Rice is an Arsian, which means he participates over at Ars Technica. This year he is hooking into their secret Santa to buy another Arsian a gift that's $25.00 or under and share the geekery.

He mentioned he was having a little trouble figuring out what do buy for the guy whose name he drew. He sent me the guy's nick so I could search Ars and see if I noticed anything.

I did.

I started out by finding his real name, which isn't that common, and I Googled him.

And I found more. Not only is he a tech-geek, he's a spec-fic writer geek. Yup, that's right. He's the cross between Rice and I. He used to maintain a topic over at the Rumormill, and I found his personal website (which verified he was the same person we were trying to find a gift for).

I quickly found journal entries on writing. For example, he mentions subbing to Analog. Can I help Rice buy something for this man? Yes, yes I can.

I suggested that he might want to buy the guy a copy of Storyteller and of course something geeky can always be included. Because if I were a spec-fic writer, and someone sent me Storyteller for Christmas, well, I'd be a very happy panda.

Rice went to go have dinner with his folks and I continued to stalk our friend. He linked to someone in his writing group, and I followed the link. The guy has links to Jason Erik Lundberg and Mike Jasper and other people's journals that I frequent. This was sort of a surreal feeling. It's not unusual for me to read someone's blog that mentions these people, but not in the Arsian context. And then I found the man's name -- he and I share a TOC.

I cleared out my head and went back to the original fellow's journal and did a search for Clarion. He was considering going in 2002, really strongly, but never made it.

Yeah, I think Storyteller* would be a good choice. I mean, it's on my wishlist. What writer wouldn't want it?


*Also available from Small Beer Press.