David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

As you may know, Potlatch is being held this year in conjunction with Foolscap, February 1-3, 2013 at the Redmond Marriott Town Center. As is traditional for both conventions, we’ll be having a writer’s workshop, and the deadline to submit manuscripts for critique has just been extended to January 10. The deadline to sign up for the interactive writing seminars remains January 25. See http://potlatch-sf.org/workshop.php for information.

I’ve just discovered that Bridget and Marti McKenna’s anthology End of an Aeon is now available as an ebook from Baen Ebooks, and what’s more they’ve put up my story “The True Story of Merganther’s Run” as one of the sample chapters you can read for free online. Enjoy!

With LiveJournal’s recent issues, lots of people are talking about moving to Dreamwidth.

I have been posting all of my content at DW as well as LJ (as well as my own blog at daviddlevine.com) for some years now, though I’m still using LJ as my main blog-reading interface. I don’t anticipate this will change soon, but as I’m a belt-and-suspenders kind of guy I have just gone over to Dreamwidth and friended everyone who’s on my LiveJournal friendslist.

If your username on Dreamwidth is different from (i.e. not character-by-character identical to) your username on LiveJournal, please comment here or otherwise notify me of your Dreamwidth username if you’d like to keep in touch there.

I’m considering an irregular series of blog posts about technology, science, and science fiction. If you have any questions on these topics that you’d like to see me address, please post them as comments here. Thanks!

When Hungarian magazine Galaktika paid me for the two stories they’d published previously, they also said “I would like to purchase a third one in advance to restore your faith in our good will.” So here’s another Hungarian translation sale: “Nucleon.” And that’s my last sale for the year, I think.

Here’s a summary of the nights I spent away from home in 2012:

Guadalajara, Mexico (4)
Lake Quinault, WA (4)
Walnut Creek, CA (4)
Venice, Italy (5)
Bologna, Italy (2)
Vienna, Austria (5)
Znojmo, Czech Republic (1)
Jindřichův Hradec, Czech Republic (2)
České Budějovice, Czech Republic (2)
Prague, Czech Republic (5)
Dresden, Germany (2)
Berlin, Germany (6)
Madison, WI (7)
Vancouver, BC (7)
San Jose, CA (1)
Snoqualmie, WA (2)
Portland, OR (3)
Ashland, OR (4)
Chicago, IL (6)
Milwaukee, WI (2)
Denver, CO (4)
Chattanooga, TN (6)
Toronto, ON (5)

Plus 12 trips to Seattle to visit with Janna and other friends, for a total of 116 nights away from home.

Crikey.

Back in August I learned that my story “Charlie the Purple Giraffe Was Acting Strangely” had been translated into Hungarian and published in Galaktika magazine without permission or payment. Furthermore, they had done the same back in 2006 with “Tk’Tk’Tk.” I tracked down an email address and sent them a note politely requesting payment and author copies.

Somewhat to my surprise, I received a rapid and apologetic response — “It seems my colleagues who should clear the rights slipped up big time” — and a request for wire transfer information for payment. Some of my writer friends thought this sounded like a phishing scam, but I contacted them in the first place, and I also know that in Eastern Europe they use wire transfers the way we use credit cards, so I sent them the information as requested.

Wonder of wonders, the payment came through earlier this month!

So now I have added two Hungarian translations to my roster of foreign sales.

I think we left it too late to get our tree this year. Our first choice tree lot was gone; the second choice was unattended and had a sign “any tree $10, put bills in slot;” the third had some decent-looking trees, but when we got ours home it started dropping needles like a butterfingered knitter. Since then it’s been sucking down water at a furious rate, a half-gallon a day or more. Thirstiest tree we’ve ever had, by far. But still, it’s up and decorated and looks lovely. Happy solstice, all!

Woke up bright and early this morning and ran downstairs in eager anticipation… only to find myself in the basement because our bedroom is on the ground floor. Hope everyone is enjoying their first day of continued existence. Happy solstice, too!