Saturday, May 10, 2008

New Book

Today the mail brought me a box full of my new book, Nano Comes To Clifford Falls and Other Stories. As always, Golden Gryphon Press has done a wonderful job, with acid-free paper, appealing lay-out, and an enigmatic cover that does not scream PULP!! I like it, even the overly effusive Introduction by the irrepressible Mike Resnick (who better not "pinch me in any elevators.")

Holding a book you wrote is a strange experience, although it grows less strange with each volume. Like anything else, writing has a Law of Diminishing Returns. Or, to switch from economics to drugs, the first book published produces an amazing high, and after that you need more and more stimulant to get the same effect.

The very talented Jack Skillingstead just sold his collection of short stories to Golden Gryphon. When it appears in 2009, he will undoubtedly be levitating -- as he should be. Don't get me wrong; I'm very pleased to have this book, and I hope fervently that a lot of people read it. But another fact enters into this: I wrote the most recent of these stories three years ago, the oldest nine years ago. My attention is currently absorbed by what I'm writing now. Also, the hydrangea in the yard needs cutting back, I've got cookies in the oven, and I have to wrap my gift for my mother for Mother's Day, which is tomorrow. Somehow those rank almost as high as Nano.

Almost. But not quite.

6 comments:

TheOFloinn said...

Cookies?

Nancy Kress said...

Peanut butter cookies. Yum.

TheOFloinn said...

Don't like peanut butter, but that is one dude cover:

http://www.amazon.com/Nano-Comes-Clifford-Falls-Stories/dp/1930846509

They use you for the eye-model?

Nancy Kress said...

I'm not even sure what "one dude cover" even means!

bluesman miike Lindner said...

Hmmm... =Everything= falls to the Law of Diminishing Returns, Nancy?

Having children? "Every new child is a new lesson in love."--a famous rabbi whose name I forget.

But I do know what you mean.

TheOFloinn said...

Nancy:
I'm not even sure what "one dude cover" even means!

Mike:
"Dude" is an all purpose word. Like the German "doch," it is used for emphasis. It can be an exclamation ("Dude!"), a noun ("check out the dude"), a verb (to "get duded up," as in dressing formally or wearing socks), or an adjective ("a dude cover"). It is connected to the term "cool."

dude
1883, "fastidious man," New York City slang of unknown origin. The vogue word of 1883, originally used in ref. to the devotees of the "aesthetic" craze, later applied to city slickers, especially Easterners vacationing in the West (dude ranch first recorded 1921). Surfer slang application to any male is first recorded c.1970. Female form dudine (1883) has precedence over dudess (1885).

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=d&p=19

Do not look up "ducky" at this site.