Three Quick Pimps, Plus a “Pimpin’ Other People” Thread
Posted on March 14, 2007 Posted by John Scalzi 26 Comments
Three things for you to leave this site for:
1. That was quick: Mere hours after announcing the “Guest Ficlet” program (whose official title, incidentally, is Ficlet Spotlight), we have our first guest ficleteer: Campbell Award-winning author Kristine Smith, who thought up three cool ficlets for folks to fiddle with. Naturally, I invite you to see these ficlets, and to check out Smith’s other work, too.
2. Jeff VanderMeer passed along a note letting me know that his and Cat Rambo’s collaboration, “The Surgeon’s Tale,” is being serialized this week at Subterranean Online; parts one and two are up and part three is coming on Friday. And now I’m telling you. You may, should you be inclined, tell others, and thus will the network of knowledge about the work of VanderMeer and Rambo be increased throughout the land. Which can only be consider a positive for us all — and indeed, may save us all. Plus: nifty story.
3. Shimmer magazine has a nifty video trailer up for its latest issue, with excerpts from stories narrated by the fabulous Mary Robinette Kowal, and music from some schmoe. I was going to post a link to the trailer, but then a remembered: Duh, it’s on YouTube, I can just embed it:
If the trailer intrigues you, check out Shimmer’s page on the issue.
That’s my pimping for today. Want to pimp something from someone else? Use the comment thread below. Note this is pimpin’ other people’s stuff — not a self-pimp thread. Spread the love, people. Also remember that if you drop in a link, your comment might be sent to the moderation queue. Don’t panic; I’ll release it.
I thought I recognized the schmnoe-ish music. Good tune, schmolzie!
I’m gonna pimp my boy MAtthew’s book on Sonic Youth again. It’s in the 33 1/3 series, and it’s all about “Daydream Nation.” My boy worked really hard on this, is lucky to be alive and I am so happy and proud of him. So keep yourslef posted at his blog and then go buy the book on April 1st.
Friend-of-a-friend pimp here:
Rachel Roberts, a talented singer/songwriter in the Akron area, is performing Monday nights at the Northside in Akron. You can hear samples of her work and buy her album on her website: http://www.rachelroberts.info/
The Northside club, with information and concert schedules, is here: http://www.northsideclub.com
K
Pimpin’: Two CDs that I expect to be superior are now available for preorder. Seanan McGuire, a poet and awesome musician from California, is now taking preorders for her second CD, Stars Fall Home. While you’re at it, get her first CD, Pretty Little Dead Girl; it rocks!
Also, Steve Savitzky is finishing up his long-awaited (at leat 20 years’s worth) first CD (okay, it used to be “long-awaited first tape” :-), Coffee, Computers, & Song! (yes, it’s filk; it’s also hot stuff). Preorder and get cool extras, like a whole second disc and in-process mixes for download. (Damn. I wish I had something for someone else to pimp of mine. Someday, with more hard work than I’m currently devoting to it… :-)
Cool ficlets. Pity they wouldn’t let me read the first sequel to the second one.
It’s because the author marked it as a “draft” — they’re not done writing it. I’ll notify the tech folks; they probably shouldn’t list drafts as linkable.
It’s a good sequel–I hope you can figure out a way to read it. I had to sign up for an AIM account into order to post.
Actually… it’s the same as the nondraft, readable sequel – they’re both mine. :p
It’s a nastier bug than that, and I’ve sent in a bug request. The second time I signed in, the interface dropped me in as “User359” rather than my primary created user, and I didn’t notice until after I hit “save”. There’s no way to delete the story or the user that I can find…
Fun playground though!
::blushing:: and thanks!
Good morning John and Whateverers.
My wife’s Yoga studio. Great teachers, great students. And all around good “Yoganess”
http://www.theyogacompany.com
My $.02 on Ficlets: we used to do this kind of writing exercise in high school (or even sometimes verbally, where someone starts telling a story and then someone else has to pick up where they left off, etc.). It was always a lot of fun to do, and an awesome idea to put it in a web-based environment, where the universe of possible authors is basically limitless.
The only downside to the web platform is the multi-thread scenario: where two people write a sequel to the same ficlet, so that now there are two competing stories birthed from the same parent.
I’m sure there are folks out there who see this as a feature, but I would personally prefer the site to limit each ficlet to one sequel and one prequel. That way, someone coming to a story late in the game can read an entire story from beginning to end (as opposed to reading it chronologically by time written), and then contribute to the beginning or the end as he/she sees fit.
Anyway, that’s what I think. What? No one asked me? OK, then…
Brian Greenberg:
“I’m sure there are folks out there who see this as a feature, but I would personally prefer the site to limit each ficlet to one sequel and one prequel.”
We talked about this a bit before the site went live. I personally prefer the multi-threaded version that exists, not only because it’s fun to see how people branch off, but also because of issues of quality control; bluntly speaking there’s no assurance that a sequel is going to be good just because it’s written first.
The way it works now someone can add on to the sequl they like the most, or, if they don’t find one, add their own sequel to the original. That makes for the most possibilities and the most fun.
I like multithread’s myself. I’m up there as Original Changsta and I wrote a sequel yesterday in like 20 minutes. I loved it. I want to do a whole story based on the ficlet sequel I wrote!
John
Have you been using naughty words or posting pictures of naked cats?
For some reason you’ve just joined the the proud ranks of sites blacklisted by SmartFilter. When attempting to connect from work today, instead of the usual well crafted words I received the following:
Access Denied (content_filter_denied)
Your request was denied because of its content categorization: “Adult/Mature Content;Arts/Entertainment”
Chang – I know what you mean (“I want to do a whole story based on the ficlet sequel I wrote!”). I started a Ficlet yesterday that hasn’t received any sequels, but I may try to turn into a short story/novel on my own.
Any thoughts on adding ICQ ids to login to ficlets. You can use them in AIM; but not with the ficlet site.
Sorry for posting in two places!
Answered you in the other thread, Jeff. Generally you only need to post once.
My friend Jason Stoddard just sold a story to Talebones, who let him put it up online here. It’s the adventures of the AI amalgam of Linus Torvalds and Bill Gates. Hilarity ensues.
I’ll take the opportunity to do a friend-of-a-friend pimp, here:
Rachel Roberts, a talented singer-songwriter from the Akron area, is performing Mondays all this month at The Northside in Akron. She’s got a really nice voice, and a good, stripped-down guitar sound. You can hear samples, and check out her schedule, at her website:
http://www.rachelroberts.info/
Check her out. “Pattern of Compromise” is really good.
K
Not sure if this is the place to address such things, but I wouldn’t mind a feature whereby one could view the entire storyline of ficlets, perhaps with some sort of toggle or branching design in case of multiple sequels/prequels. It would make it much easier than having seven windows open in order to write a sequel. :-)
Other than that, a huge thumbs up!
Sorry for the apparent double-post. I thought my original post had been devoured by the spam filter.
K
De-lurking to say that the Ficlets site is a great idea — even though I can see that it’s going to successfully distract me from my novel writing. That’s my fault, not the site’s.
And I’ll take this opportunity to pimp my husband’s on-line art gallery: http://www.onekind.co.uk, complete with the inevitable blog.
He specialises in abstract digital art and is, miraculously, just about making a living out of it.
As long as the Pimpin’ Other People thread is still here, yesterday I stumbled across the
best video I’ve seen in years. Even if it’s from a couple of years ago.
According to the info gleaned from YouTube:
*Röyksopp comes from Tromsö, in the Northern Norway.
*Röyksopp has two members; Thorbjörn and Svein.
*Röyksopp won the MTV Music Award for Best Video
in 2003/04.
*They have won several awards in Norway for both videos and songs.
The version used on this video is the “Someone Else’s Radio Remix”, and can be found on the ‘Remind Me’ single and on the 2CD/Special Edition version of Melody AM.
The directors are Ludovic Houplain and Hervé de Crécy of H5.
—
As a total geek, I can’t get enough of the animated systems stuff. It’s like the Sims on steroids. And the music is perfectly in synch.
Dr. Phil
Was there some problem with the prior comment I made in this thread? It’s been two days and it hasn’t yet been approved.
Ok I want to pimp an anthology that’s about to come out from an australian small press go read about it here.
I’ll pimp an illustrator acquaintance of mine who’s looking for work. Under “Art” and “Visual Resume” he has a really cool resume that’s worth checking out just to see how it’s done.
I pimp all of etsy There are so many talented people there. It’s outrageous. All handmade. All amazing.