Tuesday, January 03, 2006

2005

This past year saw a number of geek highlights for me:

Spherical Tomi was released as an e-book, and then later as a Podiobook in progress. The reception has been great so far. Thank you all.

My story, "The Unsolvable Deathtrap" was accepted for Interzone #202. This is huge.

Amityville House of Pancakes vol 1 was released in 2004; but the book, along with my "Dirk Moonfire & the Nefarious Space Women" story within its pages, saw a few glowing reviews in 2005. (Barnes & Noble newsletter, SFReader.com)
Incidentally, DM fans, I completed a solid draft of a Dirk Moonfire sequel in late December. It has 3x the laughs and the thrills of the original. More news about that as it develops.

2005 was also the year of Duel of the Fates! Which, I think started off with peopel shrugging and scratching their heads, but soon snowballed into something fairly well-known and pretty special. It helped me to become somewhat known in the podcasting community, helped establish me as a frequent guest of the Dragon Page shows, and was a lot of fun. That's also available as a Podiobook, as you probably know.
2006 is starting right off with Duel of the Fates 2.

I was excited to meet Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta (and therefore also K.J. Anderson, Gabriel Moesta, etc.), Michael A. Stackpole, Bruce "Don't Call Me Ash" Campbell, Evo, Mike, Summer, and Joe of the Dragon Page, Tee Morris, Greg Keyes, Dave Dorman, Tom Sanders of Dark Commandos dot com, TD-0013, Kevin A. Murphy, Ken St. Andre, Mike D'Ambrosio, Paul Tanton, along with some other notable names. I ought to include Stephen Eley in that list, though I've only exchanged pleasant e-mails with him. Speaking of pleasant e-mail exchanges, I shared a few with two of my heroes in 2005: Bruce Sterling and Cory Doctorow. Mind you, I'm not attaching myself to their celebrity here -- or insinuating that we're great friends. I just felt honored to exchange a few e-mails with them. They're classy guys. And -- I was absolutely delighted to see Cory Doctorow use a sample of my review for "Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town" on the book's site and at Ourmedia.org.
Most importantly, of course, I met all of you. You guys rock. This community is widely diverse, harsh and unforgiving at times -- f@#king weird at others -- but overall, a huge, never-ending convention of really great people. You give back so much.

And what about 2006?
Well, I plan to see many more publications, to grow and nurture the followings for Spherical Tomi and Duel of The Fates, to supply the resolution that ST fans seek, and to finish the novel that occupied quite a bit of my 2005 focus. What with the suprisingly good Dirk Moonfire sequel, I may even need to consider that franchise as well.... I also have a wonderful podcasting opportunity coming up in January, which I really, really hope pans out (and once it's a certainty, I'll tell you all about it right here).

And I'll see you guys at the local Phoenix Cons! (Are LepreCon and the Nebula awards on the same weekend in 2006??)

Even if the real world goes to hell in 2006, I'm looking forward to a fun, geeky, successful year in this one.

What/who did I leave out?

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

WOW! You did have a really good year, it sounds like '06 is shaping up to exceed expectations. '05 for me I got to exchange emails with Margret Wies (DragonLance) discover podcasting, bought a 100+ year old house that sits to near the railroad tracks and extreme jealousy of all those people that live in Phoenix...

Hey I had a good year also.
Yea Us!!!
BTW Turn my brother onto DoTF this is a major accomplishment, let me explain, he is not into sci-fi or anything tech (I must have been lucky to recieve all the geek in my family) loves the DoTF thought I'd share since he does have trouble turning on his PC.

1/03/2006 5:19 PM  
Blogger JackMangan said...

Cool JackH -- Congrats on buying your house. I also became a homeowner in March of '05.
And thanks for all you've done to help promote DotF!

Margaret Weis - nice! I knew a couple of people who'd taken their Photon names from characters in the first 6 Dragonlance books. I think every literate teenager in the late 80s read those books.

1/03/2006 8:21 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I had a little trouble getting to your review of Cory Doctorow’s new book on Ourmedia.org, so I thought I post the craphound.com link:

http://www.craphound.com/someone/reviews.php

Can’t wait for the Dirk Moonfire sequel!

1/05/2006 6:02 AM  
Blogger JackMangan said...

Hey thanks, paulm! Where did you used to play Photon?

Thanks for adding the craphound link --
Here's that Ourmedia link:
http://www.ourmedia.org/node/30390

1/05/2006 9:21 AM  

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