn't until Jay left and Forrest Aguirre took over co-editing duties that I accomplished this goal (coincidence? You'll have to ask Jay :-j), and this was one of the highlights of my writing career thus far. When Deb emailed that P7 might not come out, I was depressed beyond words.

If, like me, you have gotten something out of one or several (or all) of the volumes in the Polyphony anthology series, please preorder Polyphony 7. You will receive in return another fantastic collection of slipstream fiction, and you'll be helping to ensure that the series does not end prematurely.

Here is the table of contents for Polyphony 7, a lineup that deserves to see the light of publication:

The Bravest Girl I Ever Knew by Howard Waldrop
Dr. Black at the Red Demon Temple by Brendan Connell
The Snow Queen by Chris Clarke
Strange Mammals by Jason Erik Lundberg
The Afterlife of Sorrow by Mikal Trimm
Breaker of Thresholds by George Zebrowski
The Seven Deadly Motels by Bruce Holland Rogers
The Monster in the Field by Steve Rasnic Tem
There is Something So Quiet and Empty Inside of You that it Must be Precious by Ben Peek
A Problem in Five Clocks by Stephen Bush
Bear in Contradictory Landscape by David J. Schwartz
Automata by Eric Schaller
The Klepsydra by Micheala Roessner
Captain Kid by Kristin Livdahl
Loose Ends by Jerry Oltion
The Possibility of Love by Stephanie Campisi
Grief-Stepping to the Widower's Waltz by Ken Scholes
A Sip from the Cup of Enlightenment by Sarah Totton
The Dust and the Red by Darin C. Bradley
A Joy Forever by Celia Marsh
The Heart of the Rail by Mark Teppo
Mirages by Eric M. Witchey
Avoiding the Cold War by Josh Rountree

Once again, the preorder link is here: http://www.wheatlandpress.com/order.html#polyphony7.

My Nebula-eligible fiction for this current cycle (not that I think any of it has even the slimmest change to get nominated, but hey, if you're in SFWA and feel like throwing a little love my way, I certainly wouldn't mind):

"Stuck" (short story), Farrago's Wainscot, July 2008

"The Apokalypsis Pentaptych" (short story), Qarrtsiluni, December 2008

"The Time Traveler's Son" (short story), Papaveria Press, December 2008 (RTF available to Nebula voters)

"In Jurong" (novelette), Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, November 2009

I have left off my Daily Cabal entries, because, much as I love writing them, they feel more like exercises in flash fiction than honest-to-Buddha publications; still, if you would like to read them, they're archived here.

Before Janet and I moved to Singapore in March 2007, I sold or gave away almost a thousand of my books to lighten the load and set free the ones I didn't think I would read again. More than a few of them I have regretted letting go, and every so often I reach for a book I think I still own. However, I find myself now really missing my copy of The Norton Book of Science Fiction (edited by Ursula K. Le Guin and Brian Attebery), especially as I have been given the task of constructing the six-week science fiction unit for Secondary Two Language Arts next year. It was the main text used for my very first class with John Kessel, and several prominent authors have signed their stories within.

I don't recall who bought the book from me in the first place, but if you're out there, could you please contact me ASAP? I would be very willing to buy the book back from you.

Thanks in advance.

Update:



W00t! Thanks, carnwrite!

Yesterday I tweeted that my novelette "In Jurong," had sold to Quarterly Literary Review Singapore. What I didn't mention is how completely surprised I was to sell it to them; it's very obviously a fantasy (whereas QLRS, being a respectable literary review, seems to normally only publish mimetic fiction, although I haven't read every issue, so I may be wrong about that), not to mention that it's told in second-person POV, which is tough sell anywhere. But the story does have local appeal (it's basically an alternate world where the Jurong Birdpark has taken over all of Singapore), and they must have seen something else in it to make it worth publishing. So yay!

Yesterday, before the Neil Gaiman/Amanda Palmer event at the Singapore Writers Festival, I ran into Kai Chai, the short story editor for QLRS, and he said that the story would most likely be posted later in the day. When I woke up this morning, it was up.

I wrote this story five years ago, and it had been rejected from 11 other markets before I sent it to QLRS. I had almost given up hope of it being published at all; it was the anchor story for the collection I'd put together, and at least, I figured, it could be seen there if a publisher ever decided to collect my short fiction. Anyway, I'm very glad that the editors at QLRS momentarily lapsed in their judgment and decided to give the story a home.

So if you can spare the time, please go forth and read "In Jurong."

My latest contribution to The Daily Cabal has gone up today, called "The World, Under."

I wrote this story grenade the night that Janet gave birth to our daughter Anya. Taking Tim Pratt's own experience with the birth of his son River as inspiration, I wanted to see if I could still write a coherent narrative on very little sleep. I guess whether it's coherent or not is up to you, the reader, but I think it works. It's the setup for the larger story to come, but hopefully it still reads well on its own.

This piece marks my first conscious attempt at continuing a series (prologued by "Mini Buddha Jump Over the Wall"), collectively to be called Looking Downward. At this point, I don't know how many installments I shall write, but I suppose that when the story ends, I'll gather them fixup-style into a cohesive whole, and maybe try to sell it.

As before, I'm disabling comments here to encourage discussion on the story page. If you feel motivated to comment on the story, whether you loved it or hated it, please do so there. And if you did like the story, please do spread the word.

Enjoy!

I submitted the following pieces to the forthcoming Hint Fiction anthology edited by Robert Swartwood and published by Norton, but sadly none of them got picked up. Still, I think they're not bad, and at least they're very short, so here you go:


ESSENCE

The bomoh sold me the Essence of Chicken, but it transfigured me into one of his clucking brood. I just wanted to ace my exams.


HIDDEN IN THE LEAVES

I stared into the dark center of the banyan tree, and the arboreal spirit awoke and followed me home. We chatted. It liked my lemonade.


BUDDHA'S TOOTH

I placed the Buddha's tooth in my mouth, expecting enlightenment. Nothing. So it's true, then. Not from the Buddha, but from a water buffalo.

Introducing Anya Sophia Lundberg, born at 5:53 p.m. Singapore time today on 15 October. She's 49cm long, 3.25kg in weight, and one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

   

Today, Janet and I officially became parents. All three of us are exhausted beyond measure.

(Although I will say that I somewhat passed the Tim Pratt Writing After Birth Test; I didn't write a very long story, but I did start and complete my next Daily Cabal entry, which continues the adventures of a curious little Eurasian girl also named Anya.)

I just left Janet in the hospital room and Anya in the nursery and grudgingly came home. I got online long enough to post this, and now I am going to bed. I didn't do nearly the work that my favorite girls did today, but I'm about to pass out.

Welcome to the world, little one. I pledge to do my utmost to ensure that your life is full of wonder and whimsy and wisdom and woodpeckers and wallabies and other things starting with W.

Janet woke me up at 2 a.m. to let me know that she thought her water had broken. It wasn't like in the movies or on TV where it's a huge gushing action, but after a few minutes she was pretty sure. She wasn't having contractions yet, so we checked through the antenatal handbook to see when we needed to come in to the hospital; still wasn't clear, so Janet phoned Mount Alvernia, and they said that if the water had broken that she needed to come in.

So I got a quick shower, threw on some clothes, double-checked that everything that needed to be in our delivery bag was packed (including the camera), tossed the MacBook and exam papers in my messenger bag, called a taxi, and we headed to the maternity ward at the hospital.

The nurse examined Janet while I got her checked in downstairs; she's currently wearing a monitor that keeps track of the baby's heart rate and both the frequency and intensity of the contractions (which are very mild at this point). It's still early yet (she's barely dilated), so we're just waiting at this point; Janet's trying to get some sleep while she can, and I may too (both of us only got about three hours).

So we've got a way to go, but sometime later today (hopefully), the baby will have arrived! Waaugh!

I'll be updating (if I can) on my Twitter feed if you want to follow along.

Jonathan Carroll (one of my favorite authors) recently blogged that his latest novel The Ghost in Love is now out in paperback. Which reminded me that my review for the book had still not been published; Lit Mob accepted the review back in March (I bought the hardcover whilst in NYC last December, discovered to my delight that it was signed, gulped it down once I returned to Singapore, and wrote a review immediately afterward), but for whatever reason the site stopped updating in April, and the editors have not replied to my emails in the intervening six months.

So, since it's unlikely to be published at Lit Mob, I present my review here for The Ghost in Love:

According to Benjamin Franklin, "In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes." And though it's highly unlikely that author Jonathan Carroll would tackle the latter in one of his novels, he does seem to have a preoccupation with the former. Many of his long-form works deal explicitly with death, but it is in The Ghost in Love, Carroll's 17th book, that the concept of death itself is turned on its head.

Right off the bat, Carroll does something remarkable in making us care about a protagonist who is a complete dick, and care enough to keep following him through to the end. Ben Gould slips on some ice, hits his head, and is supposed to die, but doesn't; more weirdness follows, leading to a breakup with his girlfriend. Ben's ghost, who is supposed to escort him to the afterlife and clean up any unfinished business, must stick around to see what happens next. Ben's ex-girlfriend, German Landis, keeps coming back into his life, caught up in the side effects of his non-death (including meeting her past selves). Ben's dog Pilot has the ability to talk (another favorite trope of Carroll's books). The Angel of Death is a plate of runny eggs.

Carroll is at his best when letting his characters experience the weirdness of his books and try to figure out just what the hell is going on. He's less successful when imparting the truths of the universe directly to the reader, using the voice of the author rather than the erudition of his characters; these moments (that fit in better on his remarkable blog than in the Kunderian intrusions of his fiction) tend to throw the reader out of the narrative with their insistence that you pay attention to how clever they are, but thankfully these moments are not enough to derail the quite ingenious premise. In the end, Carroll's flawed and very human characters drive the events of the story and make the reader wish they actually existed, for their lives are smarter, sexier, stranger, and more interesting than we may ever know.

You can read the first chapter and other reviews, and view the trailers for the book at Jonathan Carroll's website.

ETA (12 Oct, 1:30 pm): Less than a week after posting this blog entry, Ahmad Qari, the new managing editor for Lit Mob contacted me about the re-emergence of the site, and whether I would like to participate once again. I sent him the above review again, and it has just been posted to the site. I'm glad to see that Ahmad is on the ball, and am hoping that his communication and attention will be a new start to an already great literary review site.

That's right, my age is now the last two words Joey Ramone shouted before every Ramones song.

I am 34 today. It's a pretty normal day. Weather's a bit cooler than normal, with a nice breeze, which I definitely appreciate. Janet's parents are picking us up momentarily for lunch. I may buy some new pants.

Wow, birthdays in your 30s are pretty boring, huh?

As has been pointed out by a friend of mine on Facebook, I will share my birth month with my forthcoming daughter, and I already share it with my mother. October's a good month. After talking with my parents via Skype this morning, it made me long for the autumnal temperatures of this time of the year in the US.

Oh, and I get black forest cake later. Win!

My latest contribution to The Daily Cabal has gone up today, called "Mini Buddha Jump Over the Wall."

I first came across the catoblepas in Borges' Book of Imaginary Beings, and my reaction to the description of the creature was of pity, that the mystical effect it would have on other living beings would leave it so incredibly lonely. It was a kindred spirit, and I felt the need to put it into a story. (Although I'm still unsure of how exactly to pronounce it.)

This particular catoblepas, after which the flash piece is named, first appears in my story "Strange Mammals," which is scheduled to be published in Polyphony 7 (and I'm crossing my fingers that the anthology will still be released; please go buy some excellent books from Wheatland Press so that P7 can emerge into the world). I re-read that story recently, and felt like there was more to say about this unusual animal; I may do more flash pieces on it as well. I've also been preoccupied with fatherhood lately, as Janet's due date is only two weeks away now (gah!), and thinking about the curiosity of little girls.

Incidentally, "Mini Buddha Jump Over the Wall" is also the name of a complicated Chinese stew that I've seen several times in Cantonese restaurants but never tried myself. It's made up of lots of different disparate ingredients that add together into something wonderfully strange, and so this name seemed entirely appropriate for the mythical creature I was writing about.

As before, I'm disabling comments here to encourage discussion on the story page. If you feel motivated to comment on the story, whether you loved it or hated it, please do so there.

Enjoy!

alankria arrived this evening after a very long flight from London, and will be staying with us for the next few days before heading off to Australia. This is actually the perfect time for a houseguest (and Alex is our very first one!): Janet's due date is still several weeks away, final exams don't start for me for another week and a half, and the little student marking I have left to do isn't due until the end of next week.

We talked about several places we could visit (the Botanic Gardens, the Asian Civilizations Museum), however early tomorrow morning, I will have to leave Alex in Janet's capable hands so that I can camp out in the queue at The Arts House for tickets to Neil Gaiman's events at the Singapore Writers Festival next month*. If I get there early enough, hopefully I'll get them, although I'm already prepared for the eventuality that they'll run out before I get to the front; a lot of people are unhappy with how the SWF folks have handled this, and I just hope to not be one of the ones who gets turned away tomorrow.

Anyway, after that, I'll join up with Alex and Janet again, and we'll continue showing her around the city-state. Yay!

* And yes, once again I out myself as a complete Neil Gaiman fanboy. At least I'll get that marking worked on whilst sitting in the queue.

As a corollary to "I Will Not Read Your F*cking Script" by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Josh Olson, and to "What to Know Before You Ask Me to Read Your (Unpublished) Work" by John Scalzi, I would like to offer my own slightly different take on the subject.

I will not publish your book.

Janet and I have been running Two Cranes Press since 2003, and in those six years (especially after the release of Scattered, Covered, Smothered in 2004 and A Field Guide to Surreal Botany in 2008), I've received many queries both by email and in person for me to publish someone's book. Many times this is done without a proper understanding of what we have published, or even what kind of books we have published.

As it says on our site, "Two Cranes was set up to publish speculative fiction -- collections of weird short writing, to be precise," yet I've heard from people who wanted me to look at historical novels, memoirs, poetry, children's books, and science textbooks (among others). First of all, this shows an incredible laziness; our website is easy to find, and a cursory examination of the four books we've published in those six years gives a very clear indication of not only what types of books we publish, but also which genre, all of which reinforce our mission statement (brief as it is). We frankly don't know the markets for those other genres and types, and would be clueless as to properly marketing and publicizing in those arenas.

But still, even after saying an original "no," I'll get the occasional, "But if you'll just take a quick took at it, I'm sure you'll love it," after which I register those email addresses as spam. Not taking the time to comprehend what kind of books the publisher who you're querying actually publishes shows lack of professionalism and teh n00bishness, and further pestering said publisher = FAIL. This includes ignoring the note on our Contact page that reads, "Please do not send unsolicited manuscripts."

But besides that, even if you have a short story collection that fits what we like, I still will not publish your book.

Again, look through that (small) list of our titles. Every single book we have published was conceived of by Janet and me. Our first chapbook contained fiction by both of us, poetry by me, and artwork by her. Our second book was edited by both of us (even if only my name was on the cover). Our third book came about because of a personal relationship with Daniel Wallace, and a desire on my part to collect some of his stranger short fiction. Our fourth book was edited by both Janet and me again, although it was Janet's brainchild, and she did the lion's share of the work on the project. A pattern is certainly evident here.

I have many friends in the sf community whose fiction I would love to publish as either a chapbook or collection. Perhaps if I had more time or resources I would do so. But the fact remains that I currently don't have the time or resources to publish a chapbook or collection of my own fiction, let alone anyone else's. I wish that things were different and that we were able to expand beyond our cozy little niche, but this is not in the cards for the foreseeable future.

I wrote this post because of the confluence of the above articles with a very recent experience I had at a shopping mall cafe two days ago. I had parked myself in one of the cafe's comfy chairs in order to mark some papers (yes, I'm still having to do this during the term break, when I should be vegging out instead), and the man next to me asked if I was a teacher. He had a North American accent (I found out later he was from Toronto), and had moved with his wife and two boys to Singapore only a couple of days beforehand, and they were looking at schools. I talked to him quite a while, relaying the experience I'd gained in my time here, and after some time his wife joined us. It was a pleasant (if a bit exhausting) conversation, and at one point I brought up Surreal Botany; almost immediately afterward, rather than asking me about the book or the publishing process, the wife mentioned that she had written a children's book and wondered if I might take a look at it, at which point I had to explain much of the above (although more politely, as she was an otherwise nice person).

So please, if you're considering pitching a book to Two Cranes Press, don't. I wish you all the best with it, but I will not publish your book.

My latest contribution to The Daily Cabal has gone up today, called "The Crying of Kopitiam 419."

After WisCon one year, Janet and I were waiting at the Madison airport for our flight to board, and David Moles and Ben Rosenbaum were waiting with us. Dave and I got to talking about books we'd read recently, and either he or I (I can't remember now who) brought up Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49; he'd enjoyed it quite a lot, but I confessed that I'd been so distracted by the title and its mysterious meaning that I was unable to appreciate the intricate conspiracies and bizarre characters of the novel. I was so annoyed that the relevance of the title didn't show up until the last few pages, that I unfairly neglected to examine the book on its own merits. I've felt bad about this ever since, and have intended to re-read it, but haven't yet gotten the chance.

There's a food centre near the housing block where Janet and I now live called Kopitiam 119, which has several stalls all selling different types of local dishes. I noticed after Janet and I had been there a few times that a cat had called the place its home; it was well fed (presumably by the diners there), and was very pretty, completely black (what Neil Gaiman would refer to as "a patch of night"), with a tail that had been crooked multiple times into the semblance of a lightning bolt. Of course, I had to name it Lightning Cat, and I make sure to say hello whenever we're there.

Put together Lightning Cat and international conspiracies, and you get this month's story grenade.

As before, I'm disabling comments here to encourage discussion on the story page. If you feel motivated to comment on the story, whether you loved it or hated it, please do so there.

Enjoy!

N.B. I just noticed with delight that I'm posting this at 4:19 p.m.

Today is the Teachers Day holiday here in Singapore, a school holiday which follows the Teachers Day celebrations* yesterday, and I'm getting some much-needed rest. Actually slept for eight hours last night, and woke naturally to the gentle cloud-diffused sunlight leaking in through the bamboo blinds in our bedroom. Breakfast was at our favorite coffee stall in the nearby hawker centre: strong local coffee, charcoal-toasted bread with butter and kaya, and half-boiled eggs.

I'm catching up on a bit of blog-reading and writerly maintenance: sent in my submissions for the Hint Fiction anthology edited by Robert Swartwood (just under the wire too), and now working on the second draft of my Daily Cabal entry for September.

And while I'm catching up on those things, I thought I would also catch up a bit here. The last 4-5 weeks have been nightmarish in terms of marking papers, and I've had almost zero time for blogging, either reading or writing. This school term was perhaps the most stressed out I've ever been at a job, and this was aggravated by the shortness of the term (only seven weeks instead of the usual ten), as well as the sudden request that all my rolled-over assignments needed to be marked and keyed in by 11 September, rather than in Term 4 as I had expected**. My free time, such as it was, dwindled to zero, as I ended up marking papers every afternoon after school, as well as on the weekends.

But somewhere in there, I have managed to do a few things I actually wanted to.

( NIN concert, book launch, writing workshop, more books! )


* I'm not aware of an analogue to this holiday in the US; the only thing I remember being close to it when I was growing up was the occasional "Teacher Work Day," which I suspected was something like what was presented on an episode of The Simpsons, where the teachers would all gather and drink margaritas and play mini-golf and ride rollercoasters at Six Flags or something, although I'm sure that the reality was much more mundane, and that the teachers used these work days to catch up on grading and lesson preparation.

What it entailed in Singapore was a morning "concert" by the students (more like a variety show, with some singing, some dancing, some cheesy performances), and a small prize ceremony for the teachers (I was a co-winner for Most Popular Online Lesson, based on the IT Home Learning given at the beginning of the term; my prize: gift vouchers to Books Kinokuniya. Yay books!). This was followed by a mass return to the staff room, where the teachers were mobbed by the students, and given thank-you gifts and cards. I have to say, having the students appreciate you like this (not with gifts, although they are appreciated, but with thanks for your work in the classroom) at the end of an incredibly difficult term does much to alleviate the resentment and frustration teachers can face during the school year. At least for a little while.

** Anyone leaving a comment like, "Oh, just give them all C's and go shopping," will get a virtual punch in the neck; this kind of comment reveals a profound ignorance of how secondary schools (at least in Singapore) micro-manage the marking process. There are constant standardization meetings to make sure all the teachers are marking in exactly the same way, and at least once during the school year, student files are taken up by the department heads to double-check the handouts and notes, as well as the thoroughness of your marking.

In modern Moscow, a werefox prostitute falls in love with a werewolf FSB (formerly KGB) agent, and seeks enlightenment through philosophy and Buddhism. Sexy and smart, and full of Nabokovian turns of phrase. Just as the fox's tail spins a glamour on her clients, Pelevin's wordplay ensorcells the reader, and a satire of contemporary Russia transmutes into a profound exploration of the very notion of existence itself.

The only quibble I had at all was a minor one, that of the werefox nomenclature; A Hu-Li is our first-person protagonist, and her name is set up as a linguistic joke in that, in Russian, it's a vulgar obscenity. In its original Chinese, it simply means "the fox named A," with "Hu-Li" as her surname. However, this is counter to Chinese naming, where the surname actually comes first, and the correct form should have been "Hu-Li A," although "A" would not be used as a Chinese given name (mostly because the letter by itself gives no clue as to its pronunciation); again, with the protagonist and her sisters ("A," "E," "U," and supposedly the other vowels as well), the linguistic conventions are expressed in a Russian mindset that just would not make sense for creatures who originated from China.

But as I say, this is a very minor beef for such an incredible novel. Absolutely brilliant, and easily the best book I've read this year. Highly recommended.

Elsewhere: New York Times, The Guardian, Strange Horizons, Paint Stains

• 10:20 @gregvaneekhout Story grenades! I have been missing them from you, man. #
• 10:31 Susan explains @StrangeHorizons' annual operating budget, and transparently breaks down the numbers: is.gd/2nEow (via @charlesatan) #
• 13:41 RT @charlesatan: Anna Tambour's Aisle 2 and the Astroidian Threat bit.ly/21jQJg #
• 13:46 RT @TheDailyCabal: "A Bit of Summer Reading" by Rudi Dornemann is up at dailycabal.com #
• 13:47 @ElizaPatricia Wow. Very cool to see. How hard was it as a USian to obtain the visa? #
• 14:02 Cleaned out my left ear, and now I have a sore throat. Is that normal? #
• 17:46 Am marking papers in the basement of Raffles City mall, so why the hell do I smell the overwhelming pungence of durian? Blech. #
• 21:42 Brain is pudding, therefore bed. #

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• 07:17 On page 120 of The Sacred Book Of The Werewolf by Victor Pelevin #
• 07:53 RT @UtneReader: Brilliant: How to explain art to your parents bit.ly/uLZIM #
• 07:53 RT @MarlaMason: Chapter 8 of Bone Shop is up! Read, marvel, donate if you can. is.gd/2ldgs #
• 09:26 Fantastic geeky song & video! The Guild = teh awesome. RT @feliciaday: Video is up! bit.ly/datemyavatar #datemyavatar #
• 14:56 @johnjosephadams Yay Nnedi! And congrats, John! #
• 15:02 RT @JustineLavaworm: A message to do those who don't see colour: bit.ly/n0VSc #
• 15:02 @deirdresm Alas, I can take no credit. :) #
• 17:16 Can't wait! RT @JSCarroll: Trailer for new Jean-Pierre Jeunet film due out in October: bit.ly/2LPTy #
• 17:20 @SFDiplomat That's the irony, as when you call them out on their racist behavior, they always claim they "don't see color." #
• 17:41 Just ate sandwich & slice of Black Forest, got Beck shuffling on the iPod & a sweating glass of iced tea on the table. Time to mark papers. #
• 19:56 RT @doctorow RT @guardiantech: Why free ebooks should be part of the plot for writers | Cory Doctorow bit.ly/U6bcu #
• 20:56 These are amazing. RT @largeheartedboy: Doctor Who cakes (via @popcandy ) bit.ly/seow2 #

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I'm in the interesting position of being ahead of schedule in two of my English classes; I've finished the Secondary Two scheme of work for Term 3, but we still have two weeks of classes left. And so, I thought I'd do something a bit more fun than teach about information reports and comprehension passages; I'm going to do a short unit on contemporary imaginative/fantastical/slipstream fiction as a bookend to the unit on science fiction that we did at the beginning of the school year.

I already have two stories lined up, ("26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss" by Kij Johnson and "How To Talk To Girls At Parties" by Neil Gaiman) but I'd also like to include recent stories by writers of color. So I'm looking to all you nice people in the blogosphere for recommendations.

Please recommend stories that will be:

• appropriate for 15-year-old boys (and will be appropriate for a conservative school environment; I don't want to get into too much trouble here),
• not too long (probably 4,500 words is the max we could do per story), and
• found online for free (I don't have the time right now to go through the laborious process of requesting the school to pay the licensing fees for copyrighted stories not available on teh internets, so I'm limited to fiction that can be viewable from any browser without restriction).

I prefer recommendations of stories that have been nominated for or won awards, but this is not necessary.

I'm especially looking for stories that are also available in audio format, whether in a podcast or a regular download. Because I'm looking for shorter stories, they probably should be only around 30 minutes or so read aloud; our school periods are 40 minutes long, so this will allow an additional ~10 minutes for discussion.

If I get lots of good recommendations, it may mean overlapping a bit into Term 4, which is fine. So please, don't hold back because you think your recommended story wouldn't be allowed the time in the next two weeks.

Many many thanks in advance. Comments are open! Please include links!

I can't wait.