cybermonklives

Moving to Wordpress

2009-10-23T08:59:17Z

At long last, I got my new website/blog set up and ready. My new home on the web is now at http://lavietidhar.wordpress.com.

See you there!

New story up

2009-10-14T04:21:14Z

Just realised that my story "Jews in Antarctica" has been up since Monday at Fantasy Magazine!

And I also have an editorial up at the World SF News Blog.

Yay!

2009-10-12T09:42:40Z

Sold novelette "Funny Pages" to Interzone!

Being in Interzone is pretty awesome, and it means I have 2 stories forthcoming there now!

I have to admit "Funny Pages", being a sort-of-political, Israeli-set, comiksy, novelette-length story with superheroes, did kind of worry me (as in, would anyone publish it?)

Well, the answer is yes!

Meanwhile work continues on the new, improved Book Two for Angry Robot (more explosions! more escapes! more sadistic automatons!), as well as on the World SF News Blog. We've had such a positive response and a lot of talented, awesome people are going to be contributing in the coming months. Spread the word! This week's original feature: Part Two of our round-table discussion on the influence of background and the environment, with Lauren Beukes, Lynne Jamneck, Rochita Loenen-Ruiz, and Shweta Narayan.

Mind-mush!

2009-10-06T09:52:55Z

Spent the last four days messing around with web 2.0 thingies - porting the World SF News Blog to Wordpress, then doing a wordpress-to-twitter thing, feedburner, this, that, the other, updating content, e-mails - my brain's mush.

...not helped by the fact I suddenly realised I have to write the entire part 2 of the second book from scratch. On the day I was going to start book 3! Not a happy camper.

The move to wordpress showed me just how bad LiveJournal has become. I'm only waiting for a couple of book covers to arrive and I'll be migrating my own site/blog to wordpress - which is a joy to use.

Elsewhere - "The Shangri-La Affair" is now available in Hebrew as part of the new annual from the Israeli SF Society. And I'm nominated for an award! Anne and Jeff VanderMeer's new Last Drink Bird Head Awards, in the "international activism" category. LOL. Incidentally, I'll be guest-blogging over on Jeff's blog next month - or at least, I will if my Internet connection works long enough to post something.

Oh well - re-writes tomorrow. Yay.

World SF News Blog move to Wordpress

2009-10-02T09:56:00Z

LJ finally broke me down (those adverts! Hit the monkey! Hit the monkey!) and so after some concentrated work, and with Charles Tan's online presence, we got the World SF News Blog moved to a new, improved home over at Wordpress.com

Check it out! Spread the word!

As part of the move, I hope we'll see the WSNB move further with some new original content, in the form of round table discussions, interviews and articles - at least we hope so. It also has a dedicated e-mail address now - worldsfblog at gmail dot com. We'd love to hear from you.

While I'm on here (I'm ensconced - en-sconed? I'd like a scone - at an internet cafe) a quick round-up of some other things, namely:

The Tel Aviv Dossier is #7 on the Horror Mall Digital Editions Best Seller List.

Ellen Datlow's Lovecraft Unbound anthology is now available on Amazon!

New British published Immersion Press has its web site up and running.

Apex Books has a new webstore and to celebrate they're offering 20% off on all title - including HebrewPunk, if you still want one of them apples. (The code is NEWDESIGN)

And now I could do with a beer!

New interview

2009-10-01T05:13:23Z

A new 7-question interview with me is currently up over at Writing Raw.

Book #2 went over to my agent on Monday to read, and I will hopefully, hopefully start book #3 this coming Monday. In the meantime I've written two new short stories - my first in quite a while - and am tinkering with a third.

Typhoon Ketsana heading our way...

2009-09-29T07:51:23Z

... so not sure how things are gonna pan out in the next couple of days. Ketsana looks like it's going to a Category 1, with wind speeds of 120-150Km/hour. It's currently in Vietnam and heading this way...

Will keep you posted.

Revision

2009-09-25T08:11:20Z

I spent the last week going over the book #2 manuscript, and it's almost there now. Tweaking, fixing, plugging holes and so on. I also managed to write 2 new short stories recently - the first in a while.

So the book should be on its way to the agent very shortly - who hopefully won't ask for any major rewrites - and book #3 should start next week, unless I get tempted into one of the other books I want to write... sigh. Too bad cloning is not an option.

Israeli readers, by the way, can enter a competition to win copies of both The Tel Aviv Dossier and The Apex Book of World SF. All you have to do is sign up for the mailing list. "In honor of the upcoming ICon 2009 (Oct-4th to Oct. 9th) I will be giving away one free scifi or fantasy book on each day of the festival."

Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides? No way!

2009-09-23T06:36:35Z

Yes way!
Disney have optioned Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides, to be the fourth installment in the Pirates of the Carribean franchise.

That is cool beyond words.

On Stranger Tides was the first Powers book I ever read. I picked up a copy in a shopping mall in Johannesburg years ago - an American first edition that must have been shipped to South Africa the way remaindered books still end up there. It cost me the princely sum of 3 Rands... and launched me on a Powers collecting habit that led, by a roundabout way, to my meeting and becoming friends with fellow Powers collector John Berlyne - later to become my agent. I have the beautiful-beyond-words first UK edition of On Stranger Tides (you'd know it if you saw it!) though I think John, going one better on me, actually has the original painting for the cover! I have about 40 Powers editions in my collection, and my copy of Secret Histories is patiently waiting for me in London.

Really fantastic news - now to wait for the film to come out!

Forthcoming audio stories

2009-09-16T12:22:47Z

Pleased to say I'll have stories coming up in both Escape Pod and Pseudopod - "Hard Rain at the Fortean Cafe" (Aeon Magazine) in the former, and "Bophuthatswana" (the Glorifying Terrorism anthology) in the latter. V. v. cool, this whole audio thing...

AR book #2; interview; chapbook; facebook

2009-09-15T06:44:05Z

I've been interviewed for SF Signal, where I talk about world SF, the Apex anthology, and a little about the Angry Robot books.

I am currently going over the manuscript of the second book for AR. With a bit of luck it will be done by next week and I can finally send it on. I talked a tiny bit about book #2 in the interview:

If you look at the second book I'm doing for Angry Robot, for instance - I had a lot of fun with it because I took American Noir, and I took Wuxia, the Chinese martial arts genre, and I sort of mixed them up. Wuxia-noir! And I took bits from Japanese and Italian pulp, stuff like Machine Girl, this very gory Japanese movie, and worked them in.

So far it's not too bad. Mainly making notes on things I need to fix and doing line-editing on typos and the more clunky sentences.

Meanwhile, as I mentioned I'll have a few short stories coming out towards the end of the year, mostly anthologies, but right now I have a tiny chapbook out from ML Press, "Alcove", a sort of very weird short-short story in a stand-alone publication. I'll post about some of the forthcoming stories once ToCs have been announced.

And finally - Facebook... I actually quite enjoyed it when I started out, but now it's basically become an excuse for people to:

a) set up their own fan pages and
b) repeatedly invite me to join their fan pages

Which leads to:

c) my removing those people from my facebook friends list.

Seriously, how SAD is that? You can't set up your own fan page? Surely? Don't you need, like, you know - fans?

Maybe I'm being too grumpy about it but with my internet connection, using facebook's slow enough as it is, and dealing with this sort of ridiculous spam just makes me think of opting out altogether. Plus it's just, you know - stupid.

Erm. I probably need some lunch...

Murky Depths issues 9 and 10

2009-09-10T16:23:10Z

Just to say that issue #10 of fab comics/fiction magazine/anthology Murky Depths is coming out soon and is currently available for pre-order. It contains only my second comics story, "Finger", illustrated by Neil Roberts. Check out Murky Depths! The current issue 9 has the first installment in Richard Kalder's Dead Girls graphic novel, illustrated by Leonardo Giron (who is awesome) and with an introduction by KJ Bishop. And issue #10 has Mike Carey.

And also, I think, Murky Depths is simply the best smelling magazine. Seriously. When you open the plastic and it comes out, it just smells like...

Victory.

You know, one day this war will be over.

The Tel Aviv Dossier out of print?

2009-09-10T15:36:56Z

Only momentarily! We've been told Chizine has sold out of their first print run of the book, and it might be a couple of months before it is available again - but in the meantime, the brand-new electronic edition has just been made available .

The To-Do list

2009-09-09T09:14:36Z

Rather to my surprise, the To-Do list is almost done!
And it feels very good indeed to have cleared out some of the outstanding jobs I had sitting around. For one thing, Chains of Assembly is finished, at 53,000 words or thereabouts (hooray!), Occupation of Angels has gone back to Apex after a fine-toothcomb revision (that added 3000 words or so to the text), stories have been gone over and sent, and there's been a handful of story acceptances recently, which I'll post about when I can.

I really want to write some new short stories, but I'm not sure I have the knack any more! And of course, the next big items on my list are going over book #2 for Angry Robot and starting book #3. So it's still a very busy plate...

Also, I've seen cover roughs for The Bookman and they're awesome.

More Amazon!

2009-09-01T11:43:31Z

The Tel Aviv Dossier is available on Amazon! For pre-orders, at least - it gives the availability as 15th September, so just around the corner. And it's only $12.99 at the moment!

The Bookman on Amazon!

2009-09-01T07:43:56Z

Yes, right here! Cool, huh?

And today's chapter from Chains of Assembly:

Chapter Twenty-Seven: In Which A Three-Headed Dog Contemplates Life Before Drowning, And Feelgood Visits A Shrine of Ogko

Masks!

2009-08-31T08:55:40Z

The travel accessory you can't do without this year in Asia - Lavie and E. riding the fashion trend at Danang airport.

This week on the to-do list...

2009-08-31T08:23:34Z

Finishing short novel Chains of Assembly - a weird gonzo-SF novel (maybe? I guess...) currently at 43k or thereabouts and not planned to be much longer. Back to it after a couple of weeks, and with more energy. Today's chapter:

Chapter Twenty-Six: In Which the Nature of Qian Kun Da Nuo Yi is discussed, And An Elevator Ascends To Elevator Heaven

A lecture you can't miss!

2009-08-30T10:12:26Z

If you're attending the 2009 Israeli SF convention, Icon, Ehud Maimon will apparently be giving a lecture on the role of the city of Haifa in some of my short fiction (including "Shira", "One Day, Soon" and "The Projected Girl").

Pretty cool!

The To-Do List

2009-08-30T06:45:36Z

Vietnam was awesome. I wish I had one or two more weeks there, but what can you do? And I'd like to go back to see the cities - HCMC or Hanoi (of which I only saw the airport) - but not sure I'd be able to this time around.

Anyway.

I got back to some nice news - like "Hard Rain at the Fortean Cafe" being nominated for the Washington SF Association's Small Press Award (thank you, WSFA! It's an honour just being nominated...) - but also to the realisation that my uncompleted, due, want-to-do and other projects are going to bury me alive unless I did something drastic.

Cue the To-Do List.

I was going to launch the new web site, remember? That's on the To-Do List. So are five different comics projects, two uncompleted novels, revision of book #2 for Angry Robot, writing book #3... And that doesn't even take into account the promotion work for The Apex Book of World SF - now coming out in a respectable first printing, it being Apex Books' first title to make it into general bookstores in the US - and all the things that I want to write but - well, they're on the list.

And it's hot. It's very, very hot and humid. And it's hard to work. I spent all of last week going over An Occupation of Angels. I finished it late last night. I think the version that will be published by Apex next year is a much stronger, tighter copy of the same book. It's slightly longer - 30,000 words as opposed to 27,000 - but essentially the same book. Only, you know, stronger. So that's off my to-do list.

One by one I'm going to tick off items from the list. They will not conquer me!

Or so I hope...

Moving from this blog

2009-08-12T07:52:32Z

I probably won't be updating this LJ blog any more, at least for a while - I'm trying to move/combine the website and blog into one place on Wordpress. Hopefully it will go live soon. I'm away this Friday to Vietnam! Need a holiday.

So far this year I've written the second book for Angry Robot, most of a not-very-commercial novel and most of a short novel/long novella, plus 6 short stories. My brain is mush.

When I get back from holiday, I need to:

Go over and proof the new Apex edition of An Occupation of Angels
Go over the first draft of the book for Angry Robot, make it nice and send it to my agent
Finish the new novella/novel (only another 5000 words or so)
Ideally finish the other novel at some point (15,000-20,000 words left)
Start the new novel
Work on various comics projects
...And various other things.

Erm. I need a holiday!

Three book deal with Angry Robot

2009-08-04T12:58:55Z

Well, it's official now - I've sold novel The Bookman plus two sequels to HarperCollins' new Angry Robot imprint, via John Berlyne of the Zeno Literary Agency.

Here is the press release.

The Bookman is a kind of steampunk adventure novel with automatons, giant lizards, poets, pirates, airships and, you know... STUFF.

And congratulations to Aliette de Bodard (aliettedb) on her own 3-book deal!

Chizine Launch Party at Worldcon

2009-08-02T06:53:42Z

Nir Yaniv, my co-author on The Tel Aviv Dossier, is going to Worldcon next week - look for a hulking, shaven-headed pale monster of a man who sings in a suprisingly high voice. No, he's very gentle, really - as I told our publisher at Chizine, just make sure he's fed every 2-3 hours, don't give him any alcohol, and keep him away from Brian Aldiss. Long story, that last one...

Anyway, Chizine will be having an official launch party at Worldcon for five of their books, namely:

The Tel Aviv Dossier by Lavie Tidhar & Nir Yaniv
The Choir Boats by Daniel A. Rabuzzi
Objects of Worship by Claude Lalumière
Monstrous Affections by David Nickle
The World More Full of Weeping by Robert J. Wiersema

WHEN: Saturday, August 8th, 2009 @ 7:30
WHERE: Maisonette Suite 2802
Delta Hotel Centre-Ville
777 University Street
Montreal, QC

Nir will also be signing copies and appearing on several panels, as part of the Worldcon programme.

New interview

2009-07-31T03:52:12Z

In conjunction with "The Integrity of the Chain" being up at Fantasy Magazine, there is also an interview with me, by Rae Bryant: Exotic to One Person is Commonplace to Another.

New story

2009-07-28T09:38:03Z

"The Integrity of the Chain" is now up at Fantasy Magazine.