Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

So I finally took the plunge and purchased a Nook last month. I’ve had it for about a month now.

I like it. I admit it.

Pros:

People have been  giving me ebooks for various reasons (reviews, etc.). This makes them much easier to read. It’s fairly comfy. I’m not having too much trouble with the reading experience onscreen. It’s okay.

So. Many. BOOKS! <3 Without having to find shelf space!

I’m downloading a few public domain novels via Google Books that I had not gotten around to reading yet. Also, probably good for me. Even if it cuts into “current things I ought to be reading.” The temptation to reread some old favorites is also overwhelming.

I have failed to sell my soul completely to Amazon. This is probably a good thing. Our only bookstore in town is a Barnes & Noble (other than the college bookstore–no indies here!), and we end up ordering from Amazon a fair amount between conventions. (We still buy at conventions, too.) The way I deal with the choice between two chains that may or may not be evil  (since I don’t have the option of NOT shopping at them at all) is to split the difference and shop at both, thus not giving either a competitive advantage with my hard-earned moolah. (Because MY money will make the difference. Riiight.)

We’re turning off the tv in the evenings more often, and reading more. This is probably good for me in the long run. And has caused us to delay upgrading our cable, which is probably also not that bad for us.

I expect it will get a decent amount of use as our travel computeresque-not-a-laptop-thingamabob when we are conventioning at places with free wifi. So I might actually be able to tweet and stuff when on the road more easily than I can with my phone.

Cons:

As expected, it’s much easier to pay for an ebook than to get a free one onto the Nook by sideloading it from, say, a library ebook account. Oddly enough. *sigh* But one of my goals here is to use the ereader as a way to read things that I want to read, but don’t necessarily want to KEEP, so that I can save shelf space for the dead tree versions of things I want to keep. So, still working on that.

I am still figuring out how to get library ebooks. I started the process, got distracted, and now need to find the time to sit down and figure out how to do it correctly. I expect to use this feature quite a bit once I set it up for real. Michael has been busy putting together the Hugo Voter Packet, so he’s been on the laptop quite a bit (which is right and good and proper), but it means that I haven’t had the opportunity to sort out this stuff.

I am realizing that there will never be enough time to read all the things I want to read. People may think that being a librarian means sitting around and reading all the time, and having an ereader means that I WISH IT WERE TRUE so I could sit around and read ALL THE TIME. Not that I don’t want to do that all the time with paper books, too, but having ebooks means that I’m doing it In The Future!

Still trying to work myself up to actually purchase things like apps and ebooks. Much of my focus has been on free content, which is FINE, but only goes so far.

I also need to figure out the whole “can use it as a media player” thing. I know I can, I just haven’t taken the time to sort out how best to achieve that. But my goal is to always have Certain Things I Never Tire Of Rewatching available on my Nook. Mmm…Colin Firth on demand… *sighs*

Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

1. More Chicks Dig Comics reviews! This time, from Sequential Tart, Bookshelf Bombshells (who host contributor Tammy Garrison for a guest post, featuring Katy Shuttleworth’s awesome cover art), and ComicsForge.

2. The semester is over, campus is quiet. This is a good thing. We’re all taking a moment to breathe, and soon we will be on our four-day workweek. That begins the week of June 4. Special Collections will be open Monday through THURSDAY, 8-4:30 pm. We resume our 5 day week on August 13.

3. For those of you that are local, I want to remind you that the Friends of the NIU Library is having its annual Ice Cream Social (with a really brief business meeting) on Monday, June 18, at 3:30 pm in Rare Books and Special Collections. We’re getting Ollie’s Frozen Custard and homemade hot fudge, and giving it away. Because we CAN. You should come. Because FREE. OLLIE’S.

4. I will be at WisCon this weekend. Here’s my schedule. Note the massive amounts of unscheduled time, perfect for hanging out and chatting.

5. Mad Norwegian Press is once again sponsoring a WisCon party, this time to celebrate Chicks Dig Comics. We have awesome drinks (in test tubes! FOR SUPER SCIENCE!) on the docket, but we’re still figuring out food, and the hubby has requested “not the usual chips and veg/fruit platters, please”. This may involve busting out the shrimp-and-cocktail-sauce-covered-block-of-cream-cheese option, developed when I was a Social Chair (i.e. Dorm Party Thrower) at Smith. We can do better. So: given that the party room does not have a microwave, give me your best room-temperature stable party foods in the comments. I’m totally open to suggestion! Let’s do something COOL to celebrate this here book.

Bonus item: I like my Nook Tablet. A lot. Still moving towards loading media, etc. upon it. But I really like it.

Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

So, I’m still just recovering from having hosted the Horatio Alger Society’s annual conference here in DeKalb. Here are some of the important things I learned or had reinforced, having put together the whole shebang from soup to nuts, basically.

1. Deadlines are wishy-washy for most things, except catering. Always submit a higher number to accommodate last-minute attendees. You will still be wrong, but it will be close enough for everyone to be fed.

2. You can have the best speakers, the greatest setup in the world, but what attendees will talk about first, positive or negative, is 1) the food 2) the temperature and comfort level of the venue. If you nail those two things, everything else will be okay. And your speakers and attendees will be happy, too.

3. Things will go wrong. Reservations will be lost. Things will be forgotten. What matters is not that it happened, but how you cope with it. Have a plan B (and C) just in case, and you’ll be fine.

4. When buying snacks, having the option of healthy choices is important. But you will still go through twice as many cookies as fruit, and twice as many donuts as yogurt.

5. The forms you thought you needed to fill out to do that one thing? Yeah, they’ve changed from the last time you did this. Again. You will need to do them over again.

6. Your staff is awesome and you love them, and you couldn’t have done it without them and their help. They made everything look effortless.

7. You will still not have less than a 12 hour day for three days straight. Taking the following week off was a good plan. Thinking you’d use that time to paint the bedroom was a tad unrealistic. It’s okay to rest.

8. Don’t worry about not having exercised; you ran up and down the stairs enough times to cover it.

9. Take the thanks of the people who are offering it. You worked for it, and you deserved it.

10. There is nothing more awesome than handing a high school kid a surprise scholarship check for $1000 for college. That always rocks.

 

Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

After running a 3-day conference, I took a week off…which involved seeing the Avengers (awesome!) finding a cute red dress very cheap (you’ll see that at multiple conventions this summer), and cleaning out our closets as we prep to paint our bedroom. That’s taking slightly longer than I’d hoped, but we’ll get there. The walls will eventually be blue.

Here, have some things that have happened recently:

1. Comic Book Therapy reviewed Chicks Dig Comics.

2. So did Brit Mandelo over on Tor.com

3. And, um, Neil Gaiman really liked Sarah Monette’s Sandman essay in it. Yes, I’m proud.

4. In other randomness of the universe, I picked up Joan of Dark’s (Toni Carr)’s book Knits for Nerds, and what do I see? one of her models reading Chicks Dig Time Lords. In Neil Gaiman’s library, where many of the illustrations were shot. Pic, because it did indeed happen (h/t to MJ, who pointed it out!)

5. I was tuckerized, sort of, as an unnamed Chicagoland archivist in Catherynne M. Valente’s  story for Under the Moons of Mars.

So there you go.

 

Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

The May Episode of the SF Squeecast! Episode 12, A Whole Year is now live! This episode brought together Squeecast regulars Lynne M. Thomas and Paul Cornell, with our Very Special Guest Rachel Swirsky!

In this episode we talked about:

• 52 (Wikipedia) and Gotham Central (shared by Lynne M. Thomas)
• Soft Apocalypse by Will McIntosh (shared by Rachel Swirsky)
• EasterCon Report (shared by Paul Cornell)
• With a bonus Invisible Cup of Tea roundtable discussion on the value of conventioning, and the origins of our cup of tea’s invisibility.

Rachel also answered our silly questions.

Go, download, enjoy!

Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

I’m on vacation from work this week, trying to Do Stuff Around The House, so here… have a rare (possibly my very first) GUEST POST for my blog! The amazing Australian writer Tansy Rayner Roberts is doing a blog tour to promote the worldwide Kindle release of her award-winning Creature Court trilogy.

 

 

WHAT EPIC FANTASY COULD LEARN FROM BATMAN, by Tansy Rayner Roberts

I like to write stories set indoors, about people who don’t travel much. You would think this was a bit of a problem when it comes to writing epic fantasy, which is all about sturdy shoes, long horse rides in the bracken and maps, right?

Well, no, not necessarily. I like to think that a fantasy story can be epic while staying in the one place. You can still have massive, world-changing stakes, and Huge Drama within, say, a single city.
After all, superheroes do it.

Gotham City is the perfect example of a setting for epic stories which don’t move about much. In fact, many superheroes have a city of Epic Proportions, even if for many of them that city is New York. But Gotham is perhaps the best example simply because the city has itself taken on such heroic and dastardly traditions over the years.

Everything happens in cities. Some of the best sieges, invasions, tragic love stories and disasters have occurred in urban environments, going right back to the Trojan War. The only reason that fantasy writers generally get hung up about all that mountain trekking is because of being imprinted with Tolkien at an early age. And I’m not saying that wading through all the bracken with your questing party of dwarves is an invalid approach…

But CITIES. Where you can have your crazy magical invasions, your prophets of doom, your dark lords and battles and deadly, world-coming-to-an-end high stakes, and still be able to order dumplings at 2 in the morning.

I’ve been reading the first volume of the newly released everything-and-the-kitchen-sink edition of Batman: No Man’s Land, and right there is the perfect example of how you can write a huge, epic storyline that doesn’t move from your back doorstep. Gotham City has suffered earthquakes and political upheaval, and it gets to the point of no return… quite literally. The US government evacuates the city, and blows the bridges, declaring Gotham a No Man’s Land.

But of course, not everyone can afford to leave, not everyone accepts the rules, and by the way, when the chap in charge of Arkham Asylum evacuated, he thought it might be a good idea to open the doors and let the super villains out on the streets instead of, you know, EVACUATING THEM TOO.

The story is imperfect, it has parts I don’t like. The levels of grim, humourless violence are sometimes hard to take. But I’m sold on it, not because of the epic scale of the disaster and the plot, but because of the small human stories that take place because of that epic storyline.

I’m interested in the gender issues raised by the new Batgirl who manages with a straight face to convince a bunch of street thugs that actually the Bat was always a girl, it’s just that none of “his” victims ever confessed who had really beaten them. I’m interested in Barbara Gordon’s wheelchair-using Oracle, and how the lack of technology in the city (not to mention the rubble in the streets) makes her feel her disability in ways that her wealth and privilege had previously shielded her from.

I’m interested in the portrayal of ordinary people and their devastated lives, and how graffiti can be a code and a lifeline and a survival mechanism.

It occurs to me that yes, you can tell epic, massive, world changing stories in a single location, especially when there are plenty of people living there with something to lose. But if you do this, you also have the opportunity to tell the story of the people that epic fantasy rarely looks at: the families defending their homes, the priests protecting their congregations, the children trying to survive, the everyday lunacy of keeping your head above water when there’s a war on your doorstep.

And maybe it’s this that epic fantasy could most benefit from including, regardless of where the stories are set, or whether the heroes have to pack their trudging boots. You can tell a huge story without necessarily only shining a light on the path of the Lone Hero and His Mates.

We’ve had epic fantasy stories for a very long time. Maybe we’re due a look at how those epic events affect the more ordinary people…

This post was written by Tansy Rayner Roberts for her Flappers with Swords Blog Tour.

Tansy’s award-winning Creature Court trilogy: Power and Majesty, The Shattered City and Reign of Beasts, featuring flappers with swords, shape changers, half-naked men and bloodthirsty court politics, have been released worldwide on the Kindle, and should be available soon across other e-book platforms. If you prefer your books solid and papery, they can also be found in all good Australian and New Zealand bookshops.

You can also check out Tansy’s work through the Hugo-nominated crunchy feminist science fiction podcast Galactic Suburbia, Tansy’s short story collection Love and Romanpunk (Twelfth Planet Press). You can find her on the internet at her blog, or on Twitter as @tansyrr.

Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

5 Things about Apex Magazine and Chicks Dig Comics:

• Issue 36 marks the completion of three years of Apex as a magazine!
• It also marks our first issue to debut after our Hugo nomination for Best Semiprozine.
• Catherynne M. Valente’s story “The Bread We Eat In Dreams” was nominated for a Locus Award (and congrats to Cat for a total of FIVE Locus nominations. Wow.) This story appeared in the first issue of Apex that I edited. *proud*

It’s  good to be part of the Apex team.

• Heroine Content reviewed Chicks Dig Comics.
• …so did SF Crowsnest

Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

In case you missed the tweet-fest yesterday…

Apex Magazine Issue 36 is live!

Fiction:

Decomposition by Rachel Swirsky
Tomorrow’s Dictator by Rahul Kanakia

Classic revisited:

The Chaos Magician’s Mega Chemistry Set by Nnedi Okorafor

Nonfiction:

My Editorial
Faith in the Fantastic by Tim Akers
An Interview with Rachel Swirsky by Maggie Slater

Enjoy! Comment! Purchase! Subscribe!

X-posted from lynnemthomas.com

I will be at WisCon this Memorial Day weekend.

These are the easy ways to find me:

Chicks Dig Comics (scheduled)   Fri, 9:00–10:15 pm Assembly

Moderator: Sigrid Ellis. Sigrid Ellis, Sarah Monette, Tara O'Shea, Caroline Pruett, Delia Sherman, Jennifer Margret Smith, Lynne M. Thomas, Elizabeth Bear. Come celebrate the delightful truth: women create, produce, read, and really, really dig comics! Join the editors and writers of Chicks Dig Comics, a just-released collection of essays, as they share their love for this medium and the stories it can tell.

Judging the Tiptree (scheduled)   Sat, 10:00–11:15 am Assembly

Moderator: Lynne M. Thomas. Lynne M. Thomas, Karen Meisner, Nisi Shawl.  Current Tiptree jury members discuss the process of judging and selecting the Tiptree Award winners.

GOH SPEECHES and Dessert Salon (Sunday Evening)

I get to hand the Tiptree Award to Andrea Hairston. How awesome is that, I ask you?

Mad Norwegian Press Chicks Dig Comics Launch Party (scheduled) participant Sat, 9:00 pm–Sun, 3:00 am Room 634

Sigrid Ellis, Anika Milik, Sarah Monette, Caroline Pruett, Jennifer Margret Smith, Lynne M. Thomas, Elizabeth Bear. Join the Chicks Dig Comics crew as we celebrate the comics we love and the women who love comics!

The SignOut (scheduled) participant Mon, 11:30 am–12:45 pm Capitol/Wisconsin

I asked for a light schedule on purpose, as I'm going to be spending much of this con running to readings while wearing my Apex Magazine hat.

See some, all, or none of you there. :-)

Originally published at Lynnemthomas.com. You can comment here or there.

So, there has been a bit of discussion about Chicks Dig Comics on the internets.

• The Examiner has some nice coverage of the Portland Chicks Dig Comics event at Bridge City Comics.
• ComicBuzz.com covered our C2E2 Launch panel
• So did Wired.com’s GeekDad
• And the Comic Book Candy website, too.
• And the For Books’ Sake blog has another lovely review.
• And a review from Fangirl Confessions
• Crimespree Magazine also has a review.

Thanks to everyone who has been reading, reviewing, and writing us up.