Welcome to Super-Short Storytime, lovers of literature and fans of fiction! I am Eduardo Soliz, the composer and narrator of the wonderfully weird words that you are about to hear:
Some people like to enjoy things that the majority of folks just don’t understand. This selection from my free e-book ‘ten tiny tales’ is an oration about one unfortunately ostracized oddball. I call it: “Freako.”
Alan walked into the office with a spring in his step and a big smile on his face. It was Friday, it was payday, and he would only be hanging around the office long enough to submit his time report for the week. He couldn’t wait to start his long weekend.
As he briskly walked through the office, a woman recognized him, “Hey, Al, I thought you weren’t coming in today, did something change?”
Alan stopped to chat, beaming as he answered: “Nope, I’m just here to put in my timesheet and then the fun begins!”
“Oh, that’s right.” The woman replied with a look of scorn on her face. “You’re going to that thing to hang out with all those freakos, huh?”
“Well, I wouldn’t call them weirdos, Janet, I mean, lots of people are going to be there, and…” Alan started to explain before Janet raised her hand to interrupt him.
“That’s okay Al, I don’t need to hear about what you all do there, dressed up in those weird outfits and all.” Janet quickly said.
“hhm…okay. Sorry, Janet.” Alan sheepishly said before continuing on his way. Arriving at his cubicle, he sat down and turned on his computer. While he waited for it to start, another coworker peeked his head in.
“What’s up, Al!” asked Jon as Alan turned to face him.
“Not much, Jon, I forgot to put in my time, and I want to get paid next week, so here I am.” Alan answered. “Hey, do you wanna join me at…”
“No way, man!” Jon exclaimed, his face grimacing at the thought. “I wouldn’t be caught dead at that sausage-fest! You have fun, though!” Jon said before ducking out of the cubicle.
Alan entered his time and then shut down the computer. Dejected, he sighed, and began to walk away from his desk to start his weekend. The smile on his face and the spring in his step were now gone.
“*sigh* Everybody makes fun of me just because I like something different.” Alan thought to himself as he left the building and slowly walked to his car. “I wish my coworkers would stop giving me crap for being a football fan!!”
THE END.
It’s never easy being the odd man out, Listeners, so try to be nice. If you’d like to hear or read more super-short stories scribed and said by yours truly, visit eduardosoliz.com This has been Super-Short Story time. Remember, listeners, we’re all weirdos to somebody!
Of course, there’s also boring old “Earth Prime,” which is our reality, such as it is. Most of my science-fiction would likely go here, since I try to make those stories at least somewhat plausible.
Thus, in the world of Gooplezonsoft: Santa Claus is real. He also doesn’t live at the North Pole, either, though you’ll have to read The X-Mas File to find out where he’s hiding. 😉
I’m not completely sure what to call that world, though. “Earth-S,” for Santa, perhaps? Either way, it’s a fun place to be and I already have an idea in mind for next year’s Christmas story, after I post a more upbeat one to make up for “Confession,” tomorrow.
As the writer in this story is about to learn, just because someone else has a different job than you do doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s easier. Featured in Fuzzy Words, this furry fracas is titled “Where Credit Is Due.”
The weasel’s tail swished back and forth rapidly as he paced back and forth in his living room with a cell phone held up to one ear. “The script is done, Mark, but I can’t seem to get the songs down, and well, you can’t have a musical without music, right?” He joked in a feeble attempt to appease the angry producer he was speaking with.
Mark was not pleased at William’s attempt at humor, and he let the nervous weasel know: “This is not the time for jokes, Will! I am going to be out several thousand dollars for your advance, not to mention a lot more if you don’t give me a script to put on! It’s been nine months! What’s going on in that head of yours? Are you homesick? Girl trouble? Guy trouble?”
William hesitated before answering. “Do you really want to know, Mark?”
Mark regained some of his composure and eagerly replied, “Well. Yeah, Will. This delay isn’t doing either one of us any good, so…so let’s talk it through and figure this thing out for both our sakes. What’s eating you, man?”
William let out a heavy sigh before answering: “Well, it’s that, uh, I haven’t seen my Muse lately, and, well, I’m pretty useless without her.”
This time, a flabbergasted Mark hesitated briefly before speaking. “Whoa. I did not just hear that. Did you say your Muse?” he asked with a nervous laugh.
“Yeah. My Muse…”
“WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN SMOKING, WILL? That has to be THE nuttiest thing I’ve heard in all my years working on Barkway! Have you lost your mind? You know what? Don’t answer that, ‘cause I think I already know. I need a finished script by the end of next week, or you are finished working in this town, do you understand me? FINISHED. Nobody will touch you with a twenty-foot leash after I’m done. Get some help and get it done, Will!”
Even the beep that William heard as Mark ended the call sounded angry. William collapsed onto his living room sofa, closed his eyes and let out a heavy sigh. My career is over, William thought as he dropped his cell phone onto the carpeted floor and contemplated the dreary future ahead of him.
After a few moments, he opened his eyes to find her there. His Muse. She was a short, sprightly thing: a mink almost completely covered in brown fur except for her muzzle, which was white. She stood over him and looked down at William with a big goofy grin on her face. William stared back for a few moments before the Muse finally broke the silence.
“Hi-eee!” she cheerfully said as she waved a hand in front of William’s face. In response, he groaned and rubbed his eyes before sitting up on the sofa. This was not the reaction that the Muse was expecting, and she began to pout: “Hey, I thought that you’d be happy to see me, Willie!”
“It’s William, and just where have you been?” an agitated William answered. “I need to finish this play because I’ve got a producer breathing down my neck, and if I don’t get it done, he’s going to want his advance back. You know, the one I already used to pay my rent.”
The shocked Muse took a step back. She opened her mouth to speak, but William cut her off:
“What is it with you, anyway? You’re never there when I need you. You pop up at the worst possible times, or at the last minute, like now. You can’t show up whenever I’m sitting at my laptop, you know, WHEN I’M TRYING TO WRITE. No, that makes too much sense. Instead, you pop up whenever you feel like it, like when I’m in the shower, or when I can’t sleep at two in the morning, or when I’m out on a date. I then have to drop whatever it is I’m doing so I can jot something down because I have NO DOGGONE IDEA when you’re going to decide to grace me with your presence again!”
For a moment the Muse looked as if she were about to burst into tears. Instead, she regained her composure, took a deep breath, stepped towards William, and unleashed a tirade of her own:
“Oh, so you think it’s so easy to do MY job? You think you’re the ONLY so-called ‘creative’ person that needs a little extra help every now and then? Well, let me tell you, Buddy, you AREN’T. Every day, I have to help loads of people just like you finish their books or their poems or their scripts or their songs or their paintings or their sculptures. Every. Single. Day. It never ends: ‘I’m on a deadline!’ ‘My assignment is due next week!’ “My mom’s birthday is tomorrow!’ ‘Help me!’
So I show up, inspire somebody, and what I get for my trouble? Nothing! Nada, zero, zip, zilch. When people say: ‘Oh, what a wonderful work of art,’ does the artist ever mention me? No. Do you ever hear somebody say, ‘Thank you, Muse,’ in an acceptance speech? NO! I-I don’t even get residuals!”
A bewildered William interrupted her. “But you’re a Muse…what would you even do with money?” He asked.
“SHUT UP!” she snapped back. “It’s the principle!” she said, turning away from William.
William started to approach the Muse, but since her long fluffy tail was in the way, he walked around to face her.
“So you’re just looking for some recognition, huh?” William asked.
“Just a little would be nice.” The Muse said coyly.
William thought for a moment, and then his face lit up. He enthusiastically asked the Muse, “What if, I were to write a play with you in it?”
The Muse pointed a finger at herself before speaking. “With little old me?” she said with feigned modesty.
“Sure. It will be…” William took a step back, assumed a dramatic pose and spoke as if he were narrating a movie trailer: “The inspirational tale of a guy who’s down on his luck. He can’t get a break, and just when he’s hit rock bottom and things can’t get any worse…” he stopped to point at the Muse with both hands, “His Muse appears out of the blue and saves his tail!”
“Yay!” chirped the Muse in a delighted tone, clapping her hands as she excitedly hopped up and down on both feet. “I’d like that, Willie. I really would. Have you thought of a name for it yet?”
William stifled a laugh before answering: “What else could I call it? Un-a-mused!”
With a smile and a wink, the Muse replied, “Yeah, I think I’ll let you take the credit for that one, Willie!”
THE END.
Inspiration is where you find it, Dear Listeners, that is, assuming it doesn’t find you first. For more super-short, super-silly stories, visit Eduardo Soliz dot com. This has been Super-Short Storytime, and remember, listeners; always cite your sources!
You are listening to ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 91: A few words after Furry Invasion 2018, so let the 300 Seconds begin!
Furry Invasion took place at the El Tropicano Riverwalk hotel in San Antonio last weekend, October 5-7. I did my best to pack in as much fun as I could in between shifts at work: I hung out for a little while on early Friday to pick up my badge and I made it out on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Overall, Furry Invasion was a marked improvement over last year, but once again, there are a number of little nitpicks that affected me personally that I’m going to bring up. Spoiler alert: They still have panel issues.
I arrived at registration at about ten o’clock on Friday morning and it went pretty quickly; there was really nobody in line. They scanned my e-mail, checked my ID and I got my stuff…awesome! I didn’t hear any squawking about registration this year, though there were a few complaints about finding registration, it was kind of in a weird spot, but that was expected. Two quick nitpicks about registration, however. Number one: Stickers are supposed to go on the BADGE ITSELF, not on the badge holder. Second, and this is more for the people running the show; if you have a guy that’s hacking and coughing his guts out, maybe he shouldn’t be in a position to be handing out credit cards, IDs and badges TO MOST OF THE PEOPLE IN THE CONVENTION. Yeah, the guy that checked me out let out a nice fit of coughing after he gave me my stuff, which made me very glad that I carry hand sanitizer with me.
One big complaint I heard about throughout the weekend was parking: Last year there was a parking lot across the street, however this year new hotel is being built in that space, so that significantly reduced the number of available parking spots. As for me, I was able to easily find meter parking on Baltimore street near the hotel on each day of the convention. My biggest trouble was having enough quarters 😉 Now this is an issue with the venue itself, another venue issue that came up was the elevators breaking down.
And now I’m going to talk about panels for a little bit because there are a number of issues going on here. It was a pretty good plan on paper: The panel schedule itself was done ahead of time, which is good, and the leadership decided to put the panel [schedule] online, and that’s also good. There was also a screen set up with the panel schedules rotating and a QR code that you could scan to pull up the schedule on your phone. This is also good. Unfortunately the plan kinda fell apart in the execution.
To begin with, putting the schedule on the website isn’t a bad idea, but the Furry Invasion website is not optimized for phones. That’s being polite, because it’s pretty awful on phones. Here’s the thing, guys, it’s cool that y’all have an online digital schedule that you can update on the fly, but there is nothing wrong with paper. Once your schedule is as final as it’s going to be, print out a bunch of copies. Hang a copy of each room’s schedule outside the door. Also, make a PDF copy and have that be downloadable from your website.
So I had a weird exchange with my friend Mordecai on Saturday; he thought my Furry 101 panel was at 6PM. I told him it was at 5 and he said the conbook said 6. This really confused me because Furry 101 wasn’t even mentioned in the conbook. Turns out that Mordecai was given a copy of LAST year’s conbook. Don’t that that guys. Just don’t. Recycle them. I was also given a less than ideal time and the crappiest room in the convention, but you know, what are you going to do? Based on all that, I’m probably going to skip presenting next year. On the plus side, they did have a projector set up.
Speaking of scheduling, for whatever reason the fursuit parade started before its scheduled time. I was on my way to get a soda from the machine in the lobby when all of a sudden I saw furries marching towards me. It was all I could do to scramble to find a spot and remember how to work my camera, which is what happens when you have a job that wakes you up at five in the morning.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I’m nitpicking a lot. When I have to nitpick like this, it’s because most of the convention was good. I had a good time, and I’ve been hearing lots of good things both online and off about Furry Invasion 2018. Overall, I think things will continue to get better as the staff builds from their experience, and I’ll definitely be back next year.
Furry Invasion 2018 was a good con overall. Except for issues related to the venue and my own personal panel issues, which admittedly, are my own, there were no major issues present on the part of the con itself. I had an enjoyable time, when I was able to get out there, I will certainly be back next year, hopefully for the whole thing. The theme for next year’s Furry Invasion is going to be ‘Cyberpunk’ and it appears to be taking place on the weekend of October 4, 2019, and I look forward to seeing you there…or perhaps I should say ‘furward!’
This has been 300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz, the next episode will be posted after I recover from the long weekend of work and fun. I am Eduardo Soliz, please subscribe to this podcast and check out my website at Eduardo Soliz dot com for more podcasts and short stories. Thank you for listening!
You are listening to ‘300 Seconds with Eduardo Soliz,’ and this is episode number 90: A few words before Furry Invasion: The Road to Furdition, so let the 300 Seconds begin!
Furry Invasion will be happening at the El Tropicano Riverwalk hotel in San Antonio this weekend, October 5-7 with badge pickup happening tomorrow night. Because life has been getting in the way of my fun lately, I will only be at Furry Invasion Saturday and Sunday afternoon. I’ll be presenting my Furry 101 panel on Saturday afternoon at 5PM in the Bolivar C room. If you or someone you know would like to know more about the fandom, then come on down.
This is the second year for Furry Invasion; last year’s show was a solid first effort that had a few hiccups here and there, including a few that affected me personally, so just a heads up, this is going to get just a little bitey.
The biggest issues that I had last year were the slow registration line and the panel schedule being disorganized. The problem with registration last year was that attendees were required to print their registration sheets at the convention which slowed down the process considerably. At other conventions, attendees are allowed to print out their preregistrations beforehand, allowing them to be processed much more quickly. I’m happy to report that I was allowed to print out my registration paperwork after paying, so that should make things more efficient. While that problem appears to have been solved, a new one has been introduced by the convention’s choice to put registration in the hotel’s ballroom, which is in the back of the hotel and on the third floor. This is going to make signage VERY important and staff should also be aware of how to get to registration so they can direct people there.
My second beef last year was with the panel scheduling; the schedule that was printed in the conbook ended up being different than the actual schedule, due to some changes being made after the original schedule was made. This led to some confusion among attendees and presenters, including myself. Fortunately, the Powers That Be decided to make the schedule digital this year, which means that last minute-changes can be made without fear of ending up with an outdated print schedule, so good on them. What I’m hoping happens is that they print out each panel room’s schedule and post it outside so folks can see what is happening.
While Furry Invasion has made efforts to fix their registration and panel scheduling issues from last year, one thing that was sadly not addressed, was the weather. Now, you may be asking yourself: What can the convention do about the weather? Well, they can try to push the con ahead a week or two in the hopes that the weather cools down. Cooler weather makes it easier for fursuiters to go outside and have fun, puts less strain on the venue’s air conditioning and is just nicer. Should there be a third go-round, Furry Invasion really needs to look at pushing their date forward a week or two.
I openly admit that yes, I am harping on the convention a bit, but that’s mainly because the first two issues I mentioned were really touchy issues for me personally. As I mentioned at the top, the first Furry Invasion went well; if the registration and panel problems weren’t there it likely would have been a great show instead of a good one. Year two should be better since steps have been taken to address most of the issues from last year and the staff will have a year of experience under their belt to build on.
This has been 300 Seconds, the next episode will be posted after the convention. I am Eduardo Soliz, if you’d like to hear more 300 seconds subscribe to this podcast or check out my website at Eduardo Soliz dot com for more podcasts and short stories. Thank you for listening!
San Japan is probably my favorite convention, bar none, and this year was great! As always, I noticed a few things…
BEFORE – I’m guessing “Magical Universe” means there will be a lot more Sailor Moon crossplayers.
#17 Yay?
They’re going to have to try pretty hard to top Okashicon for: “Con with the most pinks and pastels” prize.
Between this and Furry Fiesta 2019’s ‘Roll Fur Initiative” theme, I’m not feeling a lot of love.
As a nerd who’s old enough to have owned an Atari 2600, I’m not exactly the target audience, so yeah.
I’m getting a new fursuit and this will be my first time wearing it. It’s just the thing for MID-90 DEGREE WEATHER.
In addition to the usual con prep, I’m also looking for a new job and getting my house ready to be put on sale the Tuesday after. No rest for the weary! >.<
Staying at the nearby Tru by Hilton, which apparently is a more modern hotel, which means it annoys me somewhat.
Thing I forgot (again): Aftershave.
Chili’s seems to have become our San Japan Thursday dinner go-to.
Looks like my fursuit won’t be ready for the show. Given the temperature outside and my lack of experience, it’s likely just as well.
Had a funny moment with a friend when I had to remind him that he wasn’t working on Labor Day the following Monday.
Dave: “You can have ambience or you can have a butt-load of arcade games.” I’m glad he went with Door #2.
Maybe they should change the name to ‘Sign Japan.’
I find the lack of security on Thursday nights to be just a little concerning.
FRIDAY – Nothing like waking up early to go feed the meter; a small price to pay for cheap parking!
I was happy with my badge art until I saw the volunteer badges have the same art and now I’m less happy.
#14 The signage was YUUGE!
Yay escalators!
Yay, I forgot about the escalators and took the scenic route down to Artist Alley!
Furst World Problems: I quit wearing my ears because the hairband kept digging into my head.
I got a haircut the other day so there is less hair to cushion it now.
The uneven lanes the Artist Alley are just a little weird.
No panels to run on Friday: HOW DO I HAVE FUN?
Retro Game Museum might be better off being called “Pong Museum.”
Might need to put together a video game history panel, made better because I WAS THERE FOR MOST OF IT.
The arcade was cool, though the sound on the music games wasn’t always loud enough.
You know the competition between the three(!) Chinese joints at Rivercenter Mall is crazy when someone tries to hand you a sample WHILE YOU’RE IN LINE FOR THE PLACE NEXT DOOR.
SATURDAY – I didn’t have enough change to feed the meter for the whole day, so I decided to live dangerously.
Old hotness: Annoying music over Bluetooth speaker. New hotness: Watching anime subs on your phone with the volume turned up
Sign of the times: Sriracha at the breakfast buffet
It has always been my goal to create a paper book. The problem with doing so is that my short stories are so short that I had to accumulate a pretty good number of them (27 in all) in order to have a book of reasonable length printed.
Naturally, I encountered a bit of a learning curve in publishing something physical. In the digital world, there is no concern about margins and fonts and all of that stuff, because the screen that your book is going to be read on may be of any size and the reader can adjust the text font and text size to their liking. In the print world, you have bleeds and gutters and covers and inches and all sorts of things that need to be done the right way.
Things have certainly changed for the better: Way back when, if you wanted to print a paper book on your own, you had to go through a vanity publisher, which meant paying to have a few hundred (or thousand!) copies printed. This meant that you took a big risk of being stuck with boxes of books that nobody wanted to buy. Thanks to modern print-on-demand technology, paperbacks can be printed as they’re ordered, so just like in the e-book world, your cost of entry is nearly zero, save for the purchase of proof copies.
I gave both CreateSpace and NookPress a try, and ended up going with CreateSpace because of their expanded distribution options. Also their books seemed to be of higher quality and they offered a better discount to authors purchasing their own copies.
A funny thing happened as I showed friends my print proofs; I repeatedly got this ‘so you’re a real writer now’ vibe (and a comment or two) from them. Never mind that I’ve published quite a few digital ones. Oh well, what can you do?
In any event, now that I’ve finished my first one, I can’t wait to do another!
NOTE: While looking through my drafts, I found this list. I have no idea why I didn’t post it back then. Better late than never, I guess!
San Antonio’s first furry convention, Alamo City Furry Invasion, took place this past weekend. Many locals (including myself) were excited to have a furry convention in our hometown and I noticed a few things during the furry fun:
MINE!
BEFORE-Sorry guys, but ‘Alamo City Furry Invasion’ as a name is too long, I’ve just been calling it ‘Furry Invasion.’
RealmsCon also happened over the same weekend, so I have another reason to not go there.
Thing we forgot to mention on the pre-game podcast: Parking around the con itself is going to be ‘fun’ especially for those of us not getting a hotel room.
There was some confusion about the availability of a projector. We were told to reserve the one projector they had, which was odd considering I checked a box that said ‘I need a projector’ when submitting my panel.
I made arrangements to have one just in case.
Day before the con and we don’t have an online map
There have been a few complaints beforehand about the potential parking costs, oh well.
Took a walk around the hotel Thursday afternoon and it was plenty warm, which doesn’t bode well for our fursuiters.
Surprised they aren’t doing a ‘print out your email’ thing for pre-registrations, hope that doesn’t slow down registration.
FRIDAY-Pleasant surprise: Free parking for hotel guests while it was available. I fed the meter.
I had to make jokes about “Don’t let your meter expire or Judy Hopps will pay you a visit!”
I see the hotel and Barry Manilow’s ‘Copacabana’ pops in my head.
As always, the guy with the Bluetooth speaker has to have crappy taste in music. I swear it’s a physical law at this point.
Got into the reg line at 3:38 and waited for 45 minutes, pbbt
The ‘WE’RE SORRY’ guy in the reg line finally got on my nerves and I had to open a can of manager on him.
Fire alarm lights go off at 541 on Friday, oh boy.
Little Kid: “Pokémon!” Dad: “I don’t think those are Pokémon…”
Just a little sadface over not getting a personalized dog tag…does that make me weird?
The comic book was a lame substitute, and it’s not good to see staff members with tags
No furry Westerns for movie night? Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron? An American Tail: Fivel Goes West?
If I’d have realized there were going to be so many people there on Friday, I would have shaved!
SATURDAY-Up bright and early so I can shave (see above) and get a parking spot (see #3)
There were plenty of parking spots with meters around the hotel and even some $1-$2 parking a block away.
You still have to feed the meter on Saturday? LAME
Downloadable PDF format for the schedule would have been nice
Oh wait, the online schedule is different than the printed one, uh-oh.
That is, assuming you can read it, looks like they used they used 4-point font.
Nice job of giving credit where credit is due at opening ceremonies
For fuzzing sake, can we keep fetish gear out of furcons already?
Wheee!
Stop popping your heads and breaking the magic, people!
They definitely dropped the ball on the schedule. What is most surprising to me is either the staff didn’t notice or they chose to not do anything about it. No bueno.
How to handle major screw-ups: 1-Apologize. 2-Take no more than two sentences to say what went wrong. 3-Tell us how YOU ARE GOING TO FIX IT.
I mention the previous item because I heard the same ‘printer guy screwed up the schedule’ story way too many fuzzing times. WE DON’T CARE WHAT WENT WRONG JUST FIX IT.
Regardless, I got by with a little (okay, a lot) of help from my friends for Furry 101.
A bunch of quiet people attended Furry 101, there were no questions for me at the end!
Some parents were there too, and were very complimentary after the fact.
OMG all the Amber Alerts
Seems I forgot to turn off the Amber Alerts on my new phone, too. DERP
Guillermo’s Italian restaurant near the hotel was delicious.
Had to do karaoke to finally get Copacabana out of my head.
Forgot about the 20-bar instrumental break in the middle, should have found a dance partner.
Going to be hard to not wear my Dallas Cowboys jersey on Sunday. GET IT? COWBOYS? 😀
I wasn’t even aware of the food trucks, need to work on communication, there. Maybe a bulletin board?
Bedbugs, tire slashing and threats? It’s a party now.
I won’t lie, my eyes got a little misty when one guy did ‘Free Fallin’ during karaoke. God Bless Tom Petty.
SUNDAY-To the person who glomped another fursuiter: YOU SUCK
Apparently fursuiters weren’t happy with the fursuit lounge closing at night. Even by my cranky middle-aged standards, 10 o’clock is WAY too early.
Another furry watching football? SAY IT AIN’T SO!
If you’re still telling Tony Romo jokes now, stop talking about football. Just. Stop.
Had my panel cancelled on Sunday because I was feeling way
48. Unpossible!
too hungry that afternoon…and they scheduled it opposite closing ceremonies.
737 attendees, wow!
IMO attendance would have been higher but for RealmsCon being the same weekend in Corpus Christi and some folks in Houston are likely still recovering from the hurricane.
I should probably get a room next year so I’m not dragging my tail home in the middle of the night.
Overall, it was good but y’all really need to fix that scheduling, guys!
I am not a visual person by any stretch of the imagination.
When I was in college studying computer science back in the 90’s, people would occasionally ask me if I could make websites for them. The conversation would go something like this:
Person: “Can you make a website for me?”
Me: “Yeah, I can code one, but it’s going to look like a computer guy made it.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s going to look terrible.”
So yeah, I didn’t make any websites.
Given that I’m self-aware of my lack of design sense, I don’t know what possessed me to make my own book covers when I started self-publishing short story collections. It comes even more perplexing considering that I knew artists that could do quality artwork. Ego may have had something to do with it; the notion of doing everything on my own. Maybe I didn’t want to pay for art at the time. Whatever the reason, I figured some text on a solid color background would be good enough. I did three covers like that, and it honestly only worked for The Rules of Tech Support.
A picture! Yay!
I like to think I made the most of my limited skills with my Nine to Five Lives ‘clock face,’ but that may have been too clever for its own good considering its low sales (it’s free now!).
At that point I figured it was time to get some actual artwork done. My friend Damon Cone provided some artwork for Con Fluff 1, which I used to make a faux ‘con badge.’ I thought about making similar ones as promotional items for the book. That never happened, but it remains an interesting idea for future use. The character on the cover is me, which seems a little conceited, but at the same time, why the heck not?
SO PRETTY
I commissioned an artist friend who goes by Padunk for Con Fluff 2 and she knocked it out of the park. She was also kind enough to put the title text on the artwork, which made it look really nice. Future volumes have also featured artwork, and with the exception of The Rules of Tech Support, most of my collections featuring my early awful covers have been put off-sale, though you can still see them here.
While I have been happy with all of the artwork (Faeries, Fantasies, and Furries is another favorite) there are a few that need a do-over: As the first book in the series, I don’t want to pull Seven Super-Short Sci-Fi Stories, but it does need a facelift. Funny Animals, Funny People kind-of works, but I have a better concept in mind I’d like to see for it. I took the easy way out with Fuzzy Words by plastering a picture into the middle of a (wait for it) solid colored background.
I’ve since commissioned new cover art for the printed version of Fuzzy Words from an artist named TinyBunner. After spending the day arguing with CreateSpace I think everything is ready to go for printed copies. I’m very excited at the prospect of having an actual printed book, but that’s a post for another day.
Halloween has been a non-holiday for me ever since I took my last trick-or-treating sojourn as a kid many years ago. I didn’t have many friends in my teen and college years to be invited to parties or to engage in trickery. Upon moving out, I discovered that exactly zero kids come seeking treats at your door when you live in an apartment. Except for handing out candy at my parent’s house a few random times, the only thing Halloween meant to me was that Mary Jane peanut butter kisses were available. Hey, at least it’s not candy corn.
When I purchased a house a few years ago, I figured that I was going to spend my future Halloween nights handing out candy to excited trick-or-treaters. As fate would have it, that never happened.
At least, it never happened at my house.
You see, I had joined the furry community a year before buying the house and as a result, made some new friends. One friend that lived nearby also owned a home, and he had spent the previous Halloween handing out candy while wearing his fursuit. (“Fursuit” is the term for the animal costumes that some furries wear) When the next Halloween rolled around, he invited a few friends and myself to come over and hand out candy.
I don’t own a fursuit myself. They can run in the few thousands of dollars so I like to joke that I have a mortgage and a car payment instead. My lack of costume made me the ‘handler,’ a person that helps out fursuiters by making sure they don’t trip over things or bump into kids. Since fursuit heads severely limit vision, a handler’s job is essentially to keep fursuiters from accidentally hurting themselves or others. In addition, my job was to take pictures and occasionally run into the house for more candy and bottled water to keep our three fursuiters hydrated.
The fursuits were a smash! After the trick-or-treaters got candy from each one of them, their parents often wanted to take pictures of their costumed children (and sometimes themselves) with the fuzzy people. It wasn’t unusual to have a large group of people congregated in front of the house: Trick-or-treaters collecting candy, parents taking pictures, fursuiters being silly and everybody having a great time together. We stayed outside until our supply of candy was gone. Despite being pretty bushed from all the running around I had done that evening, it was easily the most fun Halloween night I’d had in years.
We gave it all away, too!
The tradition continued with seven fursuiters showing up the next year and more and more joining the fun with each successive Halloween. Lucky for me, more handlers showed up, too! One guy even bought an ice chest that we filled up with candy before getting to work. There were a grand total of fourteen fursuiters last year, making the house a veritable bonanza for the trick-or-treaters in terms of the amount of candy and fun to be had.
I have yet to spend a single Halloween night at my own house. Instead, I have furries to wrangle, candy bowls to refill, pictures to take, and memories to make!
problem with doing so is that my short stories are so short that I had to accumulate a pretty good number of them (27 in all) in order to have a book of reasonable length printed.
Eduardo Soliz 