Wincing at Light

Matt over at manybooks.net has added 12 Steps to my portfolio over there.  You can get it here.  As always, I was completely surprised and tremendously honored.

Speaking of feeling honored by the attention, thanks to Matt putting From the Hands of Hostile Gods on the front page over at manybooks.net, I got a couple of interesting mentions on some of the “establishment” genre reporting sites.  Most notably, a reference on Futurismic, Quasar Dragon and on SFSignal’s blog.  Look, this isn’t like earth-shattering acceptance or the adoration of millions, but it does mean that I’ve progressed from the status of “some schmuck putting stuff up on the internet”…which, of course, doesn’t change the fact that I am still just some schmuck putting stuff up on the internet.

And even more bizarre, I’ve now officially topped 3,000 downloads for 2008 of the books I’ve blogged on this site.  Or rather, 3,000 downloads through sites I can track.  There’s likely a few more through sites I can’t, but that’s neither here nor there.

Obviously, this isn’t approaching a Doctorow level of achievement.  It isn’t even a mid-list SF writer level of achievement, but it’s oddly gratifying nonetheless.  I’m just glad there are people out there (presumably) reading and enjoying my work.

On a completely unrelated note:  Since I’m mucking about in the Web 2.0 consciousness and doing the whole normal-people-generated-content thing, I wanted to pass along the latest Web 2.0-style effort from some actual professionals.  If you haven’t seen the notices, you really ought to check out Joss Whedon’s web serial Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, starring Neil Patrick Harris (yes, that Neil Patrick Harris), Nathan Fillion (of Firefly fame) and Felicia Day (who I’ve never heard of, but is brilliant in this).

(Completely aside:  Nathan Fillion is one of my all-time favorite underrated actors.  He was fantastic as Captain Mal Reynolds in Firefly, then cranked the believability and passion of that character to a whole new level in Serenity, and even made Slither a palatable movie with his combination of old-fashioned machismo and wry humor.  His deadpan, completely sincere, completely in-character delivery of the otherwise horrible line “I aim to misbehave” in Serenity remains to this day one my personal cinematic highlights of the last decade.  A line like that should not resonate with truth.  It should not bring out the throat-lumps and goose pimples.  And yet it does.

I will watch any movie Fillion is in, no questions asked.  He always delivers.  Of course, I’ve felt the same way about Michael Biehn ever since Aliens, so your mileage may vary.)

Anyway, Dr. Horrible is a great example of creative folks doing outrageously creative (and hilarious) things with an emerging medium — things that very likely wouldn’t work in traditional formats, and I applaud Whedon and all the actors involved for taking a risk (that pays off so well).

If you get a chance, check it out.