I’ve finished Zombie Raccoons and Killer Bunnies, edited by Martin H. Greenberg & Kerrie Hughes and overall it was an OK anthology. A few stories stood out, and those I’ve denoted with bold titles. A few of the stories were disappointing, either with an ending that wasn’t as satisfactory as I would have liked, or with an ending that just didn’t make sense to me at all. There were some good chilling stories in here, along with some fun humorous takes on the theme, so a wide variety overall. If you like “creature of the night” stories, then you’ll find a couple of good reads in here, but in the end I was a little disappointed overall.





Table of Contents:

Death Mask by Jody Lynn Nye: This was a zombie raccoon story, where the raccoons come up against a farmer who doesn’t agree with the idea that you need to commune with nature. It was an OK story, but I had a hard time getting used to the voice of the farmer character, which threw me off.

BunRabs by Donald J. Bingle: And this was a killer bunny story . . . told from the POV of a chicken. *grin* The chicken’s POV of the world in general is hilarious, especially their take on modern day conveniences (and how they use them) and the mythology they’ve developed about rabbits and how they incorporate some of our own traditions into their worldview. A fun story.

for lizzie by Anton Strout: A cute little story set in Anton’s “Simon Canderous” universe, although it doesn’t feature Simon as a character. The main character is an archivist, dealing with a certain lack of social skills when dealing with the opposite sex . . . along with a rather ferocious little book wyrm.

Faith in Our Fathers by Alexander B. Potters: The idea here is that young child who can heal with his hands in upset because his pet cats keep disappearing. His father tells him it’s the fisher cats (who aren’t fishers or cats) that keep taking them, so the boy decides he wants to find these fisher cats and goes in search of them. He finds something more instead. It was an interesting story, written well, but at the end I wanted more. I wanted the story to do more, especially since there was so much potential for more in what was presented in the story. With that said, though, this is the best story in the anthology so far.

Bone Whispers by Tim Waggoner: The creature in this story is a rather large and supernatural groundhog, haunting a cemetery. The story revolves around a man returning to the cemetery to confront the groundhog, who had a run-in with when he was twelve years old. I felt like this story needed a little more development, with the connection between the groundhog, the man, the boy, and the groundhog’s hole (and the cemetery) fleshed out more. It had a creepy ending though.

Watching by Carrie Vaughn: And here we deal with pigeons. A man proposes to his girlfriend after taking her to Venice . . . only to have her say no. This sets the man’s life onto a whole new track as he sets out to backpack across Europe, discovering pigeons the entire step of the way. Only the pigeons aren’t exactly what they seem. The first half of the story was interesting, and the character drew me in, but then the story takes a hard sharp turn (perhaps even a hair-pin turn) in the middle and becomes a completely different kind of story altogether. This wasn’t a bad thing and the ending itself makes you smile, in a sort of funny/gruesome kind of way.

The Things That Crawl by Richard Lee Byers: This story doesn’t single out one particular type of creature, it sort of deals with snakes, lizards, alligators, etc, in general. And this is the most well developed story in the anthology. I connected to the main character, a detective who has an alcohol problem, so has been demoted and has relocated to the coast of Florida where, after a hurricane passes through, discovers that the local wildlife isn’t behaving as usual. He picks up on this and puts the pieces together (he is a detective after all), but the conclusion is, of course, too supernatural for the average person to believe. He ends up being forced to deal with the situation himself. Again, a very well-written, cohesive story with a rounded plot, rounded character arc, and a beginning, middle, and end.

The White Bull of Tara by Fiona Patton: This is a story centered around the White Bull of Tara. It begins interestingly enough—fairy cows are breaking through from the fairy realm to munch on the Druids’ garden and a pack of siblings/guards are tasked to stop the incursion. They figure out who’s causing the problem, and why . . . and then the story just kind of dies. They don’t really do much to stop the incursion from the fairy side, but the cows stop coming. Instead, the White Bull’s rival comes through and has his way with the local herd. It just felt like the story fell apart to me, or skewed off in a different direction from the first two-thirds of the story, and so the ending didn’t feel right.

Dead Poets by John A. Pitts: I don’t think I understand this story at all. I REALLY, REALLY liked the idea introduced at the beginning: the main animal here is the shrike, a bird, which (I didn’t know this before reading the story) apparently captures its prey and impales it on thorns on hedges and such around its nest. A cool factoid in and of itself. When, in the course of the story, the main characters finds that the shrike pestering her garden has started impaling pixies as well as rodents and such, the story jumped into a whole new level of interest for me. I seriously thought this would be the coolest story in the anthology . . . but then it completely fell apart near the end. Great setup, great idea, great animal . . . but nothing is done with it in my opinion. It kind of just trails off.

Super Squirrel to the Rescue by P.R. Frost: This story was cute, as the title suggests, with only a little touch of “evil creature from the night” to it. In this case, the evil creatures were crows, a whole murder of them, tormenting a neighborhood. Every attempt by the people to eliminate them was ignored and ridiculed with cawing. It required a rather supernatural squirrel to come to the rescue!

Her Black Mood by Brenda Cooper: This time, the creature of the night was much darker, a black toad created by the main character who can paint wooden carved creatures to life. However, she’s in such a black mood due to her life that this toad, when she paints it alive, comes out rather evil, with teeth and a lust for blood. Brenda Cooper captures the black mood of the character perfectly (we’ve all felt like this at some point, I’m sure) and the toad comes across as evil indeed, but I felt the resolution of the story could have used a little more umph. It made sense (unlike some of the other stories in this anthology), but I felt that so much time was spent on creating the situation and background that there should have been a little more time spent on resolving it all. It took 10 pages for the setup and making the toad as evil as possible, but only 2 pages to resolve the entire situation. A little unbalanced, but definitely a good read.

Ninja Rats on Harleys by Elizabeth A. Vaughan: The title pretty much says it all. *grin* A fun little story with evil rats and possums, a heroic mouse, and two flatulent dogs. Oh, plus a few humans. An interesting and enjoyable read, with just the right amount of humor thrown into the danger. But again this story felt unfinished. Unlike some previous stories in the anthology though, this one felt complete in and of itself, but also felt like the start of something much bigger. At least, I felt like I could have flipped the page and started another chapter when I reached the end. A good story overall though. Definitely entertaining.

Bats in Thebayou by Steven H Silver: Alien bats, anyone? That’s the main creature in this story (plus mosquitoes). Earth has been invaded by alien bats . . . we just don’t know it yet. The story flips back and forth between an alien bat perspective and the human perspective of two campers in Thebayou. I’m not sure this was effective overall, since I was much more interested in the alien bat perspective and not interested at all in the human perspective. But again, the ending was unsatisfactory to me. And aside from the main creature being a bat, there wasn’t much in the way of “creature of the night” feeling to this story.

Twilight Animals by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: This story was well-written, with a main character who could at this point in his life be labeled a “loser.” He’s hired to watch over his brother’s house while his brother and family tour Europe for a month. Since this guy’s in college, he decides to do some research on the neighborhood, ostensibly for a paper for school. Of course, he begins seeing things during his studies that just aren’t natural, in this case, a peculiarly large possum population. The ending is also peculiarly reminiscent of another story in this anthology, which is kind of bizarre. But overall a good story.

The Ridges by Larry D. Sweazy: The last story is about foxes . . . sort of. I can’t say much about the storyline without ruining it, so I’ll just say that the storyline here was good and it didn’t end the way I thought it would as I read it. I had the right idea, in general, but the author twisted it around into something different than what I’d expected by the end. Not really a “creature of the night” story in true form, although it certainly fit the theme of the anthology

So I spent ANOTHER few hours today transcribing the student evaluations for my second semester at Oneonta. There were more evals this time, probably because it was the first time I'd taught a couple of the courses and I admit that my perception of what the students would be able to handle was skewed at the beginning. I adjusted as the semester went along, and most of the students complained about what I'd expected at the beginning, but also noted that things changed as the semester went along. So I think, overall, the evals were good ones. I've got two more semesters of evals to transcribe now, and when I return to classes in January, the Fall 2009 evals should be waiting for me to transcribe.

But I say again, GAH, and ask, "What's the point?" I mean, I could copy the evals and put them if the administrators really do want to see them all, but I don't honestly think that they really do look at these things when they get together to discuss the portfolios. Sure, they may look at a few of them, but am I seriously expected to believe that they're going to look at the hundreds of evals I've gotten, when they probably have 50 other portfolios to look at after mine?

In any case, here are some of the typos I found during this batch. And these are just errors in spelling. I'm not even attempting to take note of the grammar errors involved.

The winner by far in the spelling wars was "quizes." I probably saw it spelled that way over 50 times. People just don't believe in z's anymore, apparently. The others, in no particular order:

"reconize"
"calculatos"
"assesments"
"metrial"
"calculters"
"calcalters" (This was on the same one as the previous word, so the student was trying to figure out how to spell it correctly.)
"explination"
"proffesor"
"resonable"
"suprises"
"ridculously"
"theroms"

And may I add that, as a writer, it is EXTREMELY difficult to type those words spelled incorrectly into the computer? Both here and when I was typing up the evals. But I push onwards. Probably not until after the trip home for the holidays though. Tomorrow I'm hoping to write some on my own stuff.

Why, look at that: you've got a new screen for your Presario.  No, I will not install it for you.

Yes, I work in IT.  Why, then?

Like this:  The gear I work on is incredibly expensive - it's nothing to drop $15k on a low-end entry level system.  Talking systems that host software that runs a profitable and (for the times) prosperous organization.  I fancy that I'm pretty good at my job.  I've been doing for over a decade and have moved at a steady pace up the responsibility ladder.   My employer thinks I'm doing something right: they pay for a cell phone and internet access so I can be Johnny on the spot 24x7.

But that does not translate into actual competence swapping out hardware on a laptop.  That stuff is incredibly finicky and precise.  With itty-bitty screws and parts that do not tolerate a lot of ham-handedness.  The gear I work with tends to the large and bulky type, and is 'field replaceable'. This means you haul out the old, dead part and shove in the bright and shiny new one.

And most of the time I don't do that much.  It's under warranty: let the tech from Sun or NetApp or IBM do it.

Were I to even look at your laptop, I have no doubt it would shatter into a bazillion bits.

I sure wish I'd said this an hour ago before I shattered the zero insertion force keyboard harness in her laptop.

The thing is, I had never used dried beans before.


( Lessons learned )

In other news, MW '09 reports still no mice. Gaby continues well--she's outside now, yodeling at something. King is in here in the office with me, sleeping. I have some day job work to do. Blackhawks are on tonight. Not looking forward to Monday, as always, but at least it's a short week. Two days, then out for five. Yea.

Here's a nice review of klingonguy's Buffalito Destiny by James Maxey.

Excerpt: "...the book is a fast-paced, often funny romp that should be a rewarding read for those who don't demand elaborately detailed science in their science fiction and who are looking for something genuinely new."



Hadley Rille Books

For me I think this counts as a "light" year.

Las Vegas, NV(*)
San Diego, CA (*)
Forks, WA
Walla Walla, WA
San Francisco, CA (*)
Palo Alto, CA
Dallas, TX
London, UK
Hoddesdon, UK
Marlow, UK
Barcelona, Spain
Portland, OR
Los Angeles, CA
Montreal, Canada

Got through Part One last night...didn't need much work...but it was time consuming. I think it all moves the story forward. I'd like to say I'm working on Part Two...appropriately enough "Yule"...but I spent the morning out doing a couple of things that needed to get done. I'm still short one Christmas present short and didn't think of a great place to get it until after I was home for like an hour. I'll try to go after school tomorrow. And now that I'm home, I've got a couple of letters of recommendations and some punishment assignments for the seniors to write before I even open files and start writing!

For the moment though? Christmas Vacation! Sweet. Is Rusty still in the Navy?

Just got back from delivering books to the liaison for our local domestic violence shelter.  This is the fourth year I’ve collected books to be given out for the holidays, and once again I’m blown away by everyone’s generosity.  There was a lot of good SF/F in there, as well as Seuss, an anime collection, some YA, mystery, romance … it’s a wonderful mix of books, and will mean an awful lot to the families who receive them.

The only downside, of course, is that now I want to read them all.  So many books … guess I know what to ask Santa for this year!

All total, we ended up with about 75 books.  Most of the books in the picture above were signed and sent by the authors.  Others were purchased new and donated.  My deepest thanks to everyone who contributed:

• Elizabeth Bear
• Heidi Berthiaume
• John Fitch V
• Chris Gerrib
• Betty Hanawa
• Samantha Henderson
• Mindy Klasky
• Michael Merriam
• Melanie Nilles
• Richard Parks
• Julia Reynolds
• C. L. Rossman
• Karen Schwabach
• Kate Shaw
• S. Andrew Swann
• Emily Testa

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

OK, so holiday shopping is upon us, so I thought I'd reiterate some of the holiday deals I mentioned earlier this year.

First, I thought I should remention that all three of the books are available on Kindle now, for all of the Kindle lovers out there. Here are the links to the kindle versions: The Skewed Throne, The Cracked Throne, and The Vacant Throne.

All of the books are now, as far as I know, available in all other electronic formats as well. Go forth and download them!

And now for the dead tree versions. I'm currently running a few holiday specials, one for hardcovers and one for paperbacks:

Hardcover Deal: You can buy all three hardcovers of the books for a total of $30! That includes shipping.

Paperback Deal: You can buy all three paperbacks of the books for a total of $20! That includes shipping as well.

If you're interested in any of these deals, contact me at jpalmatier@sff.net and we can arrange payment and get address info, etc. Individual hardcovers and paperbacks are available as well at $15 and $8 respectively (shipping included). Just let me know what you're interested in! All prices are for the US shipping only. I can give you a quote for international shipping if you get in touch with me.

Happy holiday shopping everyone!

*********************

Our first real snow of the season! Yippeee!!!!!

Yeah!!!!

Crash loved it - he was little a tiny little white furry snowplow, burrowing through the snow with his face!

He was leaping, prancing around in the snow, didn't seem like a Crashcicle at all. And then he started jumping into the air, making weird swallowing sounds and snapping with his jaws. I thought he was choking then - and then I realized, he was catching snowflakes on his tongue!

We're almost there folks! This one has it all: Will Ferrell, a great song and Zooey Deschanel singing in the shower:

So, as part of my day job, and part of the tenure-track position I'm in, I have to submit a portfolio every couple of years to get rehired for another couple of years. One of the things they asked when I got my first packet back was that I include ALL of the written student evaluations (I'd assumed they couldn't possibly want ALL of them, so selected a few at random). At the time I shrugged and said, oh well. I'll just copy them all and stick them in.

But no. Apparently this is not all that they want. What they want is the original copies in the Master portfolio and then in the subsequent 6 smaller folders that you must also submit, they want TYPEWRITTEN TRANSCRIBED copies of all of the evaluations. And not just all from the past year. They want them all SINCE YOU STARTED WORKING THERE.

Now, in the normal course of events, a professor's classes at this college would consist of maybe 15 students each. But I don't teach normal classes. I teach math classes, and have taught the Gen Ed courses for the most part, which means my average class size is around 25. And generally these students don't just put down "great class" or "class sucked" as an evaluation. I somehow end up getting paragraphs for my evaluations. I generally view this as a good thing though, because it shows the students cared enough to say something about my class. And I like getting feedback. But . . .

So now I have to go back and transcribe all of my previous evaluations for the past 4 semesters. That's about 14 classes. 25 evaluations per class. Paragraphs of words. You do the math (I'm on break).

But I want to be hired for another 2 years, so today I broke out the evals and the word processor and began. I got through one semester (4 classes). It took me nearly 2 hours. My back hurts and I really wish that students would learn how to correctly spell "recammend" and "quizes" and "perfessor." (We have to transcribe them verbatim, errors and all.) So I'm putting the evals away for another day now and getting myself some chocolate, damn it!

Man, people are weird. I spent today in the bear suit handing out cookies at the Saturday market. It’s actually a lot of fun because the kids totally love having a giant teddy bear give them cookies. What’s weird is that the adults just love the bear also, want hugs and will happily take a cookie.

Now. If I were dressed in normal clothes, even with a Christmas flavor, and tried to give a total stranger or a small child a cookie can you imagine the reaction? Dubious distrust. How about hugs? Sure, there would be some takers in both cases, but on the whole it would be seen as completely weird and a little sketchy.

But put me in a bear suit, so that you can’t identify me even by gender, and suddenly everything is fine. Weird.

Comments? -- Link.

I figured out that it's not that I don't have time to be working on my writing, it's an energy thing and I have very little right now. But we're pushing a month now since all this unfolded and I really need to get to work, I'm just totally unsure how to start.

I've done so a couple of times in the last few days, only to stall before I got moving. It doesn't help right now that I've got Natalie sleeping on my shoulder and the dog squeezed between me and the recliner arm so I'm using her as the arm. We're not talking optimum comfort.

Plus, I'm in complete vegetable mode right now and I'm watching the Travel Channel's Disney marathon...I want to go back...my dream is that I'll get to take my family (the wife, Nat, wife's sister, brother in law and my niece) for Halloween with "book" money...but FIRST I have to finish the rewrite dammit. It all comes back to that! (Yah, I know...all that counting chickens and hatching....)

Anyway, here's hoping I can get into gear!

Last night, we headed into town ahead of Snowpocalypse, to see the Fantasticks in the classic Lincoln Theater.  We left plenty of time to negotiate traffic and weather, so we arrived 2.5 hours before the show began.  Our first-choice restaurant was locked, with waiters inside who did not acknowledge us in any way, shape, or form.  Annoyed, we went to a great Thai noodle place and indulged in good food.  We even had time for nummy cupcakes, down the block, before the show.

Back at the theater, we watched the Fantasticks - this normally-sparse production was rounded out with lots and lots of magic tricks.  I stage managed the show in high school and have always loved it.  My verdict on this production:  The Girl and The Boy were very, very good, and the magic tricks were excellent.  El Gallo, alas, did not have the magnetism to round out the role.

After the show, the snow had started (amusing, actually, since one of the last lines in the show was, "It's snowing!")  We made our way home slowly, but safely; the roads were getting slick, but there wasn't a lot of snow sticking.

And, this morning, I woke up to a foot of the stuff on the ground (drifting much higher in places), and a strong, steady snowfall continuing.  They say it's going to go like this all day.  That's fine with me - we've got plenty of food in the house, endless books to read, and lots of movies to watch.  My scheduled massage was canceled yesterday (a decision I strongly favored!), and Sunday's writers' group party was canceled this morning (again, a decision I favor for the weather, but regret for the socializing that will be missed.)  I have cookie ingredients in the cupboard, though, from the planned party baking-to-be, so I'll whip up some sort of treat later this afternoon.

Good food, good company, good retreat - what more could a girl ask for!

Mindy, hoping all around her are safe and warm!

For my paisans...