"The Futurist" is out in Adbusters!

My emo story "The Futurist" appears in issue 82 of Adbusters magazine! You can buy it at left-leaning or generally politically geeky newsstands all over North America, and you can order it from their web site. (The web-site page for that issue is not yet updated, but I have actually held Issue 82 in my hands, and it does exist.)

I did not enjoy writing this story at all — it was a Clarion story, and I spent each week at Clarion setting myself new challenges: write a story with huge infodumps and make them work; write a story that included issues that were painful for me personally; write a story that was dark and depressing instead of funny (or at least funny to me); etc. This was the dark and depressing story, and I hate both writing and reading dark and depressing stories. Opinion in the Crit Pit was divided, but one or two of my fellow Clarionites were very enthusiastic about its merits (hi, Lyn!), and so I started sending it out. And lo! A sale! For money! In a non-genre magazine!

In other news, many of you may know I'm a complete Grammar Daemon. If I ever happen to make a grammar mistake, my shame reaches abysmal depths. So I'm highly motivated to do it right. One of my most precious tools for this is the ability to diagram sentences, taught to me in seventh and eighth grade by Mrs. Heinz (as she was then known). The nuances of this skill have eroded over time, but the basics are still with me, and still help me understand sentences and write them clearly. So imagine my joy to see this:



Yes. It's the diagram of a piece of an Obama speech. I just stare at it in happy wonder. Here is the explanation, by the diagrammer himself.