I contributed a couple of books to books4barack, Ayelet Waldman's fundraising initiative, wherein you donate money to the Obama campaign and get a bag of randomly-allocated signed books (which could include some rare first editions, etc., though not even the organizer knows what's in which bag). Looks like they've stopped offering the books-for-bucks deal as of yesterday, which is a shame (though I don't blame 'em, that's a lot of mailing!), but you can still donate to the campaign at their site!

This morning I sold "Unexpected Outcomes" to the good people at Interzone, which will be my first appearance in that magazine -- whoo! This is the Simulation story I've mentioned here in the past.

It's also the second story I've sold this year where "Tim Pratt" is a character. The other being "Her Voice in a Bottle", which will appear in Subterranean at some point. (Just watch, they'll appear around the same time, and people will be like, "Pratt is going all meta!" even though they were written more than a year apart. Such are the vagaries of publishing.)

In "Unexpected Outcomes," the "Tim Pratt" isn't even exactly me, but a perfect copy of me who exists in a far-future simulation of Earth... at least, he's a perfect copy until something changes in the simulation, and then our paths diverge a lot. (It features appearances by other Real Life people such as my wife and my friend Dawson! With their permission.) The title comes from the Buckminster Fuller quote, "There is no such thing as a failed experiment, only experiments with unexpected outcomes."

I think metafictional/transreal approaches can be powerful, but this doesn't mark the beginning of my Meta Period or anything. I think it's a technique best used sparingly, for me.