It pleases me no end to say that LoneStarCon3, the host of the seventy-first World Science Fiction Convention, has decided to conspire with me in a Pulp-O-Mizer cover competition. Anybody who has registered for the 2013 Worldcon in San Antonio, Texas can enter.

There’s a special "WorldCon #71" title image that only the contestants can use, and which they must use in order for their entry to be considered. Entrants can unlock the super secret WorldCon title by following the instructions on the competition’s page.

Entries are being accepted through May 31st. So if you’ve registered for WorldCon… go forth and Pulp-O-Mize! And if not, why not?

I’ve been experimenting with the process for offering T-shirts and hoodies through the Pulp-O-Mizer. At the moment, I’m cautiously optimistic.

Supporting T-Shirts requires some more muscle from the server. I’m not sure yet whether that will amount to too much muscle, especially under the heavy load that the Pulp-O-Mizer sometimes attracts.

It’s a sturdy contraption, but it does need to co-exist with other contraptions on the same shared server. So we’ll just have to see.

Yesterday’s work went faster than I expected – which is as nice as it is unusual – and the next step at least doesn’t require me to be any smarter than I have been up to now. The final, or penultimate, or semi penultimate step, though, will take smartness on a grander scale.

And then, with my smartness expended, I’ll have to see how many resources the whole process requires from the server and reduce that load, if I can.

It’s a thrilling adventure!

It’s so thrilling, in fact, that I keep meaning to chronicle all the highlights of the past few weeks. But I’ve been too busy! At first I was patching up all those parts of the Pulp-O-Mizer that weren’t quite ready for the public when the public, suddenly, poured in; then I had to catch up on some other work; then I added a few new image layers; and now I’m working on The Question Of Shirts. So the True Life Story of the Astounding Adventures of the Pulp-O-Mizer may have to wait so long that I won’t remember what it was any more by the time I sit down to type it up.

All in all, that’s not a bad problem to have.

The UK Steampunk band The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing is sponsoring a contest for their Facebook watchers using the PULSATING POWER of the PULP-O-MIZER.

Through Friday, by which I mean Friday in Old Blighty, they want you to post a Pulp-O-Mized advert for the band. You can see the details on their Facebook page where they’ve announced that prizes will include two tickets to their show in London on April 27, plus some other things that may include posters, CDs, and T-shirts. And awesomeness.

In spite of the Pulp-O-Mizer going crazy across Twitter and Facebook and web sites near and far, I have had work to do; and today I finished up one important task that probably shouldn’t have taken me so long. It’s the online bookstore for Matthew Hughes, the author of the Archonate stories (Majestrum, The Spiral Labyrinth, and Hespira, among them).

The first two eBooks to be available are Fools Errant and Fool Me Twice, Hughes’ early novels that set the stage for the Archonate and introduced us to its future Archon, Filidor.

The books are available in three formats: .mobi (for the Kindle and some other readers), ePub (for the Nook, the iPad, and lots of other readers), and PDF, which can be read by pretty much anything, except for horses. They just can’t seem to get the hang of it..

There should be more books coming online soon, too, and they won’t all necessarily be stories from the Archonate. Hughes is taking this chance to convert his whole backlist to electronic formats as those rights revert to him.

So go visit the Archonate Bookstore, already. It’s still all warm from the oven!