Libby and I used to go out, but now we're just friends. (Between you and me, I think she still carries a torch.)

Luc Reid is (among other things) a professional speculative fiction writer who lives in Burlington, Vermont. His book Talk the Talk: The Slang of 65 American Subcultures is just out in stores. You can read more about him here.

What's The Latest?

• September 8, 2006: Talk the Talk is now in stores, offering 65 flavors of subculture slang; we saw a couple of copies in our local Borders bookstore today. Also: the new Talk the Talk Web site is up, with supplementary information and forums for talking about everything from birding to bicycling to model railroads to circuses.
• August, 2006: I'm back in Burlington, Vermont, after a fine fifteen months or so in Florida. (This in case you were stalking me and needed the new location.)
• May 3, 2006: Talk the Talk is now available for preorder on Amazon at 35% off the cover price. It begins shipping in September. Scroll down to the discussion section of the book listing and click on my post there to see a full table of contents.
  
  
• April 29, 2006: New radio commentary on WJCT, on the secrets of runners' insanity.
  
  
• April 25, 2006: I got a peek at the cover of Talk the Talk today, along with the news the Talk the Talk is featured in the new F&W catalog, whose cover is based on the cover of Talk the Talk (which I like a great deal, although I can take no credit for it). In other words, the book is coming out with a bang! I'm finishing my author review as I write this; one of the main goals is to trim down the longer introductions to be concise; there's so much information in the book, we need to conserve every bit of space we can.
  
  
• February 28, 2006: Talk the Talk revisions for Talk the Talk are done, which will give me more time to work on the Talk the Talk Web site and complete the latest Latterworld revisions.
  
  
• January 15, 2006: Talk the Talk is completed and sent off to F&W (the Writers' Digest folks). Now back to sleeping full nights and writing fiction ... but not at the same time.
  
  
• December 24, 2005: WJCT aired my " Rejection Letter from Santa".
  
  
• November 19, 2005: A new WJCT radio commentary aired today, this one about Dragon*Con.
  
  
• November 6, 2005: My first WJCT radio commentary airs.
  
  
• October, 2005: Lined up a gig writing radio commentaries for our local NPR affiliate, WJCT. Wonderful fun!
  
  
• Much of 2005: Flagrantly neglecting my Web site, I instead secured a book deal (through my scintillating, brilliant agent Nadia Cornier) with Writer's Digest Books to write Talk the Talk: Authentic Slang from 65 American Subcultures. Though a hell of a lot of work, this book has been a delight to write.
  
  
• November 7, 2004: In going to Abyss & Apex to read the new issue I found to my pleasure that my short-short story "Just Like Meteors" is the featured archive selection.
  
  
• November 1, 2004: My short-short story "Chance Meeting With a Baby on a Train" is live at Lenox Avenue.
  
  
• October 25, 2004: To my amazement and delight, my short story "Dark-Foot Hugh" took the top prize in the first Codex Halloween story contest. Set in Elizabethan England and on a merchant ship of the time, it tells the story of an estranged father whose shadow is haunted by his own dead brother, and of the son who tries to free him from the ghost.
  
  
• October, 2004: I am more pleased than I could express in the limited amount of time I give myself to keep this site up to date to say that I've signed with agent Nadia Cornier of the Creative Media Agency. I've known her long enough to have some idea of her energy and intelligence and count myself truly lucky.
  
  
• October, 2004: L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future Volume XX is in stores now, and it includes my novelette "Bottomless".
  
  
• October, 2004: My flash fiction piece Catch is live at Abyss & Apex. This is a story so short that to summarize it would be to tell it.
  
  
• September 25, 2004: My review of Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is live at Strange Horizons.
  
  
• August 23, 2004: Just returned from the Writers of the Future workshop and gala awards ceremony in Los Angeles. What a mind blowing journey, even the second time around!.
  
  
• July 5, 2004: My interview of James Maxey is now live at Strange Horizons.
  
  
• June 11, 2004: Just received the welcome news that my Flash Fiction story "Catch" will appear in the July/August edition of Abyss & Apex.
  
  
• May 29, 2004: A note from the new online Magazine Lenox Avenue (first issue to appear in July) accepting my short-short story "Chance Meeting With a Baby on a Train" for publication in their second issue, due out in September. I'm feeling fortunate to be involved in the magazine so early on. Issue 1 includes work from Nick Mamatas, Elizabeth Bear, and others.
  
  
• May 29, 2004: Enjoyed an interview this morning by Margot Harrison for the local Burlington alternative newspaper Seven Days for an article about Vermont Writers of the Future winners. I believe the article will appear in the upcoming week's issue.
  
  
• April 30, 2004: A note from Strange Horizons saying my interview of James Maxey has been accepted for publication in a near future issue of SH, probably during July.
  
  
• March 30, 2004: Recently I've been putting a good deal of effort into Codex, a writers group for newly-pro and nearly-pro speculative fiction writers. Revelatory forum discussions, helpful critiques: what more (short of a massive advance on a first novel) could a writer want?
  
  
• January 16, 2004: By virtue of my Writers of the Future publication, I'm now eligible to be nominated for the Campbell award (see my entry at the Campbell Awards site for more information. I have no chance of winning this year, given the talented and frankly much more prolific writers I'm up against, but it's nice to be out there. Time to get some more work out there!
  
  
• September 23: The Writers of the Future XIX anthology is at long last out in stores, and to my amazement I saw it prominently displayed in my local grocery store! More of a shock than this was a brief Publisher's Weekly review of the anthology that mentions "A Ship That Bends" in flattering terms:
  
  Luc Reid�s marvelous "A Ship That Bends" imagines a world that is literally flat, where seafarers try to maneuver around the edge and onto the other side.
  
  
• August: I'm back from the dizzying experience of the Writers of the Future contest in Hollywood and back to work on Gods and Demons. Mike Lawrence, one of the winning illustrators this year, won the annual grand prize for illustration for the woodcut he did for "A Ship That Bends" in Writers of the Future XIX. The anthology hit stores in September 2003.
  
  
• July 15th: I was amazed and delighted to find out today that "Bottomless" won second place in the Jan-Mar 2003 quarter of the Writers of the Future contest. To my great joy, I'll be in two successive volumes of WotF anthology and be able to attend the Writers Workshop not only this year, but next as well. The contest administrator, Rachel, tried first to tell me I had won obliquely, but I was a little slow on the uptake and she had to spell it out for me.
  
  
• June 25th: More good news from Writers of the Future: My novelette "Bottomless" (young man who lives in a village deep inside a bottomless pit is run out of town and must try to find a way to clear his name in parts unknown) is a finalist in the Jan-Mar quarter of the 2003 contest; results should be back in about two weeks. Woo-hoo! And in about five or six more weeks, I'm off to the WotF Writers Workshop with Tim Powers and K.D. Wentworth.
• May 1st: Issue 3 of Abyss & Apex comes out with "Just Like Meteors" (two elderly friends are arguing about protesters who set themselves on fire and plunge from the sky into public places).
  
  
• March 20th: Got the news that "A Ship That Bends" (a Phoenecian girl grows up working out a way she can sail over the edge of the earth, which is visible from her home, to the bottom) will be included in the Writers of the Future XIX anthology, a paperback that will be published in August and which is available at bookstores, Amazon.com, www.writersofthefuture.com, etc.
  
  

Werkstattsschrieberfreuden

• Alethea Kontis again, and where do I start? Promising progress on finding a good home for her YA horror or dark fantasy novel Haven, a contract to do a reference work on Sherrilyn Kenyon's Dark Hunter series, and signing with a top-notch agent (who cannot possibly be as nifty as my agent but who nonetheless is a splendid match for Lee and her talents). Oh, and did I mention a moved-up release date on her alphabetic madness picture book, now retitled AlphaOops: The Day Z Went First?
  
  
• Alethea Kontis and Steve Savile on the release of their tsunami relief anthology Elemental. The list of science fiction and fantasy authors contributing to this book will make your eyes grow huge with amazement. Magnificent job, Steve and Lee!
  
  
• Nadia again, on forming her own literary agency, Firebrand with Caren Johnson!
  
  
• Steve Bein, on his sale of the short story "Datacide" to Asimov's. And who was his technical consultant on matters relating to computers? I fear I am too humble to say.
  
  
• Nadia Cornier, on joining The Creative Media Agency as an agent. She'll be continuing to run her company Cornier and Associates, which provides PR and other services to writers.
  
  
• Alas, I fear I must cease posting about the accomplishments of the literally inimitable Jay Lake, whose accomplishments, award nominations, and notable stories are too many to list in a place such as this.
  
  
• Steve Savile on the release of his new collection Angel Road.
  
  
• Jud Roberts, whose story about a Viking who rises from thrall to reknowned warrior, found a well-deserved home at HarperCollins, where it will be released as YA novels.
  
  
• Jay Lake yet again: he won the Campbell!
  
  
• Alethea Kontis, whose messed-up alphabet book The Telephab has been enthusiastically accepted at Candlewick Press.
  
  
• Steve Savile again, whose first novel in Swedish (translated by his publisher; his Swedish is good, but not that good) has been picked up to be made into a 2-part TV movie by the largest independent television company in Sweden. Grattis, Steve!
  
  
• Matthew Candelaria, whose engaging and vividly imagined story "Trust is a Child" won the grand prize at the Writers of the Future awards ceremony in August.
  
  
• Jay Lake, whose stories are blossoming as prolifically as the poppies in the Wizard of Oz, and with no less mind-bending potency. Jay's recent successes are too numerous to mention, but they include sales to Writers of the Future, On Spec, Ideomancer, Black Gate, Strange Horizons, Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov's, and a number of others. His Web site is www.jlake.com.
  
  
• Steve Bein, my black belt speculative fiction writer friend. Recently he had a chance to meet David Carradine, and when someone told Mr. Carradine that Steve is pursuing a PhD in Philosophy, Mr. Carradine responded: "Yeah, and he can kick a**, too."
  
  
• Carl Frederick, theoretical physicist, speculative fiction writer, bagpiper, and winner of the Nicest Guy In Hollywood award, who in addition to several other recent story sales just sold a piece to Artemis that (it looks like) will form the basis of some new physics work he and a colleague are writing up for Physical Review.
  
  
• Jud Roberts, whose pair of books set in painstakingly-researched and beautifully realized Viking times finally caught the attention of a really smart agent.
  
  
• Steve Savile, who's started in on a film project with a certain Hollywood actress and producer.
  
  
• Maya Lassiter, whose graceful Boot Camp short story of the urban supernatural, "Dusi's Wings", appeared in a recent issue of Realms of Fantasy.
  
  
• James Maxey, whose short story "Empire of Dreams and Miracles" so caught the attention of the good folks at Phobos that they named it a winner in their first annual short story contest, named their anthology of the winning stories after it, and later had the good sense to buy his superhero novel Nobody Gets the Girl, one of those rare single-sitting reads with a convoluted, beautifully engineered ending. I believe it's due out in October. Check out James' Web site at www.nobodygetsthegirl.com.
  
  
• and congratulations to James Maxey again on the inclusion of a short story and a novella, "Absolutely Brilliant in Chrome" and "All the Empty Space" for the new Phobos anthology Absolutely Brilliant in Chrome, a non-contest compilation of works by past Phobos contest winners. Note that two of the three Phobos anthologies to date have been named after Maxey stories!
  
  

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