Friday: Link love + life

A quick hello to those of you who've arrived at Speak Coffee to Me via Rachel Harrie's Blog Campaign! If you've not yet joined, you have til the end of the month to do so here.  The rest of this post is relevant writing links, irrelevant links, an a few snips of news from life at large.

Ann Vandemeer steps down as editor of Weird Tales, releasing a formal announcement earlier this week.   Vandemeer has edited the magazine for several years now along with multiple anthologies. She's won a Hugo for her editing work and while there's only a handful of powerhouse sf/f editors out there, there's even fewer female editors -- so why is she stepping down?  Because Weird Tales has been bought by someone who wants to edit it himself. Okay, fine I guess. You buy a cool toy you want to play with it. I understand. And hey, if you've got lots of money and you want to run your own magazine, why not buy the longest running speculative magazine in North America? Guess it sure as heck beats starting from scratch. Vandemeer is magnanimous in her open announcement of resignation, but she makes it pretty clear that she didn't want to leave ... makes me wonder if she's feeling terribly magnanimous on the inside. Maybe under the new guy's direction the covers will get less eerie; the Ann Vandemeer covered always skeeved me out.

Best coffee jewelry EVER! 

Recently, while encountering a problem for an e small appliance I found my new favorite for instruction in a long list of don'ts: CAUTION: do not incinerate. Thanks. Because I generally burn all electronic devices I purchase rather than, you know, use them.

I totally want moo.com to hire me. For what, I'm not quite certain. But I would be awesome  as a Moo employee. I love the ethic, I love the product, I love the face which Moo presents to the world. I'm a creative thinker and doer (though I have no design education beyond a bunch of high school art classes and a couple college art classes which I really should have taken pass/fail). I'm a college writing teacher and that means I engage constantly in critical assessment and redrawn definition -- if my audience is confused the first time, I reach outside the box for a wacky-pants means of making understanding. Okay, admittedly, that may not be synonymous with "teacher" to everyone, but it is in my world. Love the visual and tactile and the world of words. People who have no artistic talent look at what I can do and tell me I should be an artist; people who make their livings doing art look at what I can do and pat me on the head: I know my limitations. I have basic web design skills; this means I can't build you a new look from scratch, but I  speak the language of those who could. I'm a good organizer. When I have a task and a deadline, I see it through to the end.

Did I just pitch myself on my blog where no one with a job to offer will ever likely read it? Oh yes, I did.

Newborn mammals are cute no matter what they are: sloths!

I bought the cats "indoor cat food" which differentiates itself from the regular stuff by the same brand as having 10% fewer calories and more hairball-fighting fiber. I mixed it with the remains of their old food, as per food-changing-instructions, and they managed to eat ALL the old food and leave the new stuff. Picky bitches. Actually, I'm more amazed that they could isolate individual kibbles than put out at their eating habits.

On Facebook this week, people realized how many friends they had who lived on the east coast as status messages regarding the earthquake flooded personal news streams.  Meanwhile, Californian's snickered ... but they may have gotten snobby too fast. Because when an earthquake hits the East Coast unexpectedly, it's not the physical destruction that you have to worry about, it's the naked men with knives.

I'm reading Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke for the first time ever -- and I'm loving it! (no spoilers, plz! I still have another 100 pages to go) Clarke has such great, simple prose. As a writer, I'm totally in love with his style! That's not to say his sentences are all short, blunt, and uncomplicated. Not at all. The sentences themselves are often complicated in construction, and the man knew how to use a semicolon. But they stay clean and unadorned with poetic quirks that could trip up the reader, especially as Clarke is describing some mentally complicated situations such as explaining all the different ways of orienting and reorienting one's sense of "down" in a low gravity situation. That sort of imagining and reimagining of space had me thinking that this narrative would make a great film using today's technology and a sense of space and inversion akin to that we saw in Inception. And lo and behold! IMDB.com says there's a Rendezvous with Rama film due out in 2013! ... and apparently Morgan Freeman, of all people, is pushing for the project to happen/finish.

Post Secret is coming out with an APP this September!

I wrote several secrets and sent them in years ago to Post Secret. They didn't make the website or books (as far as I know). I wrote a few more -- real secrets this time not just the "barely a secret" items I had first sent).  But I never sent them.  I kept them in my apartment. And then I moved them. And now, I don't know where they are. I wish I knew. Because I would send them. Their absence both scares and excites me.

Edited to add: oh and if you were following from last weeks' linklove+life post, know that the foot is slowly getting better. I'm still annoyed by it, at times and it lets me know if I stress it out with too much walking, but it is much, much better.

I need your help for a Post Secret related memoir project

(please repost and repeat the information in the following letter on your blog and to your friends. I hope to conduct as many interviews as possible over the next three months)

Dear fans of Post Secret,

I am a graduate student in an MFA writing program where I am working on a memoir project involving three months of my life and my then obsession with Post Secret. The reason I am writing is because part of my current memoir project involves conducting semi-anonymous interviews with people who have interacted with Post Secret. Not just people who have sent in secrets like I have (although that would be great) but also with people who interact with the blog, online communities, go to Post Secret events or read the books.

What I mean by “semi-anonymous” interviews: I will be conducting these interviews primarily over email. I ask those volunteers who respond to give me a name (first with last initial is fine) but it need not be his or her real name. What is important to my memoir is that people be truthful in recalling their thoughts and emotions related to Post Secret, not that they divulge their identity—it is, after all, Post Secret.

Once again, I am ONLY looking for volunteers to respond to some or all of my questions; I cannot pay people. Over the next two to three months these interviews will occur entirely by email, and there may be some follow up emails sent to certain respondents to clarify or to ask for elaboration. These interviews are for a piece of creative nonfiction relating to my life and, while I am not seeking immediate publication, the piece may eventually be published with some of the volunteers’ responses in it. Any interview or part of an interview that appears in the memoir will be attributed to the fake/real name the volunteer has offered me.

Thank you for having read this far and I hope you will take the time to answer some/all of the following questions and email your responses to eileen.postsecretmemoir AT gmail DOT com.

1. How did you become familiar with Post Secret? How long ago was that?

2. Thinking about the secrets you’ve read, which one stand out in your memory? What’s memorable about that/those secret(s)?

3. Have you ever attended a Post Secret event? Why? What was it like?

4. Have you ever sent in a secret? How many? If more than one, over how long a period of time?

5. Have you ever seen one of your secrets again (on the blog/in the books, etc)? How did that make you feel?

6. Have you ever found a postcard with a secret written on it that was tucked inside of one of the books? What was that like?

7. Have you ever put one of your own secrets inside of a book? What was your reason for doing so?

8. Has there ever been a time where you’ve written a secret on a post card but kept the post card instead of sending it? Please elaborate as much as you are comfortable as to why you’ve hung on to it.

9. Why do you think you read other people’s secrets?

10. If you’ve sent in a secret, or many secrets, why did you send it in opposed to telling someone you knew or keeping it to yourself? What was your reason for sending it off to some place where strangers were going to read it?

Note: I am NOT asking anyone to explicitly state the content of their secrets unless that is something that you want to share. Any information sent to me may eventually be published.

I need your help for a Post Secret related memoir project

(please repost and repeat the information in the following letter on your blog and to your friends. I hope to conduct as many interviews as possible over the next three months)

Dear fans of Post Secret,

I am a graduate student in an MFA writing program where I am working on a memoir project involving three months of my life and my then obsession with Post Secret. The reason I am writing is because part of my current memoir project involves conducting semi-anonymous interviews with people who have interacted with Post Secret. Not just people who have sent in secrets like I have (although that would be great) but also with people who interact with the blog, online communities, go to Post Secret events or read the books.

What I mean by “semi-anonymous” interviews: I will be conducting these interviews primarily over email. I ask those volunteers who respond to give me a name (first with last initial is fine) but it need not be his or her real name. What is important to my memoir is that people be truthful in recalling their thoughts and emotions related to Post Secret, not that they divulge their identity—it is, after all, Post Secret.

Once again, I am ONLY looking for volunteers to respond to some or all of my questions; I cannot pay people. Over the next two to three months these interviews will occur entirely by email, and there may be some follow up emails sent to certain respondents to clarify or to ask for elaboration. These interviews are for a piece of creative nonfiction relating to my life and, while I am not seeking immediate publication, the piece may eventually be published with some of the volunteers’ responses in it. Any interview or part of an interview that appears in the memoir will be attributed to the fake/real name the volunteer has offered me.

Thank you for having read this far and I hope you will take the time to answer some/all of the following questions and email your responses to eileen.postsecretmemoir AT gmail DOT com.

1. How did you become familiar with Post Secret? How long ago was that?

2. Thinking about the secrets you’ve read, which one stand out in your memory? What’s memorable about that/those secret(s)?

3. Have you ever attended a Post Secret event? Why? What was it like?

4. Have you ever sent in a secret? How many? If more than one, over how long a period of time?

5. Have you ever seen one of your secrets again (on the blog/in the books, etc)? How did that make you feel?

6. Have you ever found a postcard with a secret written on it that was tucked inside of one of the books? What was that like?

7. Have you ever put one of your own secrets inside of a book? What was your reason for doing so?

8. Has there ever been a time where you’ve written a secret on a post card but kept the post card instead of sending it? Please elaborate as much as you are comfortable as to why you’ve hung on to it.

9. Why do you think you read other people’s secrets?

10. If you’ve sent in a secret, or many secrets, why did you send it in opposed to telling someone you knew or keeping it to yourself? What was your reason for sending it off to some place where strangers were going to read it?

Note: I am NOT asking anyone to explicitly state the content of their secrets unless that is something that you want to share. Any information sent to me may eventually be published.