Something Completely Different: Knitting

I haven’t got much knitting done this year.  It aggravates my RSI issues, and I had to sort of re-learn how to hold the needles after my finger got broke in the car accident.  However, cold weather is a big impetus to knit.  I’m working on an Aran-style cabled sweater.  Here are some pictures. As usual the formatting will probably get screwed up on LJ, but the pics should still be visible. The three pictures are, in order, one sleeve, an annoying mistake in the OXO cable pattern, which I will have to fix, and the beginning of the body.  The sweater is being knit on size nine circulars.  The yarn is KnitPicks Comfy Bulky Yarn.

Up for Grabs gets a nod

The genderqueer anthology I edited earlier this year, Up for Grabs, got a mention at gather.com:

“If your reading tastes are a bit quirky, if you’re an open-minded reader, and if you enjoy the premise of “What if?”…then Up For Grabs, edited by Lauren P. Burka (Circlet Press) is just the book for you. In these five delicious tales, gender is up for grabs, and science pushes the boundaries between male and female, natural and unnatural.”

Review of Wired Hard 4

In other news, today we got a very nice review of Wired Hard 4.

As big a fan of explicit depictions of gay male sex as I am, an anthology of straight-up porn with no other major elements to it would probably not sustain my interest from cover to cover. Did I mention that I read this whole thing in one sitting, from start to finish? I did, and it was because each of these stories are beautifully told and packed with ideas. .

The further adventures of “The Ontological Engine”

People who have read my recent ebook anthology Up for Grabs have noticed that there is one story that is not really about transsexuality, though it contains some amazing transformations. It’s a steampunk tale that remains fresh and vivid even now that some of us are growing weary of steampunk. It has mad scientists, orgasm machines, and scandalous behavior set in a realm of Victorian manners. I’ve been asked by everyone including the author why I chose this anthology for The Ontological Engine. The full answer to this question is difficult to convey.

Let’s start with the Circlet Press slush pile. There is a certain type of manuscript that arrives with a cover letter stating “We hope you will enjoy this story, or at least find it funny.” This statement is the sign of doom. You could argue coincidence, or you could point out that these stories seem to be written by people who are so nervous writing about sex that they can only pull it off if the sex is so stupid that it can’t be threatening, or that there’s rarely anything funny about a story that tries too hard. These are stories that we anticipate reading with absolute dread.

“The Ontological Engine” is–not to put too fine a point on it–funny. And hot. Stories that make you laugh so hard that you have to loosen your clothes and so hot that you have to loosen them more are not easy to pull off. How could I not make room for this rauchy little number?

Since the original publication we’ve put an mp3 of this story up for sale (first part is free). We are beginning work on an entire collection of stories set in this world for 2010. I can hardly wait to get to work on cover art for this one. And today, just to bring another smile to my face, we have a lovely buff from the author of ErosBlog. Please enjoy the review, download the free first part of the mp3, pour yourself a nice cup of tea, and enjoy yourself.

The Last Word (?) on the Car

I’m sorry I don’t have any gorgeous man-nipples to show you today. However, I do have news about the car. After the Honda dealer ripped out the carpet and the sodden and mildewed jute beneath and started taking stuff apart, they found the leak source. There was a manufacturing defect where three panels were supposed to be welded together. The weld had failed. They put it back together and tested it with a power washer, then replaced the jute and the carpet, which had been sent out for cleaning at a specialty shop.

We had a very interesting conversation with the head of service about the whole thing. Many apologies were tendered.

Meanwhile, I haven’t driven in about two years. I’d been having trouble with driving somewhere and getting a migraine so miserable that I couldn’t drive home. I’ve taken the new car out twice, once with the spouse along, then later on a short trip where I could leave the car and walk home if my head blew up.

While the car is a remarkably plain white Civic, some people have asked for pics. I’ll get those soon when the weather improves and I remember to take the pictures before the sun sets.

Woot! “The Marketplace” is coming back!

For years the The Marketplace by Sara Adamson (aka Laura Antoniou) has been out of print. Now Circlet Press will be bringing it back as an ebook. I’ll be prepping the manuscript. Woot!

Cover Art

Recently I got the cover art back for a novel I wrote, and I was not pleased. However, bad cover art stories are boring little cliches, so I didn’t post about it.

Today, however, I finalized with Circlet the cover art for my next anthology. Because of our low budget and tricky requirements, Circlet is pretty much stuck with making something out of stock art. It’s tough to find one image that gets across what a book is about, especially if it’s an anthology. Distributors won’t take art with visible female nipples. There’s a lot of information about what covers work best to sell a book, and some of it’s even right.

That said, it came out rather nice, don’t you think?

More Car Stuff

What the dealer said about water in the car was not correct. For one, more water appeared on the driver’s side floor when the car was not being steam cleaned. There aren’t many ways to get water in the car when it’s not actually raining or you haven’t been careless with your Poland Springs bottle. In this case, we believe the airconditioner condensate drain is responsible. Even though it’s November, the a/c has been on because we didn’t understand some of the details of the climate control system. In Honda Civics any setting that involves the front windshield defogger will turn on the a/c, and pushing the a/c toggle will not turn it off. If not for this, we might not have noticed until next summer.

We have an appointment for the fairly inept dealer to look at the car on Monday. In fact, I’d rather our shop deal with it, but we’d have a hard time getting them to pay for it, while the lemon law requires them to fix it to my satisfaction. I did talk to a manager who seemed to grasp how annoyed I am about it. That said, a clogged drain should be easy to fix, and taking up the front carpet and cleaning it adequately should be possible even for these guys.

A use for Asperger’s Syndrome?

Having Asperger’s sucks. I’m not into the big “proud of who I am and won’t change” thing, and if there was a cure I’d take it in an instant. I’m tired of constantly embarrassing myself and not noticing until weeks or months later. However I may have found a use for it: torturing used car dealers.

As I wrote previously, I lost my car in an accident. This sucked. We’ve been using Zip Car to get around, and it’s pretty cool. However, winter is hovering, and we’ve been starting to think that having a car again would be nice. And warm.

My previous car purchases were sleek, black sporty things. But I do so little driving myself (because of the headaches) these days, and my spouse is completely uninterested in the finer points of cars. They’re just a way to get around. With that in mind, I hit the internet to shop for used Honda Civics.

Everything you’ve ever heard about buying used cars is true. I have some edge in that while I’ve only bought one other car myself, I’ve watched my dad torture dealers before, which is pretty easy for him since he knows more about cars than most dealers do.

Our criteria made things a little harder. We don’t care about much, but we wanted a car that had never been smoked in, ABS, and a manual transmission. It turns out that all Civics after 2000 have ABS. While I’ve had some trouble getting private sellers on Craig’s List to answer questions about smoking, it turns out that dealers these days only have unstinky cars on the lots and send ones with smoke smells straight to auction because they are too hard to sell. Manual transmissions, on the other hand, are awfully hard to find.

After a couple of weeks of fruitless questioning of car sellers, I found a likely prospect on cars.com. It is a white four-door, 2001, with a standard transmission. It also had a rare clean one-owner Carfax report. I made an appointment with the dealer, and we rented a Zip Car to go look at it.

It was a perfectly reasonable car, except that it smelled. Not of smoke, but of mildew. What probably happened is that it was steam cleaned but not allowed to dry out properly. This was pretty darned lame. However, it wasn’t a deal breaker, because smells can be cleaned up.

I had a Buddha-like lack of attachment to buying this car. It was the first one I looked at. I wouldn’t mind not having to look more, but I didn’t care either way. This is a good attitude to have when looking to buy something expensive. The dealer, on the other hand, didn’t want to let me out of the place without extracting a deposit. More fool them.

The car had been listed on the web at $7700. This is just about the blue book price (something easy to check on the web). Word from the dealer is that they’d originally listed it at $9900, to which I can only say I want what they are smoking. The car had been traded in two months ago and sat on the lot ever since because no one wanted a manual. The hapless car guy asked me what price would make me sign an agreement to buy the car that day. I’d been doing some thinking, so I told them $6900.

Now we get to the part where I unleash the full powers of Aspergers on the unsuspecting manager. I have to work hard to get along with people in the best of circumstances, and I do not care one bit whether or not the manager of a car dealership likes me or not. Thus when he said things like “You’ve got to meet me half-way here!” I answered with things like “Why?” The manager tried asking me if I’d seen any other cars at that price, with full confidence that I hadn’t, and that the logic of it would force me to relent on price. In fact, I hadn’t seen any other Civics at that price, but I didn’t see that as a reason to agree with him when I’d only looked at one car. My spouse thinks that this was the funniest part. It doesn’t sound funny as I write it, but that’s because you can’t see the manager’s face. Since nothing he said to me accomplished anything, he finally caved. I signed an agreement with some big, fat contingencies on it.

One of them was that we get the car checked by our own mechanic. The dealership tried to talk me out of doing this because “Your mechanic isn’t a certified Honda mechanic, and ours is!” Right. It turns out that their certified mechanics has overlooked belts, hoses and a thermostat overdue for replacement, a leaking axle boot, and a pressing need for a coolant flush. By then the guy we were working with looked like he was going to cry. I got them to agree to do all the needed work. They’ve been dragging their feet on it a bit, but we expect to have the whole thing wrapped up by Friday.

Assuming nothing happens to derail the sale, my next big decision is whether to apply a Darwin fish or a Flying Spaghetti Monster emblem to the car’s rear.

Wired Hard 4 is out at Circlet.com

One of my editing projects, the latest installment of Circlet’s gay speculative fiction anthologies, Wired Hard 4, is now available. Check out the link for purchasing information. There’s a not safe for work excerpt on Circlet. Here’s another!

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