Posting will be sporadic as I travel

I will be traveling and without technology, so I shall resume posting in about a month.

Meanwhile, the following works should appear while I am gone:

2 Short shorts (ebook):
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/446026The stories are connected, prequels to my earlier story for the journal. The first of the two is broken up, buried amid the classified ads. The sequel is earlier in the magazine: a short story-of-stories. Kind of fun if you like unconventional narratives. 

Mad Scientist Journal, edited by Jeremy Zimmerman and Dawn Vogel
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poem (paper journal)
http://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/edited by David C. Kopaska-Merkel
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poem (online)
http://www.thepedestalmagazine.comedited by Marge Simon and Bruce Boston
Many thanks to the above editors.

Stories -- what we tell, what we don't

Speaking with a colleague, I learned something interesting:  The colleague said his brother had lived in the South [US] and the North.  When he moved back South, he was beat up for being a Yankee.  He moved back North and got beat up for being a Reb.

The irony and the telling made me laugh, but what if it had been told in detail?  Then the humor would have become melancholy.

What we leave in, what we take out can change (manipulate?) a story's meaning.  Propagandists take advantage of this, but it's also useful to writers.

Roger Zelazny, Trilogies, Magazines and Anthologies

Magazines and Anthologies

Science Fiction Writers Sampler 2014 by Brad R. Torgersen, Jeffrey Thomas, Stephen Gaskell, David Conyers $0.99 

Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #149 by Vylar Kaftan, Greg Linklater $0.99 

Apex Magazine Issue 61  Kelly Link, Elizabeth Massie, John M. Ford, Mary Soon Lee $2.99 

Bastion Science Fiction Magazine: Issue 3, June 2014 $2.99 

May The Ferrymen Take You 
(Walk The Fire Book 2) 
Mur Lafferty, Harry Connolly, Paul Levinson 
$4.99  

Roger Zelazny

Madwand: The Sequel to Changeling $7.97 

The Dream Master $7.97 

This Immortal $7.97 

Trilogy Bundles

The Farseer Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: 

Assassin's Apprentice, Royal Assassin, Assassin's Quest 

by Robin Hobb 

$18.99 

The Tawny Man Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: 

Fool's Errand, Golden Fool, Fool's Fate 

by Robin Hobb 

$19.99 

The Liveship Traders Trilogy 3-Book Bundle: 

Ship of Magic, Mad Ship, Ship of Destiny 

by Robin Hobb 

$19.99 

The Obsidian Mountain Trilogy 

by Mercedes Lackey, James Mallory 

$23.99 

New, free and reduced ebook lunches

 Free or trilogy reduced

Joan Slonczewski's Brain Plague is free.

Or get the whole trilogy for $4.99.

Reduced 

Lancelot 
by Walker Percy 
$1.99 

The Providence Rider 
by Robert McCammon 
$1.99 

Malice 
(The Faithful and the Fallen) 
by John Gwynne 
$1.99 

Cold Sassy Tree 
by Olive Ann Burns 
$2.99 

Arkansas: 
Three Novellas 
by David Leavitt 
$2.51 

Brazen 
by Kelley Armstrong 
$2.99 

Forbidden 
by Kelley Armstrong 
$2.99 

Travel Writing: 
Expert advice from the world's leading travel publisher (Lonely Planet) 
$3.99 

New

Soma 
by Charlee Jacob 
$2.99 

Haunted Humans: 
A Novella 
by Nina Kiriki Hoffman 
$2.99 
Review (with spoilers--I hadn't thought so, but the author did)

The Alchemist 
by Paolo Bacigalupi 
$2.99 

Beyond Each Blue Horizon 
by Andrew Hook (Author), Sean Wright (Foreword), Joel Lane (Introduction) 
$2.99 

Rites of Passage by Eric Brown  $3.99

Writing SFF: 
A 60-Minute Masterclass 
by Liesel Schwarz 
$4.99 

We Leave Together 
by J. M. McDermott 
$5.99 

Mutant Star 
by Karen Haber 
$5.99 

Saffron and Brimstone: Strange Stories 
by Elizabeth Hand 
$6.39 

The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2014 
Edited by Rich Horton 
$6.99 

The Science of Discworld 
by Terry Pratchett, Ian Stewart, Jack Cohen 
$7.99

Hard to Be a God 
(Rediscovered Classics) 
by Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky
$9.99 

Gravity Box and Other Spaces 
by Mark Tiedemann  
$9.99 

Blood Red 
(Elemental Masters) 
by Mercedes Lackey 
$10.99 

Prince of Fools 
(The Red Queen's War)
 by Mark Lawrence 
$10.99 

Robogenesis 
by Daniel H. Wilson 
$11.84 

A Shiver of Light 
by Laurell K. Hamilton 
$11.99 

California Bones 
by Greg van Eekhout 
$11.99 

The Dark Between the Stars 
(Saga of Shadows Trilogy) 
by Kevin J. Anderson 
$12.74 

Tim's Vermeer & optics in art

Boing Boing points out a new DVD out, Tim's Vermeer, explaining how Tim Jenison has replicated Vermeer's technical accuracy.  Movie trailer:

DIY Vermeer documentary utterly misses the point about old masters 

"Tim Jenison tried for a whole year to recreate a Vermeer painting – and all he got was a pedantic imitation."  (The title of the webpage says the movie failed.)

• The critic does a good job reminding us that this is art, not imitations.   However, although someone did ask if Vermeer were a "machine," Tim Jenison says that he's not an artist.  So I think Jenison's modus operandi is just to discover how Vermeer might have done it.

Related, the Hockney–Falco thesis similarly proposes (by artist David Hockney and physicist Charles M. Falco) that optics were used to create the realism of Renaissance paintings.  BBC video:

School Safety from violent storms and men

Cheap solutions gun problems in the US:

• Teachers invent device to protect students from shooters

• Students Invent Lock to Stop School Shooters

Expensive solution but it also protects from violent storms ($1000 price tag needs to come down before people invest, but great idea):

• Bodyguard Blanket the latest bulletproof product to protect US students during school shootings 

Double Vision

Bill Watterson, of Calvin and Hobbes fame, writes comic frames with Stephan Pastis for Pearls Before Swine.

Here Stephan Pastis explains.  Here's the link to where the actual comic set begins.

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The Guardian simply display D-Day photos, which you can click on to see the changes.  It matches up pretty well.

Huffington Post also does an interesting surreal match-up/mash-up off today and D-day photos, creating a surreal feeling.  However, they don't match up well, which will drive the OCD folks nuts.

NBC presents the actual photos and a few others.

9,000 Fallen Soldiers Etched into the Sand on Normandy Beach to Commemorate Peace Day