raise a little hell

OMG bunnies

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:00:47 GMT

Annyong poses with her poop.

Nom nom nom.

OMG this hay is awesome.

Her Royal Majesty the Queen investigates the new castle grounds.

Annyong and Scrambles the Deathbringer.

Queenie, Annyong & Scrambles.

OMG the cuteness.

Marry, Shag, Kill Meme

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 17:29:26 GMT

I consented to do this meme for amelia_eve.

THE RULES:
1) Comment to this and I will give you 3 people.
2) Post this meme with your answers.
3) Provide pictures and the names of the 3 people I gave you.
4) Label which you would marry, which you would shag, and which you would throw off a cliff.

My challenge: William Blake, Rudyard Kipling, Ted Hughes. I'm just going to pretend they're all somehow still alive because otherwise this gets really disgusting really fast.

William Blake: He was devoted to his wife throughout their life, so I think of this lot he's my best bet to marry. The only signifiant marital problem he might have had was he may or may not have tried to introduce a concubine into his marital bed, which sounds kind of hot, actually. So even though I wouldn't marry any of these guys in real life, he's the least objectionable and maybe he would have written something shockingly irreligious for me.

Rudyard Kipling: He was all about upright virtue and goodness (despite not really getting along with his wife), so I have to think he'd have been a lot of fun to corrupt. And there's a photo of him smoking a pipe (which I can't reproduce here as it isn't public domain in the US yet) which is positively HOT. Shag, definitely.

Ted Hughes: Well, his wife killed herself, and his lover killed their daughter and then herself, so I think even though it's rather cliche to hate on Ted Hughes, just for my own protection I'd better not either marry or shag this guy, just in case. So, the cliff it is.

(Note: top two pictures are public domain and bottom one is Creative Commons.)

OMG bunnies

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 20:53:15 GMT

Alan and I have decided to name our future bunnies: Nom Nom Nom, Annyong & Hermano.

this coruscation in the middle distance

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 00:52:37 GMT

Astropoetica published their Spring 2009 issue yesterday, which includes my poem “Northern Lights.”

I'm also doing NaPoWriMo and blogging about it, it seems, everywhere.

mirrored from joannemerriam.com

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:01:17 GMT

Clockwise Cat has just published three of my poems: "Eligibility for Citizenship," "The Trendelenburg Position" and "We'll Call Them Martyrs." (They're behind in getting things posted, so even though the post is dated February, it just went up today.)

If you're lying on your back with your feet higher than your head, you're in the Trendelenburg position. It's used in some abdominal and gynecological surgeries to give better access to the pelvis. It's also used in waterboarding.

Some of the details of chemical warfare in "We'll Call The Martyrs" were from Jeffrey Goldberg's "The Great Terror."

mirrored from joannemerriam.com

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 18:51:11 GMT

Two of my poems have just come out:

"The Hitch in Yr Getalong." My Poem Rocks.

"Evolution." Mise En Poem.

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 00:49:14 GMT

My Poem Rocks has published my "Hiccups."

Fri, 20 Feb 2009 01:33:23 GMT

As I just mentioned on my blog, Scifaikuest has published my scifaiku "matter and anti-matter."

Yay!

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 23:36:35 GMT

Concelebratory Shoehorn Review has just published five of my poems.

You can replace "love" with "like", if you want.

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:43:05 GMT

1. Tell me one thing you love about me.
2. Tell me two things you love about yourself.
Then...
3. Look through the comments. When you see someone you know, tell them three things you love about them.
4. Do this in your journal and I will tell you what I love about YOU.
(via cornpone)

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 00:45:57 GMT

My Poem Rocks just posted my poem "Crack the Whip Prohibited."

I've been updating my website.

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 02:55:01 GMT

Pretty much daily, actually.

Changes

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 18:29:21 GMT

I'm switching over to Google Reader and RSS feeds and all that supercool 2005 technology, so if I unfriend you today and you're wondering why, it's 'cause I'm porting a lot of my reading over there.

Mon, 12 Jan 2009 00:28:54 GMT

http://www.joannemerriam.com/2009/01/11/coorooktoo-spiralling-into-rafters/

Alba has just published my short poem “Homing Instincts.”

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:44:33 GMT

two new entries at joannemerriam.com

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 23:32:11 GMT

I've done a complete overhaul of joannemerriam.com. You should be able to add it to RSS feeds now. Please let me know if anything doesn't work for you!

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 18:09:21 GMT

This is fun.

My eligible poems for the 2009 Rhyslings

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:59:35 GMT

The 2009 Rhysling Awards are now open to nominations from SFPA members. My eligible poems (all for the short poem category) this year are:

"Werepenguin." Strange Horizons, 10 March 2008.
"Venusian Girls Are Better." Coyote Wild. January 2008 Vol 2 Issue 1.
"The Aviary." Chizine, Issue #35 (January - March 2008).

I'm fond of these poems, and I hope people will check them out who missed them the first time, but honestly I don't think any of them are award-worthy. I would suggest people instead consider these two poems which both really struck me this year:

"Hill and Pail." Mary Alexandra Agner. Strange Horizons.
"Phrenology." Elizabeth Bradfield. Ploughshares.

Some reading for 2009

Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:27:02 GMT

J. D. Salinger, "Blue Melody." Somewhere behind him a girl was very audibly giving away the plot to a Taylor Caldwell novel. The girl’s voice was Southern, but not swampy and not blue-grass and not even particularly drawly. It sounded to Rudford very much like a Tennessee voice. He turned to look.
Larissa Kelly, "Engines of Survival." Travelers like me are heavily taxed, but even so I have grown quite wealthy over the centuries. If I wanted to, I could take an early retirement. I could surround myself with the most ingenious amusements and exquisite luxuries that this time can produce. I could grow old in the company of others growing old at the same rate.
Jonathan Lethem, "Lostronaut." By the finish our uniforms were coated. Mstislav, champion of this episode, reasonably pointed out that any droplet of the pollutant we exported from the Den was destined for circulation and, ultimately, our mucous membranes. Our bloodstreams. So we stripped and trashed the clothes. Picture us, five floating nudists in oxygen masks, ragged with fatigue and degrees of shock, squeezing the last beads of antifreeze from our hair.
Mike Richardson-Bryan, "Elf Union Newsletter: December 2008." Santa Claus has agreed to end most product testing on elf orphans no later than 2020. It may not sound like much, but with 494 years still to go on our current contract we have to take what we can get. And, besides, there are plenty more elf orphans where those came from.

Year-end Round-up

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:26:44 GMT

I recall that I used to do end-of-year stats for my writing, but I think it was on my old journal and not this one, because I can't find them in my history. Which I think means I haven't done this since around 2004. Anyway, here's some stats:

2009: 2 haiku and 15 poems already accepted (one may come out in 2010 since the editor hasn't given me an issue number). No fiction already accepted. This is a bit weird because I've been concentrating on fiction, not poetry. Or maybe not so weird, since I'm much more accomplished as a poet than a fiction writer, at least at this stage.

2008: Published 5 haiku, 9 poems, 1 short story and 1 creative non-fiction piece (a reprint).

2007: Published 10 poems, 1 micro-fiction piece and 3 short stories.

2006: Published 15 poems (9 of them in a single anthology), 1 micro-fiction and 3 short stories.

2005: Published 16 poems, 3 short stories and also a book of poetry.

2004: Published 2 poems, 1 micro-fiction, 1 short story and 1 creative non-fiction piece.

Lifetime: Published or pending: 1 book of poetry, 5 haiku, 108 poems, 12 short stories, 4 micro-fiction, and 2 creative non-fiction. This is not counting self-publishing projects like Look Away or my chapbooks.

Goals for 2009: Work on the Damn Novel and get more short fiction published.

Almost as good as being compared to Boris Pasternak.

Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:20:19 GMT

The Fix (a short fiction review site) says this about my short story "Swan Song" (emphasis mine):

The story is very well written and also engaging, which is impressive because the first third deals with a rather boring look at a rather boring life. This is to be expected, as most day-to-day lives are boring. We wake up, we go to jobs we’d rather not do, we carry on at conversations we’d rather not have. But the strength of Merriam’s writing is that this day-to-day tedium holds as much poetry and resonance and insight as the more tense scenes later in the story, after the epidemic has been revealed.

!!!!!!

Nicknames for Can't Get Right (my roommate's ginormous cat)

Sun, 21 Dec 2008 07:34:02 GMT

CGR
Mr. Right
Tons of Fun
Mr. Whiskers
The Lordly Lion
Catbearpig
Wheezy
Featherbelly
Featherchest
Firebelly
Catbutt

Fatpants
Precious Pants
Swaggerpants
Big Cat
Big Guy
Big Face
Big Pants
Big Poppa
Big Blessing
HMS Bigstuff
Jerk

None of the muppets were good at what they wanted to be.

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 02:13:59 GMT

New post up at Vary the Line about using traditional songs and verses in your poetry. I started thinking about it because "Angels We Have Heard On High," a poem about my niece's reaction to Christmas, was published today.

In other news, it is snowing here in Tennessee. Surely the end times are upon us. It's actually incredibly frustrating driving here when it snows, because (1) there's no infrastructure in place to do anything sensible like plow or salt or sand the roads and (2) everybody freaks out because it's the end of the world and we're all going to die and (3) nobody knows how to drive in it. I'm convinced that I'm in more danger driving in the 2 inches of snowfall we probably got here than I would be in a blizzard in Canada.

Finally, the muppets were a sublime commentary on the human condition.

Thu, 11 Dec 2008 04:00:27 GMT

Chocolate News just did a bit about how Condi Rice needs a good raping.

Keep it classy, Grier.

Update

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 23:47:07 GMT

Wrote a cento for Vary the Line.
Got a very nice rejection saying I came thisclose. Always nice to hear.
Need to send out the two things that got rejected this week.
Still employed.