Recently I’ve been remiss in my postings, but never mind that. I return triumphant!

1. This year for Thanksgiving I made the turkey, the stuffing, Grandma Goer’s gravy, and a pumpkin pie. All from scratch. All delicious.^[1] With all due modesty, I rule.

2. The Why I Hate Aliens anthology is finally out!^[2] The WIHA anthology includes my short story “Watercooler“, plus fourteen other crackling good SF tales. Here’s what our editor Marissa Lingen had to say in the introduction:

   You would think it would be depressing to read well over a hundred stories about hating anything, aliens or not. Actually, it was heartening, because I learned something very important.

   Science fiction writers aren’t very good at just hating people.

   Which works out just fine with me — I never intended for this to be a bitter anthology, and I hope you don’t find it to be one. Instead, there’s a lot of frustration, a lot of self-discovery, and a few chuckles. There are even a few evil, exploitative aliens lurking around corners, shooting humans with Nerf guns or worse. You’ll find out about someone very much like Rush Limbaugh, and someone inspired by David Bowie, and someone frustrated by Jerry Garcia. There will be pheromones and experimental subjects and interspecies politics and really, really, really bad dates.

   But we, we as science fiction writers and fans, seem to have moved away from the view of aliens as beings with whom communication is impossible, leaving only mutual annihilation. We may get really mad at our aliens, but we have the chance to yell at them, to negotiate, to learn from them, and even to
   become like them.

   Enjoy yourself. I know I did.

   So there you have it, folks. For a mere $3.00, this beautiful 60,000 word PDF can be yours — just in time for the holidays. Go forth and read it. You’ll be glad you did.^[3]

Update 10-Dec-2003: Alert reader Luke Reeves has informed me that that our PDF distributor is using an SSL certificate signed by “SuperWebHost.com“… which is, shall we say, not a standard trusted authority. So if you try to buy the PDF, your browser will probably pop up a warning about this. Speaking personally, I’m not keen on purchasing from sites with certificates signed by unknown authorities. My editor has contacted our distributor, and we’ll see what they have to say about this. In the meantime, Luke has informed me that you can still purchase the eBook through PayPal. If you have a PayPal account already, I think that’s a fine way to go. Either way, my apologies for the confusion — and stay tuned for more information.

1. With the exception of the beta version of the pumpkin pie, which I managed to burn to a crisp. Fortunately, my lovely girlfriend managed to talk me down from this horrible experience over the phone. So I’m all better now, really.

2. Note that the “Aliens” in Why I Hate Aliens refers to creatures-from-outer-space, not immigrating-fellow-humans. If you’re looking for the latter stuff, you’ve come to the wrong place.

3. “But I’ve already read ‘Watercooler’,” I hear you cry. Sorry, that’s no excuse. Go read the Karina Summer-Smith’s “Marks of Ownership”, or “Sally and the Dead-Heads” by Timons Esaias. Right this minute. Go on, off you go!