Kaiju, Tuckerization, and tornadoes

[swan_tower]

Strange Horizons is running a prize drawing as a fundraiser for the magazine. Enter for a chance to be Tuckerized in the book I'm writing right now, the sequel to the Memoirs of Lady Trent! Given the nature of this book, the most likely prospect is that you'll wind up being some kind of expert on the Draconean language or other such nerdy topic, but there are a few other possibilities as well.

The Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters II anthology is nearly halfway to goal. If you missed it before, this anthology will feature a short story from me based on the micro-setting I wrote for the Mecha vs. Monsters expansion for the Tiny Frontiers RPG, which took that concept and smashed it full-speed into the idea of high school science competitions. The story is one of the most gonzo things I've ever written, and you can help it become a published reality!

This is a very long article, but very worth reading if you want to get a sense of how terrifying tornadoes can be. I'm lucky that I never experienced one, despite living in Dallas for eighteen years; I did experience huddling in the back hall of our house, waiting to find out if we'd lose that particular game of meteorological Russian roulette.

(Juxtaposing that with the previous item: gonzo as my story is, it doesn't come close to approximating the sheer destructive force of a tornado. But it's also meant to be a moderately funny story, and there's nothing funny about annihilation on that scale.)

Finally, not so much an item as a teaser for something upcoming: stay tuned to this space for some exciting news on February 6th!

Comments

[daidoji_gisei]

I grew up here in Nebraska where tornados are a fact of life. The closest I've gotten to one was the 1975 Omaha tornado, which got about 2 blocks from our house and completely demolished my school.. I was a 4th grader at the time, so it made quite an impression on me. For years after I could walk around the neighborhood and pick out which houses had been destroyed, because their replacements didn't have the same architectural logic as the ones around it.

Only 3 people died in that tornado, largely because of Omaha's (then) shiny-new emergency warning system. I remain agog at the number of communities in the south that still don't have one.

[swan_tower]

Yeah, that appalled me when I read about how many Alabamans ignore the official warnings.

[martianmooncrab]

I loved both Kaiju Rising and Mecha... looking forwards to the next anthology.

[swan_tower]

Woot!

[alessandriana]

I was in one in Denver, though I don't know if I really remember it or if my mom has just told me so many times I've filled in the details (I was 4); it apparently went in a direct line across our neighborhood, lifted up for a brief second and missed both our house and the ones on either side, and then touched back down and continued on. My dad talks about being at work in a high rise in downtown and looking out the window to see it in our area. o.O

There was also a tiny F-1 here a couple years ago when I was coming home from work; I noticed a bunch of branches down on the freeway when I was exiting, turned into a shopping center, went 'huh, why did that car park on the sidewalk right in front of the building? and why is that one upside down? and that building doesn't have a roof... wait a minute.'

[sovay]

This is a very long article, but very worth reading if you want to get a sense of how terrifying tornadoes can be.

My mother and her family survived the Topeka, Kansas tornado(es) of 1966. The house they had just moved into, not so much.