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Month: January 2007 Page 1 of 3
Books
1 – Brian Keene’s Fear by Brian Keene (Signed Trade Paperback)
2 – The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version by Peter S. Beagle (Signed Hardcover)
3 – Rite: Short Work by Tad Williams (Signed Hardcover)
4 – Gods and Pawns by Kage Baker (Hardcover)
5 – The White Tyger by Paul Park (Hardcover)
Magazines
1 – Interzone
2 – Fantasy & Science Fiction
3 – Realms of Fantasy
4 – Phantom
5 – Analog
As expected, last week’s bestsellers faced tough competition from some new releases. Outside of the new releases, sales this week slowed a little. Have to work on our PR to help continue to clear some of that inventory we have. To that end, the big sale we were running is not scheduled to end anytime soon. I’m actually adding more books to the pile, so check in every now and then and get yourself a bargain… great as a last minute Valentine’s Day gift for a book lover! It won’t work for me, but maybe someone of you have loved ones who’d enjoy it.
The school I work for during the day sets marks one day each year as Reflections. Everyone is required to write a letter of gratitude, forgiveness, or insight to someone living or dead. If I recall correctly, letters to the dead are burned and letters to the living are mailed. Taken seriously, it’s a good idea, especially if you’re ready to let something go. I’ve spent the last four years harboring some pretty deep resentments towards a few people who were once my friends. It’s not healthy and it has definitely made it very difficult for me to put trust in people.
Back then, I was in a job that I loved but was constantly being frustrated by. I had an employee that I was trying to fire who was spreading lies and trying to undermine me. My wife was pregnant with our second child and I was very sick, but didn’t quite realize just how badly. The medical problems reached the point that they started impacting my memory, so that last year is pretty much a blur. In retrospect, I can see just how bad. Oddly enough, I vividly remember the day things fell apart. Without warning, three of my friends completely blindsided me. I won’t go into details, but to this day, I don’t know why they did it. Heck, one of them turned an walked the other direction when I saw him at a college reunion. I was deeply hurt by their actions (a pain I still feel, though not as intensely) and became very depressed. I took a leave of absence from my job (where they worked too) and ended up even sicker. This was the bottom. I couldn’t go back. There hasn’t been a day since that hasn’t been impacted by those events.
Someone told me it wasn’t personal. I have a hard time accepting that. I can’t see how it wasn’t, but it’s time to let go. I’m never go to learn what happened or why. That life was like another family to me. I see the delusion in that now. I’m past the inclination to settle the score. What goes around comes around and I don’t need to be involved. Still, this isn’t something I can forget. There isn’t any hope to look back and laugh someday and it’s likely to be a cold day in hell before I’ll receive any apologies for the shameless way the situation was handled. Maybe I did something (is there something unspeakable in one of those memory gaps?), but 10+ years of friendship and being there for them should have counted for something. If I did something, I never had the chance to atone.
So, no forgetting, but maybe letting go and perhaps even forgiving. We’ll see if I can actually do that when Reflections occurs next week. It’s at least a good exercise and something worth trying.
Books
1 – Voices from the Street by Philip K. Dick (Hardcover)
2 – Gods and Pawns by Kage Baker (Hardcover)
3 – The White Tyger by Paul Park (Hardcover)
4 – The Collected Stories of Robert Silverberg, Volume One: To Be Continued by Robert Silverberg (Hardcover)
5 – Clickers by J. F. Gonzalez and Mark Williams (Signed Numbered Hardcover)
Magazines
1 – Phantom
2 – Analog
3 – Fantasy & Science Fiction
4 – Realms of Fantasy
5 – Asimov’s
Back by popular demand! Ok, back because one person asked. I had become a bit lazy and stopped posting these right after Christmas. Next week is likely to see a great deal of change for the books. We’ve received two signed limiteds with reasonable preorders: Rite by Tad Williams and The Last Unicorn: The Lost Version and one book with a lot of preorders: Brian Keene’s Fear. I’ve been shipping those as fast as I can. Good news is that I may end up with help on the shipping side of things. Depends on how things work out. I’m very picky about how things are packed.
At long last, our copies of Phantom Magazine have arrived. If you were at World Fantasy, you received one of these for free. If you weren’t, you can now get one from us. Phantom is edited by nihilistic_kid, published by Prime Books/Wildside, and only available through Clarkesworld.
I don’t know how many of you have been following the short fiction end of year summaries that Rich Horton has been posting over in his sff.net newsgroup. If you get the chance, pop over and check it out. Interesting stuff. He just posted his review of the 2006 issues of Clarkesworld Magazine. Here’s the important part:
I thought the stories were each quite good, and original. My favorites were Sarah Monette’s “A Light In Troy”, about a survivor of a conquered country who think she sees a child of her people, though all were thought to have been killed; Lavie Tidhar’s “304, Adolf Hitler Strasse”, about a strange perversion in a Nazi conquered alternate history; and Vylar Kaftan’s “Lydia’s Body”, about a woman lost in time, stranded in the body of a woman of the frontier.