PABLO CORTEZ IN POLAND

Yup, that's my name on the Hobbit-festooned cover of the January 2013 issue of Nowa Fantastyka – you can see if you squint hard enough. Inside you'll be able to find “Partyzancki Mural Syreniej Pieśni” – “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song” translated into Polish!

Thanks to the story's appearence in Marty Halpern's Alien Contact, Marcin Zwierzchowski got in touch and asked for permission. I like it when they do that.

So Pablo Cortez has been turned loose on Eastern Europe. Maybe it will result in more copies of my science fiction novel/street art manual Cortez on Jupiter selling. Or there could even be interesting images mysteriously appearing on walls over there.

Let the art, life, and madness go on!

Just in time for the Great 2012 Holiday Crunch!

CHICHANONAUTICA CELEBRATES THE NEW BAKTÚN

At 6:12 A.M. Eastern Standard Time it happened – the Winter Solstice, and the end of the Mayan calendar. Some thought it would be the End of the World. It was actually the end of Baktún 13 and the beginning of Baktún 14, and the Long Count started over again. It is a new era – the Sixth Sun.

That's what my latest Chicanonautica over at La Bloga is all about. Here are some videos to watch as the world keeps going on:

A lot of folks were as hot for the End of the World as Major Kong was for the Bomb:

They're probably feeling like Skeeter Davis today:

Arthur Brown also blew relationship troubles up to apocalyptic proportions:

And Barry McGuire thought it was the Eve of Destruction:

But that was a long time ago and, of course, he was wrong.

As for the Maya:

So have a great Baktún14! Welcome to the Sixth Sun!

MAKING THE COATLICUE/GUADALUPE CONNECTION BEFORE THE NEW BAKTUN

The Holiday Season is upon us. Or as I like to call it – the Holidaze.

It's a little crazier this year, since the end of the Mayan Calendar has a lot of misinformed people thinking that it means asteroid collisions and the zombie apocalypse, when it's just the beginning of a new baktun.

But there are a lot of other holidays in this season (not to offend some Christians who dream of world domination). I seem to discover a few new ones each year.

A young, upstart holiday that deserves some attention is December 12, Virgin of Guadalupe Day.

In my novel High Aztech (manifesting as an ebook soon!) I pointed out that the Virgin seems to be standing in for the Aztec Goddess Coatlicue.

Lately, I've been pleased to see that others have been pointing out the Mother Goddess connection.

My wife said that that the Virgin seems to be a user-friendly version. At least, more so to our culture.

It's like the Virgin was an updating of the software for a changing world. Software that updated itself. I wonder what kind of technology we're dealing with here?

And the world is changing. Again. As usual.

I wonder if what kind of updating we'll see in Baktun 14?

CHICANONAUTICA LOOKS BACK AT THE DARK AGES OF LATINO WRITING

In response to the question “Is this a Golden Age for Latino writers?” Chicaonautica, over at La Bloga looks back at my adventures as a young Latino writer back in the 20^th century.

This was a time when most Americanos thought of Chicano culture in terms of Cheech and Chong:

And the ol' Brown Buffalo, Oscar Zeta Acosta, AKA “Dr. Gonzo” was stomping the terra:

South of the Border, René Cardona was commitng some of the most outrageous acts of cinema ever. This one has nudity, fake gore, and real heart transplant footage:

And let's take the opportunity to pay tribute to the great Spain Rodriguez, who died recently:

SECRETS OF MY AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE

I finally got my Amazon Author Page done. It's a good guide for those of you who are collecting my work, or planning on giving the gift of Ernesto this Christmas/Atemoztli/New Baktun Season.

Most obvious are my novels Cortez on Jupiter, and Smoking Mirror Blues now available in Kindle Editions. Yeah, High Aztech is coming soon – I'm working on it, proofreading that Españáhuatl until my eyes are bloodshot. Stay tuned for details and updates!

The other items on the page are anthologies and magazines I have contributed to, so some explanation is required.

Alien Contact, edited by Marty Halpern included my story “Guerrilla Mural of a Siren's Song” – the story that I later exploded into Cortez on Jupiter.

My most infamous story, “The Frankenstein Penis” once again available in Love that Never Dies edited by M. Christain, an anthology of paranormal erotica on Kindle. And if you'd rather have it in hardcopy, the original Semiotext(e) SF edited by Rudy Rucker, Robert Anton Wilson, and Peter Lanborn Wilson is still available.

“Plan 9 in Outer Space,” a collaboration with my wife, Emily, is in Space Horrors: Full-Throttle Space Tales #4, edited by David Lee Summers. It's a tribute to Edward D. Wood, Jr. with zombies on a spaceship. Need I say more?

2020 Visions, edited by Rick Novy not only has my wild romp about radioactive marijuana, “Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs,” but also my wife's speculative weight-loss drama, “If the Sun's at Five O'Clock, It Must be Yellow Daisies.”

Angel Body and Other Magic for the Soul, edited by Chris Reed and David Memmott, has an ahead-of-its-time satire of Arizona and border hysteria called “Burrito Meltdown.”

“Coyote Goes Hollywood” that plugs Native American mythology into Hollywood cartoonery is in Witpunk, edited by Claude Lalumière and Marty Halpern.

Tales of the Talisman, Volume 6, Issue 3, is where you can find “The Great Mars-A-Go-Go Mexican Standoff,” where I introduce Spike Gerswhin, interplanetary gumshoe.

In Voices for the Cure: A Speculative Fiction Anthology to Benefit the American Diabetes Association, edited by James Palmer, I introduced another character, Victor Theremin, the science fiction who writer who can no longer tell his life from sci-fi. He was also in the abovementioned “Radiation is Groovy, Kill the Pigs.”

All these stories have that special Ernesto madness, so consume away! Keep the Americano potlatch flowing!