Matthew Wayne Selznick

I just discovered that the podcast edition of my first book, “Brave Men Run - A Novel of the Sovereign Era,” has been nominated for a Parsec Award in the Best Speculative Fiction Story (Long Form) category!

(insert a googolplex of W00t! here!)

The Parsec Awards will enjoy their first annual presentation at DragonCon, perhaps the largest science fiction and fantasy media convention in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. The convention runs September 1st through 4th, 2006. Winners will be selected by a panel of independent judges, none of whom are part of the “podosphere” of podcast creators and personalities… podcasters are an insular lot, so it’s actually more fair to bring in outsiders. Not sure who the judges will be, or even if they will be publicly known.

The one downside to this is that I don’t know if I’ll be able to attend DragonCon. It’s 2,180 miles away, meaning air travel, plus hotel, food, and so on. I don’t have anything near the funds.

I do have a donation fund set up to allow loving readers to help with this sort of thing — they’ve already made it possible for me to enter “Brave Men Run” in the 14th Annual Writer’s Digest International Self-Published Book Awards, and helped pay for my attendance at WorldCon 64, another science fiction convention in late August. If you’re one of those folks who helped out with that, you have my sincere thanks, and I’m not asking you to donate again.

Of course, if you haven’t donated… well, every little bit helps. Wouldn’t it be cool to know I could be there in the room if they announce the Brave Men Run Podcast as the winner?

Heck, it would even be cool to sit at a table and adopt a gracious and genial concession smile if someone else wins. To celebrate speculative fiction and podcasting with so many of my peers and colleagues — many I’ve never met in person — would be geek heaven.

It really is an honor to be nominated. No joke. I’m tickled pink.

What a good day!

Boing Boing once again fills us in on another mind-shaker… according to the site Talk To Action, Left Behind Games Inc. will be releasing a video game later this year — a first-person shooter real-time strategy game like Quake or Splinter Cell Warcraft or Command & Conquer — in which the player takes the role of a Christian paramilitary soldier. Your goal? Convert the citizens of New York City to Christ… or terminate with extreme prejudice. In the game, you are encouraged to convert or kill Jews, Muslims, Catholics, gays, and anyone opposed to your goal of an American theocracy.

Seriously, WTF???

Check out the article at Talk To Action for all the details — it’s a lengthy but informative and chilling read — but here’s the gist: the game, which advocates and depicts graphic, explicit violence against anyone who hasn’t accepted Christ as their personal savior, has strong connections to Rick Warren’s Purpose Driven Church.

Warren’s organization has made no secret of its intention to create an army of a billion Christian foot-soldiers to literally re-make the world before the oft-delayed second coming. He’s even got the president of Rwanda on board with full cooperation to start there. What better way to get the kids used to killing infidels than by marketing a video game directly to congregations?

The international director of Warren’s church, Mark Carver, sits on the advisory board of Left Behind Games. Tyndale House , which publishes the insanely popular series of Left Behind books, granted the company a license to use the intellectual property of the series to market and design the game — so they approve of using bullets to baptize, as well. So does the mastermind of the Left Behind series of books, Tim LaHaye, who told the LA Times, “We hope kids like the game. Our real goal is to have no one left behind.”

And even if you aren’t translated in the rapture, don’t worry — Warren’s army of video game-trained foot-soldiers will blow you away before the Apocalypse.

This really serves as a reminder: Islam isn’t the only child of Abraham to spawn fundamentalist jihadists. Some come from Lake Forest, California.

Another day, another item on the list of “Why I Am Not A Christian!”

Dear readers, if you’ve hung around here any length of time, or if you know me at all, you’ve heard my tirade(s) against the iTunes Music Store, Audible, and any establishment that uses / endorses / promotes digital rights management. You also know I’m fiercely dedicated to what I call the DIY ethic.

I’ve finally found an online music store that is compatible with my particular brand of fanaticism. With any luck, I won’t have to eat my words at some point in the future… but today, at least, I can say with great confidence that eMusic is the shnizzle.

Dig it:

• They utilize a subscription model, creating something very much like the content-as-utility concept put forward by Dave Kusek and Gerd Leonhard, where you pay a monthly fee to download content.
• The music you buy is in MP3 format — the worldwide, universal standard… and NO digital rights management! That’s right, kiddos… you actually own the content you download from eMusic! It’s yours, to do with as you please. Burn it on a CD… or fifty! Put in on your portable music device. Put it on a dozen portable music devices, or fifty, or a million! Share it! You paid for it, it’s yours.
• They’ve been around since 1998. They’re not going away.
• They are focused on independent artists and labels, over a million tracks. Awesome. It’s like we were made to be together.

They’ve even got a free trial — fourteen days and twenty five songs is the basic set-up, and if you stay with them, it’s $9.99 a month for forty downloads. That’s right… $0.25 per song!

If you don’t want to continue after the free trial (you know, if you’re, like, out of your farking mind, and stuff) then you cancel, and that’s that. You get to keep the twenty five downloads you got for free.

I believe in this company. I’m a subscriber, and y’all know I have no discretionary income to blow. Still, I try to support good works, and that’s what this is. I’m also an affiliate, so if you decide to try eMusic (even if you don’t stick with ‘em) I’ll get a little something. It’s love and happiness all around, just like Al Green used to sing.

Check it out!

I drove down to my mother’s today to help her with some computer stuff and some errands. It’s a hundred mile trip, so I stopped about three quarters of the way in San Clemente.

I lived in this little coastal community — the southernmost town of Orange County, California — for a non-consecutive total of perhaps five years in the late eighties and very early nineties. I had a few tumultuous relationships, started or played in a few bands, and generally had my early twenties there. A novel or two, some short stories, maybe a play or screenplay… any or all could come from the material and life experience from those days. It’s on the list.

Enough time has passed that I can visit San Clemente without feeling any strong emotion about my time there… time really does heal all wounds, or wounds all heels, or something like that. In any event, in the late Spring, it’s really nice there. The ocean air permeates everything with moisture and energy; it’s warm with a nice cool breeze… very peaceful. There’s life in the atmosphere, which is something I just don’t feel in the dry air of my current desert mountain digs.

I browsed through a used bookstore (don’t have one of those in my town, either, somehow) and picked up a hardcover of “Death Is A Lonely Business” and old mass market editions of “Stand on Zanzibar,” an old Phillip Jose Farmer Tarzan pastiche, and a Hugo Awards anthology edited by Asimov. I took the Bradbury book into the Sunrise Cafe, where I had a late breakfast and listened to one of the waitresses discuss tattoos, entrepreneurial ambitions, and parenting with a couple of young guys.

Twenty years ago, I ate countless breakfasts at that place. The food, atmosphere, and clientele are utterly unchanged. I found comfort in that.

I took Del Mar Boulevard down to the pier, and took that road along its winding path south to the last freeway on ramp. It occurred to me that if I had a crapload of money, I’d rent a beach hotel room with a kitchenette for the month of May and write my San Clemente novel. (You can help with that here if you really want to.)

I like my memories, even though they challenge me and sometimes shame me. I like the fact that I’m at the point where I can benefit from their lessons at last. San Clemente holds a whole hell of a lot of lessons for me. Spending an hour or so down there was very grounding, very comforting, very energizing.

I’ve lived in San Clemente, Costa Mesa, Long Beach, Huntington Beach, San Pedro… In San Clemente and Long Beach, I lived in places where the Pacific Ocean was a short walk from my front yard. In those other places, it was a five minute drive.

What the heck am I doing in this desert town, where the ocean and its life force is a hundred miles away?

Oh yeah… the property values.

I need to make an effort to drive down there more often… recharge. It’s good for me to see a horizon that’s infinite.

My friend is having another birthday. This year, she’s on the cusp of crisis… or it could be resolution. Time will tell.

We communicate largely by dropping breadcrumbs in each other’s line of sight (most call them blog posts and comments) but her presence in my life is as comforting and stable as the mountains around my home.

Happy birthday, Cyd. Get everything you want, or at the very least, everything you need. And if it comes down to it… the people who love you will be there with a crowbar and a net.