Bragging Rights: My Clients Rock
Filed Under: Speculative Fiction, Web Design
SF Signal / Blogs.com recently ran a list of the 10 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Author Blogs. I just wanted to say that 2 of the 10 are my clients, Jay Lake and Michael Brotherton. Woot!
Don’t worry, though, I don’t have any illusions that their popularity is based on my designs. They’re getting attention because of the fantastic content they write without fail each week. These guys are good writers and bloggers. So go check out their sites if you’re not reading them already.
New Podcast: The Girl With the Sun In Her Head
Filed Under: My Writing, Podcast, SF Podcasting, Speculative Fiction, Top Post
My story from Polyphony 4, and one of my earliest successful attempts at the short story (although your definition of success may vary from mine in this case), is now live as a podcast on PodCastle. You can give it a listen over on the PodCastle site, but if you’re into fantasy, you should subscribe to their feed. The team over there does good work. With this publication, I have one story left to appear on a podcast–I believe my story “Captain Bl00d’s B00ty” is supposed to appear on Starship Sofa at some point, although I haven’t heard anything about when.
Special thanks to Jay Lake and Deborah Layne for purchasing the story originally, and again, thank you to the PodCastle staff, Anne, Rachel, et al for picking it for the ‘cast. I am grateful.
The story, by the way is inspired by the Orbital song of the same name. I was banging my head against the wall trying to come up with a story to write when the song came up in Winamp. I saw the title and thought, hey, I could write a story about that Girl. I don’t the story reads like the song, sadly. I would be awesome if I could make stories read like songs.
I wrote a series of stories with titles identical to songs. Another one was Louis Jordan’s “A Chicken Ain’t Nothing But a Bird” about a southern family’s rooster named Scratch that was actually a cockatrice. Never went anywhere with that one. I’m a huge fan of Lois Jordan’s music. “Beans and Cornbread” is a classic. Never wrote a story with that title although I am tempted should I find the time. I even have an idea of what it’s about. Coincidentally, cornbread is one of my favorite foods. Nothing like some fried catfish and cornbread hush puppies on a summer night. Remind me to tell you how I feel about fish frys. As in, everbody getting together and frying up a bucketload of fish, not some new Burger King perversity.
Bonus Photo: Jay Lake Laughs
Filed Under: Photography
Jay: “You do know it hurts when I laugh, right?”
And yet the mirth continued. We’re just a bunch of sadists!
Jay Lake’s New Site
Filed Under: Web Design
My latest client project is complete. Jay Lake, a SF/F author published by Tor Books, and winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Author approached me with a desire to have a personal website that would be easy to maintain, incorporate his podcast, and allow him to crosspost blog content to his LiveJournal. For a design, Jay wanted something with a decayed industrial feel, imitating some of his photography and invoking the feel of some of his fiction.
This is a standard WordPress set up with about a dozen various plugins installed from Latest Comments to podcasting enclosures. No real problems presented themselves in its construction. Jay was a delight to work with and the site went very smoothly. These are the kinds of sites that I love to make.
