Oh, good grief: it’s the last Friday in March already? Where did this week month quarter go?
Mostly into the “minimally invasive, three days tops” repair and remodeling project that began in January and finally wrapped up just this past Tuesday. At last, I can finish moving back into the half of the house I had to vacate while the work was in progress and start opening up and dealing with all those bins full of Why the Hell Was I Keeping This? down in the basement. My primary goal is to find the clothes I put into “temporary” storage back in January. I’ve grown tired of wearing and washing the same seven shirts every week.
My secondary goal is to completely fill the trash and recycling bins every week. So far progress on this goal has been slow, but very therapeutic.
It’s also been very disruptive. In the past two months I’ve gotten out of the good habit of blocking out quiet time for writing first thing every morning and into a set of bad habits consistent with leading an interrupt-driven* life.
* Interrupt-driven: an archaic computer technology used for multi-tasking, when CPUs were rare and expensive and CPU-time was at a premium. Now largely replaced in computers by parallel processing architectures, but since the H. sapiens meatware has not been significantly upgraded since Paleolithic times, attempts at implementing this technology in the human mind usually result in what is perhaps most charitably described as “scatter-brained” or “ditzy” behavior.
Lately I’ve typically begun my day by rolling out of bed and going straight into dealing with whatever is the crisis d’jour; usually but not always with a quick stop in the kitchen to make a pot of strong coffee. This latter has become absolutely essential for rebooting my cognitive processes and maintaining my energy level, but is probably not doing much good for my ability to focus or ignore distractions. For example, this morning I began to write this post nearly four hours ago, but then… [interruption]… and then [interruption]… followed by [interruption]…
Crap. It’s now past noon. On the last Friday in March. At the tail end of Q1 2025.
Okay, no time for finesse. I’m muting the phone, closing my email clients, and diving in. Here goes.
Q: Does Rampant Loon Press have a bookstore site where all your titles are listed?
A: Yes. No. Kind of. Sorta. We have a Linktree shop, https://linktr.ee/stupefyingsf/shop, that was created as part of our misguided attempt to establish a presence on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/stupefyingsf/) but that never worked as expected and was a headache to maintain. I rather liked the Friends of Stupefying Stories section, but there is no way to point a link directly to it. The most aggravating part of the Linktree shop was that for reasons unknown they slapped a “Sensitive Content” warning on Stupefying Stories #23 through #26, hid the books from site visitors, and we were never able to get them to remove that warning. (Apparently we’d violated some unwritten and unpublished “community standards” rule, but they would not deign to explain what standard we’d violated or how to correct the violation. The assholes.)
A quick search on Amazon turns up most of our titles, but in no order I can comprehend. Also, some of our titles are missing from the list. These appear to be the books we distribute through Ingram Spark. You can buy these books through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or pretty much anywhere, but it seems you need to know what you’re looking for before you can find it.
Q: What’s going on with The Pete Wood Challenge?
A: I’m glad you asked! After some prolonged negotiations, Pete and I have agreed on the terms for what I wanted to call The Last Dangerous Pete Wood Challenge but we wisely decided to call “Happy Trails” instead. Here they are.
Challenge #38, “Happy Trails,” is now open for entries!
The Challenge: Write a story of up to 150 words in length using the prompt, “happy trails.” The prompt does not need to appear in the story. Any genre is fine.
Prizes:
1st place $20.00 USD, 2nd place $15.00, 3rd place, $10.00, Honorable
Mentions, (1-2) $5.00. The winning entries will be published online by
Stupefying Stories in June of 2025.
Who can enter: The contest is open to both Codexians and the general public. One entry per writer, please.
How to enter: Send your entry in the body of an email to:
southernfriedsfwriter@gmail.com
Include
the words “Happy Trails” in the subject line. It wouldn’t hurt to include
“Pete Wood Challenge 38” or “PWC 38” in your email, too.
Deadline: 7AM EST, May 15, 2025
Now get writing!
Out of time now. Will answer more questions tomorrow.
~brb
1 comments:
If you are going to post a picture of Mr. Ruffles, the most famous cat in speculative fiction, you gotta republish "Take Me To Your Litter Box."
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