I received my first piece of blog spam yesterday in a comments thread.  It took me a moment to realize what it was, because for whatever reason the idea that my LJ would get spammed never occurred to me.  Strangely enough, the guy even friended me.  Perhaps this is meant to trick me into leaving the spam up?  Or perhaps the fear of him unfriending me if I took it down would make me leave it up?  Hah!  I toyed with taking it down (and if something like this happens again, I will), but this first time I found it amusing, so I'm leaving it.  It's a blog milestone.

In all fairness, I even responded to the spam, giving him a chance to defend the foolish marketing tactic of spamming a blog about speculative fiction with a Paris Hilton video.  Not surprisingly, my new friend has remained silent on the matter.  You would think it would make more sense to send this to an LJ that deals with music or Hollywood.  Perhaps he did a search, and the fact the word "fantasy" has been used an inordinate amount of times on this blog made him spam me.  That's my best guess anyway.  Whatever.  I don't actually much care what the reason is.  I just hope this is a freak occurrence as opposed to something that starts happening with any kind of regularity.

Spammers.  They're worse than bad slush.  You reading this new friend?  Unfriend me! 

Edit: Apparently this spam connects to a somewhat more dangerous viral program, so I've banned the user, deleted his comment, and reported it as spam.

I'm blogging from my new laptop, my birthday present from my parents for my 30th birthday.  It took a while to get this thing going, because it kept offering me updates and downloads and such, and I kept accepting them, because I wanted to get the bulk of this stuff out of the way in one fell swoop.  I still have to transfer some files from my old computer to the new one, but other than a few frills that needed to be added on (like a wireless mouse), this puppy is up and running.

Man, it's great to join the technological race.  My old laptop had weeks left to it before it died.  Literally, I think.  I sometimes had to bang on it because the screen (or color) went fuzzy.  It had no wireless, was slow as molasses, the cursor refused to cooperate for more than twenty minutes at a time, and a couple of keys on the keyboard were becoming noticeably loose.  It was so fragile that I wasn't comfortable taking it on the road.

But now I'm living sexy.  This will make my fiction writing and my blogging go a lot smoother, and I'll save so much time waiting for stuff to load.  And the wireless!  My God the wireless!  A thing of beauty if ever there was one.

And the NY Giants won yesterday!  And other good stuff has happened this month.  I swear, 2008 is kicking serious ass so far . . .or maybe it's being 30!  

Joe Hill just got mentioned during the Red Sox-Indians baseball playoff game.  They showed Stephen King at the game, showed the guy next to him, and Tim McCarver mentioned how he thought it was Stephen King's son, and went on to say, "He also writes, but not under King's name ...Joe Hill."

Pretty cool.

And based on the length of the previous post, my finger is feeling much better!

Jammed the middle finger on my right hand playing basketball tonight.  Until the pain and the swelling go down, I'm writing with my left hand only.  Very frustrating.  Expect less fewer posts (and short ones at that) and few replies for the time being ...

Just wrapped up the latest batch of slush for Realms of Fantasy ...and I'm leaving for Readercon tomorrow.  Now that's some sweet timing.  I'll be sure to post a report when I get back.

 Slushing For Magazine + Writing Novel + Writing Shorter Work All In One Day = My Brain Hurts.  Not a headache, just a general mushiness by the time I'm done.   Creatively, it takes a lot out of me.  I sleep hard.  But each time I do this I certainly feel accomplished.   Makes it a little easier to gear up for the next time.

So in the past I blogged about the random editorial meeting, i.e. running into editor Andy Wheeler on the big streets of Manhattan.  This time I must report the random writerly meeting.  I ran into Shunn in Manhattan today.  This is the second time I ran into him like this ...stop stalking me Bill!

I was also surprised to learn he'll be moving to Chicago next month.  Bill, I can speak on behalf of the entire NY speculative community when I say your stellar presence will be missed.  Good luck.

I ...hate ...pollen.  Who's with me?

Some years ago I used to be quite the autograph hound in the speculative genre. Living near NYC enabled me to indulge this habit quite a bit. Eventually I outgrew this phase ...with one monster exception.

Many of you may recall the LEGENDS anthology, edited by Robert Silverberg, which came out a few years ago. Many of the biggest fantasy authors were rounded up, and each one contributed a story in his/her most popular fantasy world. Contributors comprised Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Orson Scott Card, Ursula K. Le Guin, Terry Goodkind, Raymond E. Feist, Terry Pratchett, Tad Williams, Anne McCaffery, and besides editing Robert Silverberg also contributed as an author.

A pretty impressive list. So let's rewind to more than a month ago, when I attended the NY ComiCon. At this point, the only autographs I needed to complete the set were Stephen King, Terry Pratchett, Anne McCaffery, Terry Goodkind, and Raymond E. Feist. Although I've been told that Stephen King no longer signs autographs, when I learned he would be attending the NY Comicon, I lugged along my LEGENDS anthology, in the hopes of actually tracking the man down, showing him all the autographs I'd accumulated, and appealing to his sense of humanity. Alas, I never caught a glimpse of Mr. King (I had to meet the publishers of RoF when King was doing his panel, or I would've tried there), and so never had the chance to appeal to that good ole humanity.

Enter my good friend Alethea Kontis. I hung out with her for much of the con, and come Sunday she could see how down I was that I never had a chance to snag King's autograph. "But," she told me, "I'm going to a con next month and can easily get you Pratchett's autograph."

I love this damn girl. She's traveling all the way back to Tennessee, but she didn't mind lugging this brick of a book back with her, and then doing so again to and from this con. So I finally touched base with her today, and this wonder girl landed me Pratchett's autograph. She'll be mailing me back "the Precious" in a few days. It tells you how much I think of her that I was willing to part with this thing.

So now all I need are autographs from King, Goodkind, Feist, and McCaffery. McCaffery would probably rank as the hardest one to get, being as she lives in Ireland. But here's the good news. My good friend Andrea Kail (check out her new website and blog: http://www.andreakail.com) has recently won the 4th quarter of the Writers of the Future Contest. There's a chance Ms. McCaffery will be in attendance this year, and the lovely Ms. Kail has graciously offered to lug along my LEGENDS anthology and try to score me McCaffery's autograph.

Consider me tickled. :)

So if all goes according to plan I'll be down to Goodkind, Feist, and King. Not bad. But how to get these last three? Well, when Shawna interviewed me way back when for Realms of Fantasy, she mentioned that she could pretty much get me whatever autograph I wanted. I've never followed up on this, but if down to a mere three autographs for my LEGENDS anthology I may have to put this comment to the test ...and then the "One Ring" shall truly be mine.

Millions of people are in NYC, so it's weird when I run into someone I know, and even weirder when it's someone in the genre. This happened once before when I ran into William Shunn. Both of us work in the same general area (or we did before his office moved), so running into him was understandable. But this time, while on the way to Penn Station, I ran into Andy Wheeler, editor for the Science Fiction Book Club. What are the odds? We only said quick hellos and such. It's a Friday and both us had just left work, so we had other stuff floating through our brains. But I confirmed that he's attending the Nebulas, so I'll see him there.

Truly, a small world.

So my nap before the show proved helpful, since I didn't fall asleep and miss everything.  Once there, I was wide awake, and I've got to say I had a lot of fun.  For me (and JJA), the time flew by.  Jim was delighted at how the phones lit up when we opened things up to callers.  I was wide awake during the interview, but once I got home I passed out until 5:30 p.m.  I'm mostly back to a regular sleeping schedule now.  Jim said on the radio that he'd like both of us on again, and I would love to do it.  Of course I'll post here when it happens.  For anyone interested, here's a link to the audio interview: http://archive.wbai.org/

Scroll down to Saturday, September 23rd, 5:00 a.m.

Hey Peoples,

Just a reminder to those of you within listening of Manhattan that the Slush God & I will be on Jim Freund's Hour of the Wolf radio show (http://www.hourwolf.com/), at 5:00-7:00 a.m., interviewing about our roles as assistant editors with our respective speculative magazines, and in particular we'll be discussing our adventures in slush.  I just woke up from a power nap of 3 hours so that I'll be nice and awake come game time.  I'm sure I'll pass out when I come home, and I'll try to find time to post about my experiences.

And oh yes.  Station 99.5 FM!

So I must confess something. While I do read other people's blogs, I only do so occasionally. Reason? It's addictive, and I see how much time can get sucked into these things if I'm not careful. So I do my best limiting the amount of time I spend on LJ. Sometimes this means missing the occasional post by a friend.

And today it caught up with me. About five minutes after I emailed the book meme post along to Deanna, she emailed me back:

LOL!! Doug, I tagged you for this at the beginning of August! http://deannahoak.com/2006/08/01/book-meme/ I'd thought for some reason that you read my blog. :-D



Doh! So with pants down around my ankles I've promised Deanna that I'll stop by her blog more regularly.

According to the Slush God's blog, it's Slush Reader Appreciation Month. So . . .appreciate me! :)