Le Beran Quotidien

I have decided to switch to tumblr because I like it better! Therefore this blog is now old and my new blog is here: http://daleberan.tumblr.com/

I just sold a science fiction short story, Drowned by Molly Ann Friday, to the Machine of Death anthology series. There is an interesting caveat however: I am not quite exactly sure when or where the story will appear!

The first Machine of Death book was wildly successful. And the second volume (to which I submitted) received almost 2000 submissions out of which only 30(ish?) were accepted. Editorial triumvirate  North, Bennardo, and Malki ! said they didn’t know if my story would fit into Machine of Death Vol. 2. But if it didn’t, they wanted to publish it by some means which they would figure out soon. The length is a problem. If I recall, the editors requested stories roughly between 200-7,500 words. So knowing that it’s always charming (not exasperating) to people when I break the rules but only slightly, I sent them one which was about 8,060 words (to give non-writers some idea, my entire novel– albeit a short novel– is 51,000 words– so this story is roughly 1/6th the size.)

I’m very pleased with the story and I’m excited to share it with you in whatever form it eventually takes.  Naturally, I feel tremendously lucky to be chosen out of such a prodigious number of writers. I have suggested to the editors that the story take the shape of a mighty eagle, descending a mountaintop, clutching an irrefutable golden scroll– as it originally appeared to me in my vision– but have yet to hear back.

Here’s a word “death cloud” of all the submissions for Vol. 2. As you can see– if winds are right– we could take out the entire eastern seaboard:

In recent days, I’ve been enjoying reading those stories that didn’t make the cut. A lot of folks have been posting them on their blogs and linking them via twitter.

You can also read the first volume of stories as a free ebook.

I must thank my Dates Worse Than Facebook Group for urging me to send in a submission. They already know they’re awesome but I’ll just remind them here again.

Here’s a comic I wrote about Occupy Wall Street. It’s drawn by Cricket. There’s a new page of Time Picnickers coming in a few days I just have to uh… draw it.

After I wrote this comic I saw Ted Rall did one on a very similar theme. Ted actually found a better quote in the N.Y. Times to exemplify “Juke-Think”. But you know, after they put up the pay-wall, I just can’t find the heart to Firefox>>Tools>>Private Browsing. That’s right, I said it, the Op-Ed  pages are not even worth turning off your cookies!

Ted also has a good article about generation Y (Is that really what we’re called?) here.

Addendum: How could I forget GM’s hilarious aborted ads and public twitter apology for it’s “reality sucks… but luckily the GM college discount doesn’t” anti-bike campaign from earlier this month?

All of this is via Bike Snob

That’s right, if you’re on a bike, photoshopped women with burnished cheeks will laugh at you. Ready to buy a truck? It’s only um… I can’t read the fine print. I’m sure it’s up there, and of course gas isn’t all that cheap, and well, there’s the financing plan which is like another 5-10% on 20-25K. But it’ll be monthly payments and at least all your friends will know you’re cool now cause you have that sort of enormous truck that GM swore they would stop making when the government bailed them out of bankruptcy a few years ago because the things proved intensely hated and unpopu– Whooops….

At least last time they tried this, America was rich, the auto reigned supreme, and they were clearly high:

Dearest Readers,

I’ve begun a new comic! It’s here and yes it is about gourmands who travel through time searching for fresh ingredients. Scripted out it looks to be very long. But not to worry! I plan on a updating every week for the next few months. This I swear! I’m working on two books at the moment, editing Dates Worse Than Fate for publication (of some sort) and I’m about halfway through a second book, a science fiction novel entitled (working) The Savage Twins. Here’s the first few pages from when I started the second book as a comic then decided I preferred to put it in novel form. So there you go! More free comics (albeit ones you will only be able to finish in novel form some time in the indefinite future)! Also, as a sign of my loosening grip on my own priorities/moral compass, I’ve joined twitter!

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Hey Bros and Broettes,

I’ve made a website for my novel where you can read some excerpts. It is here!

I’ve finished my novel!

It’s called Dates Worse Than Fate. The Premise: terrible dates combined with terrible moments in human history! Would you like to read it? I would also like you to read it. But that requires a literary agent or publisher. Are you one of these people/entities? If so, well, confession: I love you. Please contact me! My info is on this page. I’ve only met one literary agent once. It was five years ago after I did a reading on the Lower East Side. She gave me her card, which I subsequently lost. Are you that particular literary agent? Well, confession: I love you– no, seriously, you were very beautiful!

Are you not a literary agent/publisher? Yeah, me either! But you can still help! I created a Facebook group in the hope that if many people joined it, the published book would spontaneously materialize from our collective desire. Please join it here! If you don’t have Facebook, then you’re a stronger person than I will ever be–  just comment below this post if you would like to see the book in print!

Thank you, by the way, to all the posters in the comments sections who have said kind and encouraging things about my work. And also thank you to all the posters who have just said, like, really insane things that are sort of creepy in that way that only the internet is creepy. Confession: I love you most of all.

UPDATE (4/20/11): I’ve created a site for the book where you can read excerpts!

So Cricket’s been making a six panel comic a day. Eventually, I’ll make a better place for them; but for now they go on the blog. Here are the first five below the cut!

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Happy new year all!

I attended the St. Mark’s New Year’s Day Marathon Reading this year. Below are some scans from my sketchbook from the event.

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Well, it’s 2011 and as I expected from the future, we’ve received proof of time travel in the metaphorically convenient form of a tiny Swiss watch and Newton’s draconian laws of thermodynamics have finally been broken (apparently 60 years ago and then shelved in museum).

Why is the watch so tiny? Well, obviously the universe is not expanding it’s shrinking. We just don’t notice it because we’re all shrinking at the same time. However, if we would go back in time we would be embarrassingly small! Don’t believe me? Just think back to your childhood? Don’t you remember being ridiculously small? I know! Weird, right…

A rendering of me checking my blog by Cricket.