October Preview and News Bits

I've got three Florida-based events next month. Please stop by and say hello if you're in the area!

1. Florida State Poets Association convention (Oct. 14-16, at the Orlando Marriott, Lake Mary), where as contest chair I will emcee this year's awards ceremony.

2. NaNoWriMo Kickoff at the Lakes Region Library in Inverness (Oct. 19, 3:30-6:30 p.m.), where I'll be a panelist along with Loretta Rogers, Dylan Newton, and Flossie Benton Rogers.

3. Necronomicon 30 (Oct. 21-23 at the Hilton Bayfront in St. Petersburg). In addition to my usual table on Author Alley, you can find me on five panels this year:

a. "What Has Social Media Done for You Lately?"
b. "Three or More (writing book series)"
c. "Intro to Writing Poetry" (moderating)
d. "The Liquid State of Publishing" (moderating)
e. "Connecting Science Fiction with Poetry & Song."

Thanks to Ao Bibliophile for having me as a guest blogger! (And thanks to KamJos, who commented, "I love love love the Deviations series!")

Thanks also to kgilr7, who answered the question, "What are the best non-classic free ebooks you've read?" (posted on Reddit by SmoSays) with, "The Deviations series by Elissa Malcohn. There are seven books in the series and each one of them is absolutely amazing. She also is pretty nice and responds back if you write to her."

(There was a time when I thought I'd have to break Bloodlines into two volumes, making seven overall. The series count is actually six books.)

My article "The Many Shades of Dark Poetry" is now posted as a .pdf in the mid-summer 2011 WyoPoets newsletter, on pg. 4 and pg. 5.

Also live (though not yet available for embedding) is Part 3 of the publishing workshop I gave with Lakisha Spletzer back in July. Thanks again to Kisha for setting up, recording, and posting this event!

The Publeconomist had this to say about my review of Dr. Loren Olson's book: "Check out the recent review of Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, A Psychiatrist’s Own Story on PsychCentral. Elissa Malcohn wrote a beautiful and detailed review of the book. Definitely one of the better that I’ve read." The blog is written by Anthony DiFiore at inGroup Press, which had also published Finally Out.

Tim Lieder, editor of She Nailed A Stake Through His Head: Tales of Biblical Terror, is calling for submissions to his second Bible-themed anthology, tentatively titled King David & The Spiders from Mars: More Tales of Biblical Terror. He writes that "this will be a Bible-themed horror anthology specifically based on The Book of Samuel. Some of my favorite stories from the first anthology were David centered including Elissa Malcohn's 'Judgement at Naioth' and Christi Krug's 'As If Favorites of Their God.'"

Finally, I want to give a shout-out to The SciFund Challenge, spearheaded by biologists Dr. Jai Ranganathan and Dr. Jarrett Byrnes. As of this writing, 150 scientists (no, wait, that was less than 12 hours ago; it's now 172!) have signed onto this crowdfunding project, which goes into full swing on November 1. The sign-up period closes on October 1.

As Ranganathan wrote back on August 2, "What if scientists were rewarded for communicating with the general public? What if scientists could raise a large portion of their research budget directly from the public, through a crowdfunding campaign?"

A project like #SciFund is much more than a fund-raising exercise. It's a way for scientists to learn and use communications skills that in turn help laypeople like me understand the benefits of what they're doing. A bit like this awesome film, "I'm A Scientist" by Stephen Curry (runs about a half hour).

Also, check out this adorable song by cosmology research fellow Andrew Pontzen about the purported faster-than-light neutrino.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other JourneysPromote Your Page Too Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.), Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite, Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny, Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines, Vol. 5, Deviations: TelZodo, Vol. 6 and conclusion: Deviations: Second Covenant.Free downloads at the Deviations website (click here for alternate link), Smashwords, and Manybooks.

Proud participant, Operation E-Book Drop (provides free e-books to personnel serving overseas. Logo from the imagination and graphic artistry of K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman); Books For Soldiers (ships books and more to deployed military members of the U.S. armed forces); and Shadow Forest Authors (a fellowship of authors and supporters for charity, with a focus on literacy). This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.