My story, "Sweet as Honey", is now live in Issue 15 of the Intergalactic Medicine Show. This was one of my Clarion stories from a few years back, and I’m proud to have it in print.

My story, "Shadows in the Mirrors," (which appeared in DAW’s Dimensions Next Door anthology) was mentioned recently in Ellen Datlow’s list of stories for her Best Horror collection. Pretty snazzy…

I know, it’s been a while. Work has been a bit crazy. That’s an understatement. It’s been some of the most demanding work in my professional career. Not bad work, not bad people to work with, either, but it’s taken a *lot* of my time. Any extra time has gone to family and writing, so I haven’t had extra cycles to drop by here. I hope, hope, hope that this is going to change soon.

But I do have news… I had a story, "Sweet as Honey", that sold to IGMS a while back. I got the galleys for that and sent them back. I’m excited to get that story out to the world. It was written at Clarion in 2006, and it’s gone through several major iterations, but it’s a story I’ve always believed in, so it’s going to be nice to see it out. It should be up in November.

Similar story for "In Memory Of," which sold to the Spells & Chrome anthology from Catalyst Game Labs. That is hopefully going to be out early in 2010. No firm date yet, so I’ll update as I know more.

I did sell one more story, but I’ll hold off on that news because I don’t actually have the contract in hand.

I’m headed to World Fantasy this year in San Jose. My wife, Joanne, is coming with me for the early part of the trip. We’re going to go to Big Sur, to Muir Woods, San Francisco, and then JoJo’s heading back home while I continue on to World Fantasy. I’m not planning on much besides relaxing and networking a bit. I hope to shop around Winds, which I’m just finishing up now. If anyone else is going, I hope to see you there!

I have a story, “Good Morning Heartache,” which is set to appear in Spells of the City (formerly known as City Fantastic). I like the name change. I think Spells of the City has a bit more flair to it. Anyway, I received the galleys about a week ago and ran through the story one more time to check for minor errors. I’ve noticed a trend of mine, lately. I work really hard to make sure the openings of my stories are “grabby”, but in doing so I often fall out of my natural story tone and pacing. The result? I can’t say that they’re bad openings, but they’re rougher than the rest of my prose, because I’m out of my comfort zone. I think this is perfectly fine. I’m pushing myself to write differently, and in the end, I think I’ll be a better writer for it. I just have to pay special attention to those openings to make sure they flow while still hooking the reader.

The other thing I noticed was that the story itself held up really well. I wrote it pretty quickly, but I like how it turned out, especially considering I was writing from the POV of a black woman living in Harlem.

If you’re interested, you can see some of the goings-on via Mike Kelly’s and Eugene Myers‘ photo albums. Oh, and here’s my favorite of me, taken late, late at night by Bill Shunn at the Lowell Observatory:

I’m at Starry Heaven this week. It’s the same format as Blue Heaven, if you know what that is. If you don’t, it’s a one-week novel workshop in which twelve writers get together and hack each other’s novels apart. We start with slashing the first fifty pages and move on to demolishing the full novels. We’ve made it through the first-fifties today.

I got quite a lot of good, sound feedback. I very often (and my current novel, Winds, is no exception) try to paint the protagonist as human, and in doing so I write in weaknesses. Trouble is, the reader’s first impression is then of a weak character, and it has a lasting impression. I really have to work on choosing the right amount of heroism for the protagonist and later show weaknesses.

The other primary issue that came across was the timing of the novel opening. Specifically, I was starting the story a little too early. It’s a common problem, and often easy to fix. Just start later and sprinkle in any necessary information that was cut into later parts of the novel. I think this one will be an easy fix. The character issues? Not so much.

A worthy cause, it seems to me, from fellow writer James Maxey:

The following message went up on my blogs today under the heading, "Books for Breasts." At the end of this copied text, I’ve got a special message for fellow Codexians:

Followers of my blogs, and the readers who read the acknowledgement pages of my books, will know that I lost my partner Laura Herrmann to breast cancer in May 2005. I’ve been interested in cancer research since then and have privately made contributions to cancer related charities, but I’ve never put out any sort of appeal on my blogs to solicit for this cause, until now.

Last week, I received several cases of my latest book Dragonseed. One of the ongoing themes of Dragonseed is the idea of healing, both from physical and spiritual wounds. Within the book there’s a miraculous object called a dragonseed: Eat the seed, and all your injuries will be healed. Even your oldest scars will vanish.

I have some science fiction hoodoo underlying the dragonseed. The technology to create a pill that will both diagnose and cure any illness is pretty far out in our future, if it exists at all. But, the part of this that isn’t science fiction or hoodoo is that I believe that technology has the power to work miracles. We have MRI and PET scans that can look into a human body and see it working in minute detail. We have developed surgical tools and techniques that can remove diseased tissues from a human body without doing undo damage to healthy tissues. My father had a heart attack recently, and the doctors had to place stents in his arteries. The incision to perform the operation was small enough to cover with a band-aid. And, right now, there are researchers who are taking apart cancer cells molecule by molecule to understand the genetic engines that drive them to a degree unimaginable only a few decades ago.

We live in an age of miracles because we live in an age of knowledge. Modern computers are finally powerful enough to process all the complex data contained within a human cell. The only barriers remaining between our present understanding a cure for any disease you can name are time and money.

These are not insignificant barriers. New technologies are always expensive. And, to be blunt, the world has a limited supply of really smart people, and a nearly unlimited supply of problems for them to solve. For better or worse, money is one of the most important driving forces of where the smart people focus their energies. In the sixties, it was decided we would put a man on the moon. We threw money at the problem, and produced a glut of rocket scientists. In the eighties and nineties, computer technology was fed enormous sums of money by the stock market, and smart people focused their energies on designing hardware and software, and with the result that today my cell phone has more memory than I do. There is a lot of money today flowing into health care, but only a fraction of this money goes to research of any given disease. I’d like to invite you to increase the fraction going to breast cancer research, both due to my personal connection to the cause, and because I think that this is the right moment in history to truly make a difference. I firmly believe this is a disease than can be cured within our lifetime. I don’t know if one day we will simply swallow a magic pill and be healed, but I do know that the day will come when we will be able to profile any cancer cell and match it with the appropriate drug to wipe it out.

To help bring this day closer, if only by a minute or two, I’d like to announce my "Books for Breasts" promotion. Anyone who contributes to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation through the "Team Dragon" fundraising page will get a free signed copy of Dragonseed.

You can contribute to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer foundation by clicking here. This will take you to my personal fundraising page; just click the button that says "support James." Then, to get your signed copy of Dragonseed, just email me your mailing address to nobodynovelwriter@yahoo.com. I’ve set aside 50 copies for this cause; if I give them all away by the end of July, I’m pretty sure I can get my hands on another 50.

I’ve set up a modest goal of raising $300 through this promotion. This means I need to average contributions of $6, which is less than you’d pay for the book on Amazon. However, I’ll send you a book for a contribution in any amount, even if it’s just a buck. Spend a buck, get a book, save some breasts. Who’s with me?

My manager called a meeting today, and this was when we already had one scheduled for Thursday. Plus, he hates meetings in general, so this was pretty strange. IBM (including Tivoli, which is the group I work in) has already had a layoff this year, and I’ve been very wary about our group being put on the chopping block. So this meeting had the hairs on my arms raised up.

We got into the call, and my boss starts talking about a long talk he had with his boss over the weekend. I was just waiting for it: the word that we were all being let go. I was already trying to figure out how I was going to pay for insurance, my mortgage, where to find a new job, etc., etc. But getting let go wasn’t the end of his story. Long story short, the small group of eight guys I work in is getting broken up and split across several different products in Tivoli’s stable. We are currently in an enablement team, and anyone who knows anything about big business knows that enablement doesn’t produce dollars, and in an economy like ours, they look very, very closely at things that don’t directly pay their own way when it comes time to make cuts.

I feel fortunate not to have been let go outright. I’ll be working with a new tool called Maximo. It’s an asset management tool meant to help medium- to large-sized businesses track their stuff, virtual or real. It’s apparently a growing segment, so hopefully I can fit in and be successful. I’m worried that it’s going to mean a lot of travel, but right now that’s only a fear. I don’t really know what the job will entail at this point.

I just met with a fellow at the house who conducts solar assessments for residential homes. I’m hoping that my budget allows me to put some up. The payback is a long time, but I’m not looking strictly at that. I’m hoping to go a bit more green, to offset some monthly bills, and to perhaps help further the technology. Some have to adopt the technology for it to lower in price and eventually out-compete more traditional forms of power generation. I’ll post the assessment once I have it, just in case anyone is interested.

To get things started, I called my local power company, which happens to be WE Energies. They forwarded me to FocusOnEnergy, an outfit that is paid for via a levy that was forced on Wisconsin power companies by state law. In other words, the power companies pay for FocusOnEnergy, but they wouldn’t be doing so if they weren’t forced to by law. They paid for 50% of the solar assessment, which is great. It only cost me $200 to get it done. And the assessment itself gives me detailed information about what sort of panels would work for the house, where they should go, how much power I can expect them to generate, and what rebates and credits I’m entitled to.

I’m also paying for a home energy audit. That guy’s coming tomorrow, and I’ll share info about that process as well.

This is an interesting article from TreeHugger, but what I found really interesting were the graphs near the bottom about Community-Supported Agriculture.

Here’s another story: in January I paid $325 for vegetables that I won’t see until June, and I’m tickled pink over this great deal. That chunk o‚ money bought a 25-week prepaid subscription to Siena Farms‚ produce for the entire season. Siena Farms are in Sudbury, the next town over (in the other direction). By paying up front in the winter months, the time when farms most need the investment income to support the next growing season, I’ll helping ensure there’s a viable organic farm in my community. Farm-fresh vegetable subscriptions are called community-supported agriculture, or CSA. Currently there are more than 2200 CSAs in the USA, and a bunch are still taking subscription sign-ups. For $13/week, I get half a farm box of locally-grown-and-picked-that-day, organic, heirloom vegetables will feed my household through Thanksgiving (the other half is shared with two of my Earthwatch colleagues).

I’d never even considered such a thing. A subscription for fresh, organic produce. What an awesome idea. I looked at the CSA website and found two local growers. One was already sold out (180 subscriptions). The other has not yet sold out and I’ve sent them an email to find out more of the details. Specifically, I’m not sure if you really have a choice of what your subscription basket contains. I realize they can only supply what they’ve already grown (i.e. what’s in season) but I wonder if I can load up on stuff I like and drop the stuff I don’t or if they fill a basket and I get what I get. I’m curious to learn more.

My wife has had a jewelry shop on Etsy for a while now. It’s called Relly Rose Designs. She’s been going to art fairs as well, and expanding her jewelry making skills. She shoots for a shabby-chic, urban kind of design, and I think the results are fantastic. I like a lot of her things, but below are a few of my favorites. Oh, and she has a blog, too, over at rellyrosedesigns.blogspot.com. I’m sure she’d love to hear from any of you, even if it’s just to say hello.

You tell me…

Ironically, I sometimes don’t realize how much stress I’m internalizing about what we’re doing to this planet until something like this comes along:

Solar-Power Breakthrough

Researchers have made a major advance in inorganic chemistry that could lead to a cheap way to store energy from the sun. In so doing, they have solved one of the key problems in making solar energy a dominant source of electricity.

Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at MIT, has developed a catalyst that can generate oxygen from a glass of water by splitting water molecules. The reaction frees hydrogen ions to make hydrogen gas. The catalyst, which is easy and cheap to make, could be used to generate vast amounts of hydrogen using sunlight to power the reactions. The hydrogen can then be burned or run through a fuel cell to generate electricity whenever it’s needed, including when the sun isn’t shining.

For your viewing pleasure, I give you Al Gore’s Energy Crisis speech and challenge to the United States. You can find out more at www.wecansolveit.org.

If anyone has ever wondered what Stockholm looks like, well I have just the thing. I humbly submit to you the pictures I took (no captions, sorry) via this web album.

The time is approaching for the IGMS anthology, which includes my story, "In the Eyes of the Empress’s Cat," to be released. I found out something interesting while I was in Sweden recently. Kathleen Bellamy, Orson Scott Card’s assistant, called to ask how to say my last name. Apparently they’re coming out with an audio version of the anthology as well. Professionally read and produced and all. I’m totally stoked about this. I’m really curious to hear how someone else will read the story. Probably better than I could if they have any chops at all. (Not that I have no chops when it comes to reading. I’m just not, you know, stellar at it.) I’m not yet sure if it’s going to be a download or CD-only. I imagine it’ll be downloadable somewhere, but I’ll post more details when I have them.

Oh, and by the way, my last name? You pronounce it BOWL-yer. You can’t look at the name when you say it. Just gotta think Bowl Yer Ass Off, without the Ass Off.

Wow. The June issue of Realms has a review already from The Fix Online, and it’s very complimentary of my story:

“Lest our Passage be Forgotten” is full of surprise twists, courtly intrigue, and more. Beaulieu displays a skill at delving deep into the psyches of his characters to reveal the human condition and weaves a tale full of love, lies, and danger.

Mood: Content and pleased. Conpleased, if you will.