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SFF World-News
The Conduit

21 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm
Richard Knaak's Legends of Dragonrealm Release

15 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm
U.S. Broadcast Networks' Sci-Fi Shows for ’09-’10

3 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm
Obituary: David Eddings, 1931-2009

2 Jun 2009 | 9:00 pm
Tim Lebbon's Blog Tour

10 May 2009 | 9:00 pm

SciFi Wire
SCI FI Wire takes the holiday weekend off

3 Jul 2009 | 12:46 am

Because of the Fourth of July holiday, SCI FI Wire will not be updated again until Monday.
The new trailer for the animated comedy Planet 51 has landed

2 Jul 2009 | 2:39 pm

A new trailer has gone live for the upcoming animated sci-fi family comedy Planet 51, which you can view after the jump.
11 most patriotic sci-fi movie and TV moments

2 Jul 2009 | 12:45 pm

The long July 4th holiday weekend kicks off tomorrow, which for many of us means trips to the beach, burgers on the grill and fireworks (only where legal, of course). But it should also mean some time spent remembering those patriots who defended our liberty—both the real ones who fought for our freedoms and those fictional ones who on television and at the movies reminded us what that liberty was all about. With that in mind, let's take a look back at our 10 favorite sci-fi examples of patriotic film and TV.
New 'House of Imagination' film reflects SCI FI's evolution to Syfy

2 Jul 2009 | 11:00 am

A two-minute film, "House of Imagination," has gone live to reflect SCI FI's brand evolution to Syfy on Tuesday, celebrating Syfy's unique spin on imagination. The new film features stars from Warehouse 13, Eureka, Ghost Hunters, Caprica, Sanctuary, Stargate Universe, Destination Truth and ECW.
News briefs: Asteroids flies; Defying Gravity drops

2 Jul 2009 | 10:46 am

The Hollywood Reporter says that Universal has won a four-studio bidding war to pick up the film rights to the classic Atari video game Asteroids, for which Matthew Lopez will write the script; the game, initially released in 1979, lets a player control a triangular spaceship to shoot and destroy hulking masses of rock and the occasional flying saucer while avoiding smashing into both. ... ABC has picked up the 13-episode sci-fi series Defying Gravity, starring Ron Livingston, which is slated to air this summer, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The show stars Laura Harris, Christina Cox,…

SF Site
Powers: Secret Histories by John Berlyne: an article by Rodger Turner

1 Jul 2009 | 4:00 am

I still remember when I was reading Dinner at Deviant's Palace (1984) by Tim Powers for the first time. After some 27 years of reading SF, I thought it would be hard to startle me with ideas and amaze me with plot. Sure, I could become engrossed with a sense of wonder and be charmed by a delightful turn of phrase. But I had read a lot of books and it didn't seem like there could be more. Boy, I was young and stupid. I found a number of treasures and surprises in Dinner at Deviant's Palace and Tim Powers became one of my favourite writers on the spot.
Monster by A. Lee Martinez

1 Jul 2009 | 4:00 am

Judy never expected to find a yeti in the freezer section of the Food Plus Mart while she was working the night shift, much less a yeti intent on eating all of the ice cream (save the vanilla.) But there it is, so what does she do? She calls Animal Control Services, which, surprisingly enough, actually has a remedy for her infestation issues. Enter Monster, of Monster's Cryptobiological Rescue, a large blue-skinned man with a talent for transmogrifying and containing supernatural pests, and his paper gnome companion Chester.
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Outcast by Aaron Allston

1 Jul 2009 | 4:00 am

Once again, the galaxy is threatened by instability and strife. Once again, the Jedi Order is in the spotlight, and not in a good way. The Jedi are too powerful, too enigmatic, too independent, too likely to go against authority. The distrust is high, especially after the rise and fall of Darth Caedus, formerly Jacen Solo, son of Han Solo and Princess Leia. And when another Jedi, Valin Horn, apparently goes mad and runs amuck, it's all the evidence powerful people need.
Give Me Back My Legions! by Harry Turtledove

1 Jul 2009 | 4:00 am

Harry Turtledove explores the circumstances surrounding one of ancient Rome's greatest military disasters, The Battle of the Teutoberg Forest. This is the battle in which the German, Arminius, defeated Augustus Caesar's appointed governor of Germany, Publius Quinctilius Varus, keeping Rome out of Germany. Although well-known for his alternate histories, Turtledove chooses historical fiction as the best format to tell about this history-changing battle.
The Department of Spirit Research by James Patrick Cobb

1 Jul 2009 | 4:00 am

The idea of what lies beyond this earthy existence, be it the after-life or a big nothing, has fascinated humanity since before people developed written language. So it comes as no surprise that the subject continues to inspire both those who embrace spirituality, and those who are miners of the imagination. This work comes across as something in-between theosophical speculation and light science fantasy.

SF Scope
I Was a Teenage Vampire—a review of True Blood's "Scratches"

2 Jul 2009 | 8:54 am

This episode was sharply written, snappily directed, fun to watch. The series has not failed to entertain on any level... (Warning: this review contains some spoilers.)
Carol Berg's "Rai-Kirah" books two and three sell in France

2 Jul 2009 | 6:31 am

French rights to Revelation and Restoration, the second and third of Carol Berg's 'Rai-Kirah' novels, sold to Bragelonne...
Adam L.G. Nevill sells two untitled horror novels in auction to Pan Macmillan

2 Jul 2009 | 4:22 am

Adam L.G. Nevill, whose first horror novel, Banquet for the Damned, was published in September 2008, sold two untitled novels in an auction conducted by agent John Jarrold and won by Pan Macmillan...
Actor Karl Malden Dies

2 Jul 2009 | 2:58 am

Actor Karl Malden (1912-2009) won an Oscar, an Emmy, and the Screen Actors Guild's Life Achievement Award. He was a Broadway, movie, and television actor, and also made a few genre appearances, including...
2009 Endeavour Award Finalists

2 Jul 2009 | 12:43 am

The finalists for this year's Endeavour Award, given to a sf/fanasy novel by a Pacific Northwest writer, are...

Gray Man Writes
First Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Images: Near the SEA OF CLOUDS

Gray Rinehart

3 Jul 2009 | 5:34 am

How cool is this? From NASA's LRO web site: Quote: NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has transmitted its first images since reaching the moon on June 23. The spacecraft's two cameras, collectively known as the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, were activated June 30. The cameras are working well and have returned images of a region in the lunar highlands south of Mare Nubium (Sea of Clouds). (L: An LRO image of the highlands south of Mare Nubium [the Sea of Clouds]. R: A Clementine image of the moon, showing the location of Mare Nubium. NASA images. Click to enlarge.) Since I'm…
Back to Grinding Stones ...

Gray Rinehart

29 Jun 2009 | 3:11 am

... or something like that. After my closest approximation to an actual vacation in many years (i.e., a trip away from home and Internet, during which I worked very little [on one or two days I didn't do any work at all]), I've found it very hard to get back into the groove. I've got to start turning the grindstone faster. So much to do ...
LCROSS, and the Hazards of Writing Near-Future Science Fiction

Gray Rinehart

18 Jun 2009 | 3:26 am

Today the LCROSS (Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite) is supposed to launch on an Atlas-V rocket, along with the LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter). LCROSS is specifically designed to check for water in shadowed craters at the lunar south pole. (Artist's conception of LCROSS approach to the moon, from http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/. Click to enlarge.) The mission profile involves crashing the Centaur upper stage into an as-yet-undetermined crater, with the LCROSS vehicle and its sensors following close behind. Not only will LCROSS itself examine the ejecta for signs of water, but the…
First X-15 Glide Flight, a Half Century Ago

Gray Rinehart

8 Jun 2009 | 3:07 am

Fifty years ago today -- June 8, 1959 -- Scott Crossfield flew the X-15 on its first glide flight above NASA's Dryden Flight Research Facility at Edwards Air Force Base, California. (NASA Photo E-4942, from the X-15 Photo Collection.) From Crossfield's bio: Quote: Crossfield left the [National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics] in 1955 to work for North American Aviation on the X-15 rocket-powered research airplane project. There, he served as both pilot and design consultant for the revolutionary new aircraft that was carried aloft and launched from beneath the wing of a B-52 for high-speed,…
The STARSHINE Demonstrator -- Today's Space History Note

Gray Rinehart

5 Jun 2009 | 4:54 am

Ten years ago today -- June 5, 1999 -- the STARSHINE passive reflector was released from Space Shuttle Discovery during mission STS-96 by Canadian astronaut Julie Payette. STARSHINE -- a.k.a. Student Tracked Atmospheric Research Satellite Heuristic International Networking Experiment* -- was sponsored by the Naval Research Laboratory and consisted of a hollow, 48-cm (19-inch) diameter sphere, covered with 878 mirrors. (Starshine-1 at the Naval Research Laboratory. NRL photo by Michael A. Savell, from the Starshine project web site.) Students from 660 schools in 18 countries, including some…

Genes and Demons
Research

1 Jul 2009 | 6:13 am

Last night after work, I swung by the video store and rented four games for my X-box 360. Then I swung by the local pizza place and bought three pizzas. When I got home, I informed my sons that we'd be doing "research" all evening. They were very pleased.Also, on a side-note, the game PORTAL is awesome. The physics of the game is a bit of a mind-bender, and interestingly, Boy2 actually caught on scary-fast, while Boy1 took a bit longer. In first-person shooters like HALO, my older son always stomps my younger son, (as a function of age, I think) much to my younger son's frustration, so it was…
Go west young man, go west...

29 Jun 2009 | 11:09 am

It looks like I'll be hopping on a plane in the near future. :)
Holy crap...

26 Jun 2009 | 5:46 am

I received an email this morning that my brain almost literally could not process. I had to read it four or five times to see if it really said what I thought it said ... and now that I'm sure that it does say that, and it's not some kind of optical illusion-- I'm very excited about the possibilities. Well, excited and nervous.I haven't shown the email to anyone yet... (the house was still sleeping when I left this morning) and I can't say much here for two very good reasons... but the enormity of this opportunity is almost impossible for me to take in. I'm bouncing in this chair.
Year's Best SF 14 released into the wild

24 Jun 2009 | 2:30 pm

I received my copy in the mail the other day. Doesn't it just look juicy? My story is included.I've been reading these anthologies long enough that Year's Best SF 6 is sitting on a shelf above my desk right now. Volumes 7-13 are scattered across other bookshelves around the house and at my mother's. It still blows me away that I have a story that is actually in this book. It feels like a dream.
21 Jun 2009 | 8:12 pm

21 Jun 2009 | 8:12 pm

Happy Fathers' Day, Dad.I wish you were still here.

Eric James Stone
AnthologyBuilder Sale

Eric James Stone

1 Jul 2009 | 6:19 am

AnthologyBuilder is having a 50% off sale until noon EST today. That means it’s the perfect time for you to get my new anthology, Eric James Stone & Company, Volume II. (And if you don’t have Volume I, you can get both volumes for the price of one.) Here’s the introduction: Like the previous volume, this book contains stories by me and by some of the great authors who also happen to be friends of mine. "Tabloid Reporter to the Stars" is by me. I first submitted it to the Writers of the Future contest, but I got disqualified by winning with another story. …
Books for Breasts

Eric James Stone

23 Jun 2009 | 3:49 am

My friend James Maxey is giving away free copies of his latest book to people who donate to support breast cancer research: Followers of my blogs, and the readers who read the acknowledgement pages of my books, will know that I lost my partner Laura Herrmann to breast cancer in May 2005. I’ve been interested in cancer research since then and have privately made contributions to cancer related charities, but I’ve never put out any sort of appeal on my blogs to solicit for this cause, until now. Last week, I received several cases of my latest book Dragonseed. One of the ongoing…
Review of “The Final Element”

Eric James Stone

15 Jun 2009 | 10:05 pm

Best SF’s review of my story in the April issue of Analog has spoilers for the plot of the story. But I can easily forgive that, because here’s how the review begins: In the short biog that goes with the story, Stone mentions being brought up on Golden Age SF, and having fond memories for The Early Asimov collections. I too have fond memories of that collection, which I read in the early 70s in my early teens. And thusly (if I make speak in Good Doctor mode) Stone provides a story that could have been penned by Asimov. [Emphasis added.] That’s one of the highest compliments I’ve…
Global Translator

Eric James Stone

27 May 2009 | 5:28 am

Those of you who read my blog on my website may have noticed something in the sidebar that says “Translator” and has 42 flags underneath it. (Those who read my blog elsewhere will not have noticed.) That is the Global Translator plugin for WordPress, which I consider to be one of the most awesome plugins ever made. Behind the scenes, it goes out and automatically translates the pages of my blog into 41 languages, and stores the translations on my website. So if you’re on any of my blog pages, you can click on the flag representing a language and see the page in that…
2009 CONduit Schedule

Eric James Stone

20 May 2009 | 5:34 am

Here’s my schedule for CONduit this year: Friday, May 22 4:00pm – Reading (Eric James Stone, JoSelle Vanderhooft) 5:00pm – Panel: Stephen King: Is He Still King? (Michael R. Collings, Paul Anderson, Eric James Stone, Anne Wingate) Saturday, May 23 Noon – Panel: What can writers learn from Harry Potter? (Suzy Gehring, Stacy Whitman, Kathleen Dalton-Woodbury, Eric James Stone, Jason Anderson, Brandon Sanderson) 4:00pm – Book signing (Eric James Stone, Brian Wiser, Ann Chamberlin, Jason Anderson, Rebecca Shelley) Sunday, May 24 3:00pm – Exobiology: How alien…

Fabianspace
My stories in the Zombie Cookbook!

23 Jun 2009 | 9:04 pm

I just got the contract for The Zombie Cookbook for my two stories:"Wokking Dead" It's war and love when zombies attack a Korean restaurant."My Big Fat Zombie Wedding" So he's undead--doesn't mean he's not the perfect man for a romance that will last 'till death and beyond.It comes out in September. I'm looking forward to it. I know a lot of the writers through the Writers Chatroom, so I'm expecting some fun and quirky stories, poems and, yes, recipes in this anthology coming from the appropriately named Damnation Books.(I have a recipe for Intel on Ice. Not for the living. Trust me on…
Catholic Writers Conference Aug 5-7

18 May 2009 | 11:30 am

Catholic Writers Guild, Catholic Marketing Network Hold Writers’ ConferenceSomerset, NJ--The Catholic Writers' Guild, in conjunction with the Catholic Marketing Network, will host its first-ever Catholic Writers’ Conference LIVE! at the Doubletree Hotel & Executive Meeting Center, Somerset, NJ, from Aug 5-7, 2009. The conference will host publishers, editors and authors from all aspects of the Catholic writing world, including magazines and devotionals, novels and educational materials. The panel discussions, presentations and workshops will cover all aspects of writing including…
Animoto--simple but limited video creation software

12 May 2009 | 7:00 pm

I'm working on my book trailer course, and ran across this video creation software. You put in some captions and some pictures, pick music they provide and it mixes it for you. It's kind of neat.This took me about 2 hours because I first made it too long. (Even though it said use 14 pictures, it would only take 9.) Still it's cute. What do you think?
Video Book Trailer Class Available

10 May 2009 | 11:12 am

The next class at The Marketing Mentor will be on making your own video book trailer. This is a fun and useful marketing tool, and can take as little as a weekend to put together once you know how. We'll discuss:--basics of an effective trailer--where to get free photos and music--the nuts-and-bolts of working with Windows Movie Maker--what to do with it when it's doneYou must have a computer that can handle Windows Movie Maker or be familiar with your own movie-making program. (The only program I know is Movie Maker, so I won't be able to answer questions on others.)If you do the homework,…
Going to Ground for the Summer

30 Apr 2009 | 9:06 am

I've been blessed the past two years with some fantastic writing opportunities and some great online groups. However, the two are coming to a clash this summer. In the next three months, I need to:1. Finish a school planner, write two supplements, a teacher's guide and a family newsletter--for actual, very nice pay!2. Edit two books that are in the publishing process. Live and Let Fly will be out late 09 from Swimming Kangaroo; Infinite Space, Infinite God II around April 2010.3. Write two more books: Discovery needs to be ready to pitch at the Catholic Writers Conference Live! in August.

James Maxey
Another thing to make me lose sleep....

3 Jul 2009 | 12:08 pm

Below is the screen shot of the Amazon home page when I signed in earlier today at a public computer. It's tiny, but if you click on it, you'll be able to see it better. Even small, however, you might notice that the world's premier online bookseller seems to have stopped pushing books. The main page does feature a prominent add for the Kindle, but everything else is electronics, sporting gear,
We Shall All be Healed

28 Jun 2009 | 9:53 am

Yesterday, Books for Breasts passed the $1000 mark on funds collected, and I still have about 20 books left to give away! Back in 2004, the Mountain Goats put out an album titled We Shall All be Healed. I suspect they borrowed the phrase from the prayer, "Heal us, Lord, and we shall be healed." I first listened to the album in Laura's bedroom. She was on chemo at the time, and was spending
Books for Breasts!

22 Jun 2009 | 10:08 am

Followers of my blogs, and the readers who read the acknowledgement pages of my books, will know that I lost my partner Laura Herrmann to breast cancer in May 2006. I've been interested in cancer research since then and have privately made contributions to cancer related charities, but I've never put out any sort of appeal on my blogs to solicit for this cause, until now. Last week, I received
War on Cancer: An Alternative Approach to Health Care

21 Jun 2009 | 7:15 am

Health care reform is probably the biggest legislative goal of the Obama presidency. I have no doubt that, by the end of the summer, some sort of expensive and complex bill will get signed into law. But, as with the carbon control bill, my hunch is that what emerges will be toothless and nearly pointless. The money just isn't there for a truly radical reform, and the fact is that the majority of
Why I think the carbon bill is doomed.

20 Jun 2009 | 6:17 am

Observers of politics this week saw two of Obama's biggest legislative initiatives crash and burn. We'll maybe not burn, but at least they crashed. First, house democrats have proven unable to find any compromise on a bill to regulate carbon emissions. This isn't a shock; if you're a democrat from a state that mines coal or pumps oil, it's going to be political suicide to vote for any

Kathryn Cramer
selfportrait as a ghostly photographer

Kathryn

3 Jul 2009 | 3:58 am
Elizabeth makes a fairy bike helmet

Kathryn

2 Jul 2009 | 4:26 am
The twin suns rose over the lake . . .

Kathryn

2 Jul 2009 | 3:40 am

(Sunrise shot through double pane glass.)
A response to Christopher Elliott's "Should kids be banned from first class?"

Kathryn

2 Jul 2009 | 3:16 am

As the opening to an article entitled, "Should kids be banned from first class?" Christopher Elliott (writing for Tribune Media Services) begins by explaining that drugging his toddler worked out badly the time he and his wife got a first class upgrade. I think I'll begin by saying that I don't think I've ever actually ridden first class on a plane, though I was once given a business class upgrade on a flight to Japan. The larger seat was uncomfortable as it seemed to be constructed for a large man, rather than someone of my proportions. Elliott's article…
Good morning.

Kathryn

1 Jul 2009 | 5:09 am

Keith R.A. DeCandido
70 years ago today....

4 Jul 2009 | 9:02 am

Seventy years ago between games of a doubleheader, the Yankees held Lou Gehrig Day, in honor of their great first baseman, who had set a record for consecutive games played that was ended by illness with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, more commonly known nowadays as Lou Gehrig's Disease. He had stopped playing the previous April due to the illness, and on 4 July 1939, he was presented with a whole bunch of gifts he was too weak to hold. His number (4) was retired, and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia gave a speech that was lost on the dustbin of history because of the speech that came next from the…
"The Stars and Stripes Forever" -- Muppet style!!!

4 Jul 2009 | 8:47 am

Best Video EVER!!!!! The Muppets do "The Stars and Stripes Forever" for YouTube. Introduced by Sam the Eagle, and featuring the Swedish Chef, Beaker, Animal, and more performing, with fireworks by Crazy Harry, plus, natch, heckling at the end by Statler and Waldorf.Thanks to deza for the link.
fireworks with candy!

4 Jul 2009 | 8:38 am

A video of Fireworks by PES, combining two wonderful things: fireworks and candy!Thanks to varkat for the link.
happy Independence Day!

4 Jul 2009 | 8:21 am

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of AmericaWhen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their…
Schott's Miscellany 3 July 2009

4 Jul 2009 | 7:52 am

The last pair of great auks was thought to have been killed,making the species extinct (1844)FINGERNAILS & CHARACTERA white mark on the nail bespeaks MISFORTUNE. Pale or lead-colored nails indicate MELANCHOLY people. Broad nails indicate a GENTLE, TIMID, and BASHFUL nature. Lovers of KNOWLEDGE and LIBERAL SENTIMENTS have round nails. People with narrow nails are AMBITIOUS and QUARRELSOME. Small nails indicate LITTLENESS of MIND, OBSTINACY, and CONCEIT. CHOLERIC, MARTIAL men, delighting in WAR, have red and spotted nails. Nails growing into the flesh at the points or sides indicate LUXURIOUS…

Robert J. Sawyer
Book Banter podcasts Rob

RobertJSawyer

4 Jul 2009 | 9:06 am

Book Banter, a podcast produced by Alex C. Telander of Sacramento, interviews Robert J. Sawyer, talking about his novel Wake.Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
Bringing some sense to ebook pricing

RobertJSawyer

2 Jul 2009 | 6:29 pm

My favorite ebook format is eReader (now ultimately owned by Barnes & Noble), and they've announced some nice pricing initiatives over at eReader.com, which should help to bring some sanity to ebook pricing:eReader.com has the most competitive pricing in the industry, including:All new titles are $9.95 or less for the first week after release at eReader.com.After one week, all new titles are set to the publisher list price but will not exceed $12.95.No title is priced over $12.95.All titles on the New York Times best seller list at eReader are $9.95. The New York Times best seller list at…
It's official: you're in the right place!

RobertJSawyer

2 Jul 2009 | 5:51 pm

Yep, according to Speculative Fiction Examiner, this here blog is one of "10 author blogs to follow."If that ain't cool enough, SciFi Wire just included my Twitter feed on its list of "40 more sci-fi Twitter feeds you should be following" -- one of only two author feeds to make the list (the other is William Gibson's).Like MasterCard, I'm everywhere you want to be -- including Facebook (where I'm RobertJSawyer). :)Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web Siteand WakeWatchWonder.com
As Kor once said, "Pity. It would have been glorious."

RobertJSawyer

2 Jul 2009 | 4:30 pm

From Ansible 264, a news note from Farah Mendlesohn:Educational Supplement. Rob Latham of the University of California at Riverside told the SF Research Association that UCR's 'senior-level position in science fiction writing' was cancelled owing to huge state budget cuts -- notably in higher education -- announced on 19 May by Governator Arnold Schwarzenegger. The unnamed appointee, chosen from nearly 50 applicants including 'major Hugo- and Nebula-winning authors', had been offered the tenured position and accepted.Well, I know who the unamed appointee was, but I'm not saying -- except to…
Edward Willett on the science of Wake

RobertJSawyer

1 Jul 2009 | 9:58 am

You gotta love Edward Willett. Here it is, in the thick of Aurora Award voting, where his absolutely first-rate Marseguro is competing against Hayden Trenholm's wonderful Defining Diana and my own Identity Theft and Other Stories, and what does Ed do? Why, he writes a glowing review of Hayden's book, and then follows that up by devoting his latest science column to issues in my new novel Wake.Ed's column ("Willett's World of Science") is available both as text and with Ed himself reading it aloud (and Ed has an amazing voice). Check it out! And -- thanks, Ed!Visit The Robert J. Sawyer Web…

John Scalzi
Americans Are Crazy

John Scalzi

4 Jul 2009 | 8:41 am

Case in point: Story about it here.
Various and Sundry, 7/4/09

John Scalzi

4 Jul 2009 | 7:27 am

First off: Happy Independence Day! Here in the US we’re celebrating the day we kicked Britain to the curb, what, 233 years ago? Sigh. We were all so different then, weren’t we. And look at us now: The US and UK, totally all “friends with benefits.” Oh, UK. We love your accents. Now, then: * If you were planning to vote for this year’s Hugos today, HA! You’re too late, the voting closed at midnight. And as is now apparently traditional, when I woke up the morning after the Hugo voting closed there was an e-mail waiting for me asking me if I thought I was…
The Spookiest Sunset of 2009

John Scalzi

3 Jul 2009 | 6:21 pm

Oh, yes. It will be a pleasant night tonight. That’s it, I’m taking the shotgun to bed. Just to be safe.
Bwuh?

John Scalzi

3 Jul 2009 | 2:44 pm

Honestly, I don’t know what to make of Sarah Palin any more, except I continue to be glad she never actually came within a heartbeat of the presidency. But maybe one of you can explain the whole “eh, I don’t wanna be governor any more” thing to me. Because, really. Got me, man. Anyone from the Whatever:Alaska contingent want to clue me in, here?
And Yes, In Fact, While We’re On the Subject of “The Big Three”

John Scalzi

3 Jul 2009 | 11:52 am

Dear Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF: Please be aware that here in 2009, you look absolutely foolish for not accepting electronic submissions. We are a decade into the 21st century now. You really have had more than enough time to accept the fact that almost all correspondence and transmission of documents has become an electronic affair, and to create a system that allows you to process and respond to such submissions in an efficient and timely manner. A list of complaints like this, apparently written when Eudora was the hip e-mail client and 56k dial-up was blazing fast, no longer…

Fangs, Fur and Fey
First Lines

Jeaniene Frost

3 Jul 2009 | 4:35 pm

I've seen this "first lines" meme all over the place and thought it looked fun. The rules are simple: post the first line from any (or all) of your books/works in progress. Play along in the comments with your own first lines, if you like. Here goes mine: "I stiffened at the red and blue lights flashing behind me, because there was no way I could explain what was in the back of my truck." -- HALFWAY TO THE GRAVE "I waited outside the large, four-story home in Manhasset that was owned by a Mr. Liam Flannery." -- ONE FOOT IN THE…
Still Available From June!

S.J. Day

1 Jul 2009 | 9:21 am

The following FFF titles released in June and were showcased on the blog sidebar. They're still out there, so it's not too late to pick up copies for yourself or someone else.To see the July releases, check out the updated FFF sidebar.Happy Reading!S. J. Day
Overheard in Conversation

kellymeding

1 Jul 2009 | 7:29 am

Last night I was wandering the SF/F section of my local Barnes & Noble, trying to decide the best way to spend my birthday gift card. I had one book in hand (a friend's new release that I'd gone for specifically), but still had money to burn. I was browsing the new release shelves when a trio of guys (I hesitate to use the word "men" because they seemed to epitomize the man-child, I-spend-too-much-time-playing-WII-and-not-enough-time-socializing stereotype of today's modern male SF fan---sad, but true) wandered by.They ended up browsing within arm's reach of me, so I…
July Newsletter

kathrynsmith

29 Jun 2009 | 6:36 pm

July's newsletter is a little light, but here it is! Authors if you have news or appearances that you'd like to share, please do so in the comments section!JULY RELEASES Balog, Cyn -- Fairy Tale Brennan, Sarah Rees -- The Demon's Lexicon Day, S.J. -- Eve of Chaos Frost, Jeaniene -- FOUR DUKES AND A DEVIL (anthology) McLeod, Suzanne -- The Cold Kiss of Death Robertson, Linda -- Vicious Circle Singh, Nalini -- Branded By Fire Vincent, Rachel -- Prey APPEARANCES July 14 -18 RWA National: Kathryn Smith, Jessa Slade July 23 - 26, 2009 San Diego Comic Con: Jackie Kessler, Sarah…
Topic of the Week - With a Little Help from my Friends

Jeri Smith-Ready

29 Jun 2009 | 3:20 pm

Hi, everyone! Thanks for joining us, those of you who are online instead of out enjoying this summer holiday week (happy Canada Day and Independence Day, before I forget).This week's topic comes from whereistheluv, who asks:Hi! I'm new here. I would like to know how you found your writing groups or crit partners. I'm new to the writing world, and working on my first YA urban fantasy/paranormal/something like that novel and would love to find some other people to work with. I guess to be clearer, I'd like to know the story behind how you find the people you truly trust to read and critique…

Foul Papers
Sunday Silliness: The Story of Robin Hood

Shannan

28 Jun 2009 | 6:00 am

Dinosaur Comics
Want a peek at my dissertation?

Shannan

11 Jun 2009 | 3:09 pm

I’ve sorely neglected blogging for the last few weeks. Sadly this intermittent checking in may have to continue for some time. I’m adjusting to a new schedule that means I’m out of town at least two days a week, and I still haven’t quite figured out all the rearranging that needs to happen so I can be here regularly. It will happen, but maybe not until July. In the mean time, I thought I would offer up a snippet from my dissertation so you can see what it is that takes up so much of my non-fiction-writing time. This isn’t an argument snippet (meaning there…
Sunday Silliness: Mary Sidney, are you secretly Shakespeare or what?

Shannan

31 May 2009 | 6:00 am

The glory of K. Beaton’s history-themed comics compels you: Learn More Stuff. Hark a Vagrant, comics by K. Beaton
Saturday Matinee: TED talks

Shannan

30 May 2009 | 6:00 am

I love TED Talks like Whoa and Damn. If I could beg, borrow or steal an invite to that conference I would. First up, Mary Roach lectures on “10 things you didn’t know about orgasm.” Among the entertaining facts she reveals are the mechanics of pig insemination and the process for testing “up-suck” theory. I loved Stiff, Roach’s earlier book on human cadavers. The current lecture comes from her latest release, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex. I’ve bought it, but haven’t read it yet. After this preview, I’m sure you’ll…
A quick note

Shannan

25 May 2009 | 11:37 am

Hi y’all, Just wanted to let you know that this will be a light blogging week. I haven’t furthered my Project-Fill-In-The-Gaps quest this past week, so no update there, and I’m working on new chapters in both diss and book that are requiring extra energy, so no web-surfing or spotlights at the moment. I’ll be back to semi-normal this weekend. See you then!

Magical Words
Special Guest Friday: Lisa Mantchev!

Misty Massey

3 Jul 2009 | 7:43 am

Lisa Mantchev began writing when she was a wee young thing, banging out stories on an ancient typewriter when she was still in elementary school. She began publishing short fiction in 2002, selling stories to Weird Tales, Clarkesworld, Fantasy Magazine and many more. She sold her Théâtre Illuminata series to Feiwel & Friends in 2007. The first book in the series, the glittering debut novel Eyes Like Stars, is scheduled to hit stores this weekend (although I hear rumors that copies have already found their way to eager readers all over the country.) We’re just thrilled to be able…
Who Pays Whom: Tangent

Catie Murphy

2 Jul 2009 | 1:36 pm

Sorry for not being here last week, guys. I’ll post my POD thing next week, but I’ve been eyeball deep in revisions and my leetle brain has dropped the ball. So I’m going to talk about something else today, something tangentially related to the whole “who pays whom” topic. I’ve been running a experiment over at my daily blog, mizkit.com, to see if there’s a direct market available for me as a writer. In this particular case, I’ve offered a commissioned short story in the Negotiator (aka Old Races) universe through fundable.com, which is a site…
SWING TIPS Pt 4

Faith Hunter

1 Jul 2009 | 11:25 am

Full list of SWING (WRITING) TIPS BIC. Hero? Intensity. Kill Off A Character. No Duh. BS. Ruthless Words. Transitions. Five Senses. Immediacy. No Excuses. No Fear. First week I covered: BIC. Hero? Intensity and POF (presumption of failure). Second week was: Kill Off A Character. No Duh. BS. Third week was: Ruthless Words. Transitions. Five Senses. This week is: Immediacy. IMMEDIACY Immediacy is the way writers create suspense in the micro-scene. Sounds easy. Isn’t. It is the thing that happens when you say about a book, “I couldn’t put it down,” because every scene pulled you into the…

Nancy Fulda
Books for Breast Cancer Reaearch

26 Jun 2009 | 1:50 am

Author and all-around cool guy James Maxey is supporting breast cancer research by giving free books to anyone who donates to the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation.James says: I've set up a modest goal of raising $300 through this promotion. This means I need to average contributions of $6, which is less than you'd pay for the book on Amazon. However, I'll send you a book for a contribution in any amount, even if it's just a buck. Spend a buck, get a book, save some breasts. Who's with me?The books are top-quality fiction, and well worth reading. Learn how to get one here.
I know too many people

25 Jun 2009 | 10:59 am

My brain was not designed to keep track of the inhabitants of five online communities; three real-life communities; business contacts; magazine staffs; writing group buddies and their careers, etc. and so forth.I have a run-of-the-mill, non-enhanced brain with old fashioned biological synapses. It is optimized for a small village with two or three hundred people at the most, all of whom are somehow related to each other. I have a hard time living in a distributed society.This is not a complaint, precisely. (Although I may well use it as an excuse for forgetting your birthday, your book…
SFWA Information Center -- Wish List

15 Jun 2009 | 2:05 pm

As part of my work on the SFWA website, I'm overseeing an Information Center with handy information for writers of several skill levels. You know: advice for new writers, contract advice, writing tips, market listings, agent etiquette and suchlike.I figure it makes sense to ask some, you know... actual writers what they'd like to see in those pages. The IC will be accessible to the public, so this question applies to SFWA members as well as to those who aren't:If you dropped by the SFWA Information Center, what information would you most likely be looking for?
Three Things Every Aspiring Writer Should Know

12 Jun 2009 | 1:17 pm

1. Do Not Do This For the MoneyYou probably know this already, but let's just be clear: very few people get rich writing fiction. Most novelists never earn enough to quit their day jobs. In fact, many first-time novelists never manage to sell a second book. If you're looking for a get-rich-quick scheme, this isn't it.Which is not to say you shouldn't aspire to quit your day job. Heck, I aspire to write a masterpiece and become the next J. K. Rowling. Who wouldn't want to earn their money doing something they love? Just don't count on it, that's all I'm saying.And don't let the desire to earn…
THIS, folks, is how you market a book.

10 Jun 2009 | 2:09 am

Jay Lake's novel Green came out yesterday and I spotted this banner on several blogs:This is an example of brilliant marketing. The animation grabs my attention and the text immediately makes me want to read the book -- even though I know practically nothing about it.As authors, it's sometimes hard to restrain ourselves from revealing everything about our magnum opus on the assumption that the more people know, the more interested they'll be. It doesn't really work that way. Excessive babble turns off potential buyers in the same way an infodump turns off readers. It's too much detail, too…

No Fear of the Future
Our real-world Atrocity Exhibition

Chris Nakashima-Brown

3 Jul 2009 | 6:18 am

At Balladrian, "Michael Jackson's facelift," after Princess Margaret's.“The relationship between the famous and the public who sustain them is governed by a striking paradox. Infinitely remote, the great stars of politics, film and entertainment move across an electric terrain of limousines, bodyguards and private helicopters. At the same time, the zoom lens and the interview camera bring them so near to us that we know their faces and their smallest gestures more intimately than those of our friends.Somewhere in this paradoxical space our imaginations are free to range, and we find…
It's that time again.

Jess Nevins

30 Jun 2009 | 9:16 am

Those yahoos (in the Swiftian sense) at San Jose State have posted the results of the Bulwer-Lytton Contest, so I have to continue my (likely Quixotic) effort to defend the man. The following is the appendix to my Encyclopedia of Fantastic VictorianaIn his lifetime Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron of Knebworth (1803-1873) was a popular, prolific, and influential writer. But thanks to the vagaries of time and changing literary tastes Bulwer-Lytton’s name has become synonymous with bad writing, to the point that the English department of San Jose State University has, since 1982,…
Life as performance art.

Jess Nevins

25 Jun 2009 | 10:42 pm

Ladies and gentlemen, let us mourn the passing of America’s finest performance artist, the man who so loved a literary genre that he used his whole life to emulate it.The Gothics were, of course, the literature of terror and horror of the late 18th and 19th century. The Gothics began with Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto (1764) and ended around 1830. The most common male character in the Gothic is the Hero-Villain. The roots of the Hero-Villain lie in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, in which Satan’s combination of admirable and objectionable qualities–his dignity, evil, and…
When Björk attacks

Chris Nakashima-Brown

24 Jun 2009 | 6:57 pm

Courtesy of Ballardian's Simon Sellars, an amazing collection of the world's best celebrity versus paparazzi smackdowns via Oz's thevine.com.au. See THX-1138 bald Britney smash the windows of an SUV with her umbrella! See Matthew McConaughey and his Malibu surfer posse going all Jets and Sharks on the photogs! Feel the unleashed Njalster tantrum fury of Björk! This is your reality.If that's not enough, try this speculative version of celebrity culture jamming in my story R.P.M., courtesy of the fine fellas over at Futurismic, in which near-future revolutionaries take paparazzi tactics to the…
Celebrants

Alexis Glynn Latner

21 Jun 2009 | 10:18 am

My friend Bridget asked me, "Have you ever heard of a celebrant?"Oh yes, it's the Roman Catholic or Episcopalian priest or other Christian minister who celebrates a sacrament on Sunday morning and at weddings and funerals. But that wasn't what Bridget meant. She didn't mean the river Celebrant in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings either. (The latter is pronounced with an initial hard "k" sound and not an "s" sound.)It seems there's a growing movement to have trained, credentialed, but secular celebrants for the important moments of life in our society. The occasions can be anything from the death…

Pat Esden
Shelburne's Bridge of Flowers Goes Terabithia

1 Jul 2009 | 5:41 pm

I just got back from a wonderful visit with my mom, and my sister rubyrice and her family . While I was there we visited Shelburne Falls Massachusetts's famous bridge of flowers. Frankly, it was much more impressive than I thought it would be--amazing actually (the photo below doesn't do it justice). http://www.shelburnefalls.com/attractions/bridge.htmlAnd it was the perfect backdrop for the head-shot type photos that I've wanted to have taken, but have dreaded. At any rate, my sister managed to take a…
Driving and Thinking

29 Jun 2009 | 4:13 am

Headed south to The Berkshires to spend a few days with my mom and sister. I'm bringing a recorder so I can avoid the urge to scratch notes while I drive. Hopefully, I can get a few more scene ideas hammered out and start writing SAH at the end of the week. (Yeah, I know there are no leaves on the trees in that photo. Sorry, but it was the best photo of the Berkshires I could find this morning)
Shiver ARC, Secret Rooms, Peep Holes and A Makeover

25 Jun 2009 | 6:11 am

Okay, so that's an odd combination, but that's how my mind works sometimes (yeah, most of the time). I discovered that in order to get going on my WIP, I had to write a description of most of the rooms in Avery House and how they related to the characters, hauntings and the time period, and each other. I've never done this before, but I'll tell you this-- the phrases "secret room" and "peep hole" can sure make a plot go from creepy to frightening really fast. As for makeovers. After work today, I'm taking my Gypsy dog--who's supposed…
Breast Cancer Research: Donate and Recieve a Signed Copy of James Maxey's Latest Novel DRAGONSEED

23 Jun 2009 | 3:07 am

THIS IS SOMETHING I CAN GET BEHIND. TAKE A MINUTE AND READ JAMES' PERSONAL STORY AND ABOUT HEALING AND DRAGONSEED. (his goal is a modest $300 dollars and he's hoping for donations to average $6.00)FROM JAMES MAXEY:"Followers of my blogs, and the readers who read the acknowledgement pages of my books, will know that I lost my partner Laura Herrmann to breast cancer in May 2006. I've been interested in cancer research since then and have privately made contributions to cancer related charities, but I've never put out any sort of appeal on my blogs to solicit for this cause, until…
700 Hundred Years Worth of Ghosts and How I Spent My Sunday

22 Jun 2009 | 8:11 am

Yesterday, I decided to lump the last of my secondary characters into one mass character profile—“the ghosts” that haunt Avery House and the surrounding grounds. This was one of the best decisions I could have made because it forced me to focus on the 700 year historic timeline of the location instead of on individual ghosts--which would have been overly time consuming and not necessarily any more helpful. I’m so thrilled with the results. I know historically why the ghost (some individuals and others as massed entities) are haunting, how…

Something Wicked
Happy Fourth of July!

Casey

4 Jul 2009 | 8:24 am

I hope everyone will enjoy celebrating today. My family and I will be spending the day with in-laws and their extended family as well as friends. Always fun, and something I look forward to each year.Have a wonderful–and safe–holiday!PS, in case you missed the comment added to my blog from last week. We here at Wicked have been nominated for a blog award. Check it out at:http://ladyvampire2u.blogspot.com/2009/07/ive-been-awarded.html
Almost the 4th!

Lori Devoti

3 Jul 2009 | 8:38 am

I was a big fan of the 4th of July growing up. It meant family barbecues and fireworks. We did our own and for the most part managed to make it through without any crazy damage. I do remember my cousin fainting when she got a spark from a sparkler in her eye. Then another year my other cousin (boy) brought a smoke bomb into the house and set it on our TV. He burned both the TV and a painted bust of I think Geronimo, but both survived...as did the house. The 4th was also one of my friend's birthdays...Happy Birthday, Jeanine! So we had cake and such. Yeah, the 4th was a big deal at our…
Happy 4th!!!

Shirley Damsgaard

2 Jul 2009 | 2:18 am

The 4th of July has always been one of my favorite holidays. So many fun things to do...parades, picnics, spending time with friends and family, and of course, fireworks! There's just something about sitting outside on a hot summer night and watching the sky explode with a thousand sparkling lights. It's not that I necessarily like explosions, or have a desire to blow things up. In fact, ever since that unfortunate incident a few years ago, I've been banned by my family and my friends of ever lighting fireworks myself. (Was it my fault that the stupid canister holding the charge tipped just…
Pet the kitty

Ann Aguirre

1 Jul 2009 | 9:47 am

I have stuff going on here so it makes it hard to think of anything to say just now. So instead enjoy this kitty.
Fun on the 4th

Angie Fox

30 Jun 2009 | 7:39 am

My husband was after me last night to make 4th of July holiday plans. Now as a lot of you know, I'm not a big planner. In fact, over-scheduling a three-day weekend makes me feel boxed in and, well, uncomfortable. You need room to be spontaneous.While we're not fully scheduled yet, talking about it last night had me thinking of holidays as a kid, when my biggest concern was my brother blowing up my dolls with firecrackers. This was the 70's. We also had lawn darts.It also reminded me of this old Schoolhouse Rock video that we used to watch at school. Lo and behold, it's on YouTube.So what does…

Talking Squid
Chris Lawson on The Arrival by Shaun Tan

Chris Lawson

16 Jun 2009 | 1:42 am

Norm Geras kindly asked me to write a Writer’s Choice piece for normblog. I chose, as you may have already gathered, to wax rapturously about Shaun Tan’s The Arrival.
Science Scout ‘Nerd Merit Badges’

Stephen Dedman

11 Jun 2009 | 7:59 pm

Thanks to boingboing for linking to these ‘Nerd Merit Badges’ for Science Scouts. I can’t help envying those who actually qualified for the “I actually grew up AND became a paleontologist who studies dinosaurs” badge - or even the “rock licker” badge.
Ditmar results 2009

Chris Lawson

7 Jun 2009 | 9:28 am

Thanks to Cheryl Morgan for liveblogging the awards ceremony at Conjecture and to Dave Cake for emailing the results in a handy CTRL-C-able format. Ain’t technology wunnerful? A. Bertram Chandler Award Rosaleen Love William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism and Review Kim Wilkins, “Popular genres and the Australian literary community: the case of fantasy fiction” in the Journal of Australian Studies Best New Talent Felicity Dowker Best Professional Achievement Angela Challis, for Black, the Australian Dark Culture Magazine Best Fan Production ASif!, edited by Alisa Krasnostein…
From the Annals of Injudicious Marketing

Chris Lawson

28 May 2009 | 4:32 am

Purchased by Peter, a friend of the Squid, in a Wollongong food market.
Theatre’s alchemy

Chris Lawson

26 May 2009 | 5:34 pm

Took the family to the school production of West Side Story on Saturday. Seriously, seriously well done. If we had paid to see this production on the theatre circuit in Melbourne, we would have gone home happy. Friends had tried to prepare their young children for the complexities of the story by renting the 1961 movie but found it difficult to watch; their suspension of disbelief kept getting crushed between the faithful rendition of New York and the bizarre antics of hoodlum gangs singing and dancing their stories. But, they told us during the intermission, on stage it all seemed perfectly…

theinferior4+1
Old Pamphlet for Rockefeller Center

theinferior4+1

4 Jul 2009 | 7:56 am

The first 2 scans constitute the "outside" of the sheet; the next 2 scans constitute the "inside."Click to make big. Posted by Paul DiFi.
Joan Greenwood's Voice

theinferior4+1

4 Jul 2009 | 7:47 am

I have one question for UK readers of this blog: Does any British woman in 2009 sound like Joan Greenwood?Hear her here, in these two clips, with, alas, only a bit of inimitable dialogue in each.Posted by Paul DiFi.
Blessed are the tastemakers

lizhand

3 Jul 2009 | 8:38 am

The Pope has moved to beatify Cardinal John Newman, the 19th century convert to Catholicism whose writings influenced Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater, among others, and thus paved the way for Lord Marchmain's deathbed scene in Brideshead Revisited.http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/07/03/world/AP-EU-Vatican-Newman.htmlBeatification, as you all know, is one step closer to sainthood, and is attained by being able to work miracles (this is posthumously, by virtue of the afflicted praying to you for intercession; I suspect we could skip a few steps if the miracles occurred while…
Etc.

lucius_t

2 Jul 2009 | 6:50 pm

More Patagonia to dress up this post...Got the Jim Burns cover art for my rewrite of Viator and was going to post it, but when I saved it to my desktop, it turned solarized and purplish...So I guess I'll forego posting it. Suffice it to say, it's very cool.I was blog-hopping he other day and ran across Mike Brotherton's blog wherein he picks the the ten best scenes in science fiction movies. http://www.mikebrotherton.com/?p=1244Mine are so different than his, I thought I'd post mine and see what y'all's were. So in no particular order, this purely idosyncratic list,…
Frazetta's FLASHMAN

theinferior4+1

2 Jul 2009 | 8:41 am

I must say that I never saw this Frazetta cover until a few days ago, and a Google search makes it seem generally less-well-known, despite its awesomeness. [Click to embiggen.]Posted by Paul DiFi.

Wyrdsmiths
Friday Cat Blogging

Kelly McCullough

3 Jul 2009 | 4:10 am

Summer and the living is easy.Die, Ebil Couch, Die!Arghhh! Chipmunk! Arghhhh!Relax, I killz it with my mindz.Does you likez, mah new split-level?
CONvergence is Immenent

lydamorehouse

2 Jul 2009 | 6:52 am

Which is why, I suspect, it's pretty much crickets over here. Kelly may already be there (though not to worry, gentle readers, I see he has a "Friday Cat Blog" all set up in the queue.) If you somehow haven't heard, Kelly is one of the guests of honor at CONvergence this year.When we occasionally talk about self-promotion there's usually a very quick, off-hand, "Oh, and go to conventions." Most of the time, that's excellent advice. But not all science fiction conventions are created equal, and what you get out of a convention is really dependent on what you're looking for and, potentially,…
Advice to a Self-Published Friend

tate hallaway

30 Jun 2009 | 7:16 am

So I have this friend (no, really....) Anyway, she e-mailed m on Facebook the other day asking for some advice. She's got a self-published poetry book and she wanted to know how to get people to buy it. What can she do?Hmmmm.I probably shouldn't have, but I ended up telling her the truth: I'm sorry. Not much.Poetry is a tough sell even when it's published by a New York publishing house to rave reviews in the New Yorker. Heck, fiction books are a tough sells.... and publishers aren't always even sure themselves what sells a book (or an author, as it were.)She'd asked about ideas for getting…
Smart Things

Kelly McCullough

29 Jun 2009 | 8:20 am

My friend Beth saying smart things about choices.updated to add my friend Stephanie saying smart things about another friend, James Hall, and the 15th birthday of the operating system he wrote: FreeDOS. More here.
Kelly's CONvergence Schedule

Kelly McCullough

28 Jun 2009 | 7:36 am

So, I'm going to be GOHing at CONvergence this coming weekend and thought I ought to post my schedule. Wednesday July 1: Evening: ReceptionThursday July 2:5:00 PM: Going from a Poor Unpublished Author to a Poor Published Author (Panelist(s): Kelly McCullough, Pat Rothfuss7:00 PM: Opening Ceremony Main StageFriday July 312:30 PM: Beta Reading: Relying on the Honesty of Friends (Panelist(s): Kelly McCullough, Terry Garey, Elise Matthesen, M. K. Melin, Kathy Sullivan2:00 PM: Kelly McCullough GOH Reading 3:30 PM: Inserting Humor Into Your Writing (Panelist(s): Kelly McCullough, Brian Keene, M. K.

Joe Abercrombie
e-books, limited editions, and exciting anthologies

2 Jul 2009 | 10:06 am

Pleased to note that Best Served Cold, and the First Law Trilogy, are now available on e-book via Waterstones.com:The Blade ItselfBefore They Are HangedLast Argument of KingsBest Served ColdThe prices are a tad disappointing - £10 and change for Best Served Cold when a hardback is selling at £8.50, and around £6 for the First Law books when mass-market paperbacks are available for a mere £4. My own feeling about e-piracy and so forth is that it's virtually impossible to put a stop to - the more popular you are the more torrents will endlessly spring up, and most of them in places where…
Back from Scandinavia

29 Jun 2009 | 1:18 am

I have returned from my trip to Scandinavia, and it went most well. It was a flying visit - a day in Stockholm, a day in Gothenberg, and a day in Oslo, with four hours in airports, five hours on planes, and ten or eleven on trains in between - and hence slightly knackering. I spent the whole time in a slightly disoriented state of mild bafflement. Even more so than usual. But I got to meet my Swedish publisher, who are releasing The Blade Itself in Swedish in August (split in two books, but released together). They are actually keeping something close to the original title as well, unusually.
The Brief, Wondrous Road of Oscar Finch

22 Jun 2009 | 3:58 am

For a man who reads few books, I have read quite a few books recently. Three excellent pieces of fiction in particular, though only one of them could be considered fantasy and that of a rather peculiar and fungus-ridden variety. Still, I warmly recommend all three to anyone capable of reading in English, for they are excellent (as I said above), and all quick, sharp, page-turning reads as well. You could probably fit all three into a hollowed out hardcover of Storm of Swords and have room left over for a banana. And believe me, once you'd finished the last of them, you'd really need that…
Almost Glory

21 Jun 2009 | 12:10 am

The validity of the David Gemmell Legend Award was called into serious question on Friday night when I didn't win.A ha ha.Andrzej Sapkowski won for his Blood of Elves, so congratulations to him (forced spittily through gritted teeth, of course). In many ways not that surprising since he's much the biggest selling author on the list - bigger than Stephen King in his native Poland and pretty massive in translation in Europe and elsewhere - it shows the huge difficulty authors who don't write in English face getting translated into English that Sapkowski has only in the last couple of years had…
Best Served Cold Reviewed ... Lots

13 Jun 2009 | 12:52 pm

Much movement upon the blogosphere and, indeed, in the realms of printed media, with all manner of opinion expressed about Best Served Cold . I will try to get through all the ones I'm aware of. First up, a review from that esteemed organ of the US book trade Publishers Weekly has also weighed in, with a starred review, no less:"Abercrombie returns to the blood-drenched arena of the First Law trilogy (The Blade Itself, etc.) with this skillfully crafted and bleakly humorous sword and sorcery adventure. Duke Orso imagines that he can become king by ending the civil wars that have devastated…

Dan Abnett
Toronto Bash

Dan Abnett

17 Jun 2009 | 2:38 am

I’m busy as a very busy thing on National Let’s Be Extra Busy Day, but there are a couple or three things I just wanted to mention. The first is Games Day Canada in Toronto this Saturday (already?!?), and I’m looking forward to seeing you there, though I acknowledge that Toronto may be a long way for some of you to come unless you’re Canadian.Because of Toronto and the other busy things (see above), my next round of You Tube ramblings has been slightly delayed. My apologies. I will gather up all the questions put forward both here and on Facebook and get on with it as soon as I’m…
Questions, questions.

Dan Abnett

23 May 2009 | 12:36 pm

Last weekend, I spent time with Adelie High, recording some stuff to camera, where I rambled on about what I do, and answered a few questions sent in via the internet. It seemed to go well. The results, 6 short films, are now up on YouTube. Just go there and put my name into the search engine. A variety of subjects is covered, including the off-cuts and outtakes.As this dry run was successful, we intend to delve deeper, and we'd like to give you more warning so that you can ask questions. Post them here... Anything you'd like to ask me. Post them up by next Friday night (29th May), and we'll…
Illuminations

Dan Abnett

15 May 2009 | 12:47 pm

To GWs Manchester and Liverpool, I want to belatedly record what a fun time I had at both of your stores. Thank you for throwing on the events at such short notice, and huge thanks to the readers and acolytes who turned out in force to meet with me. For the record, my trip to Blackpool was as sublime as last year: Lily acquitted herself splendidly in the formation teams of the ballroom, and I drew ever closer to the core of an idea that Blackpool is the setting for the most significant and troubling novel of my career.Back home, I am working hard to produce Marvel’s Cosmic scripts on a week…
Nik, in Dan's absence

Dan Abnett

3 May 2009 | 9:26 am

This is just to say that Dan Abnett and Nik Vincent are now TWITTERING as VincentAbnett. Trivia concerning underbed overhangs, the Hussar and swine flu over the cuckoo's nest, not to mention Czacza Gaborgia will appear their, in brief. Check us out. Pun-hunters especially welcome.In all other matters, normal service will be restored shortly...
Free Comic Book Day..

Dan Abnett

26 Apr 2009 | 12:40 pm

... is this coming Saturday, May 2nd, and to honour it, I will be at Videosyncratic on the Cowley Road in Oxford, along with Simon Davis (Sinister Dexter and so much else), Richard Elson (Marauder and, of course, Kingdom) and 2000AD’s Tharg the Mighty, Matt Smith, in a 2000AD-themed Free Comic Book Day event! Be there or... or... we’ll be lonely! It all starts at 1.00pm! It’ll be great! I may even use another exclamation mark! Look, I did!

Ann Aguirre
More hot winners

Ann Aguirre

3 Jul 2009 | 10:43 am

BOUND BY YOUR TOUCH winner: Jane SCANDAL winner: Paula I also have more exciting news. TWO of last week’s winners didn’t get in touch with me. Only Evan has his shiny new book at this point, so I am drawing two more names. ALTERNATE MoTD winners: Hockeyvampiress Beverly If these two don’t get in touch with me within a week, then I am giving up, and I will be super bummed that only Evan wanted his copy enough to email me. It’s an awesome book! All winners contact me at ann.aguirre at gmail.com please. I need your names and mailing info. Play on, players, and have a…
Summer Heat 2

Ann Aguirre

30 Jun 2009 | 8:41 am

I’m a historical mood today. That means to beat the heat (even though these authors actually bring the heat), I’m giving away more bookish goodness. First up is Meredith Duran’s delicious BOUND BY YOUR TOUCH. Meredith Duran writes with power, lyricism and elegance that never overshadows the strength of her characters. She is a luminary talent who will rise to take her place among such historical romance greats as Laura Kinsale and Loretta Chase. In BOUND BY YOUR TOUCH, she succeeds on every level. Her hero is charming, but broken. Her heroine is brilliant, but wounded. This…
Hot winners

Ann Aguirre

26 Jun 2009 | 7:43 am

MARK OF THE DEMON winners: Evan Terri Q SMD TRICK OF THE LIGHT winners: Jackie U Yasmin SKIN DEEP winner: -V- Winners have a week to email me with their mailing info at ann.aguirre at gmail.com. If I don’t hear from you, I will presume you don’t want your glorious book and give it to someone who does. Congrats, winners! Thanks for playing. There will be a new summer heat contest next week.
Summer Heat giveaway

Ann Aguirre

22 Jun 2009 | 9:08 pm

For most of you, the summer is just beginning. Technically, it’s summer here too, but the worst of the heat is behind us. Summer is rainy and chilly here — to which I can only say, thank goodness! I was getting tired of the burning sun and water rationing. Anyhow, since I have more than enough cool to share the wealth (I mean this in a meteorological sense, but you’re welcome to think otherwise), I have three very cool books lined up to give away today and two of them, thanks to my amazing editor Anne Sowards, aren’t even available in stores yet. What do I have for…
10 years down the road.

andres

10 Jun 2009 | 4:23 pm

I remember, through the dim fog of age, what I wanted to be when I grew up. Coming to think of it, it might not be age making things foggy, but rather my brain suffering from my lifestyle in the early 90’s… but I digress. In an oddly apropos coincidence, what I wanted to be when I grew up was a Starship captain. I figured if Kirk could do what he did (take that as you will) when he was 30, then heck; 30 did not look so bad from the tender age of 10. 12? Something like that. Details, details, details. Now, other than the ugly orange shirt and too-tight pants, the whole adventure…

Colleen Anderson
Penticton and Wayward Travels

colleenanderson

4 Jul 2009 | 12:40 am

I drove up with friends yesterday (this was July 1 but there have been internet issues) to Penticton. This is an extended Canada Day that will go until the weekend. The drive started out fine and one car took the Hope-Princeton route and they other, my car, the Coquihalla route. It’s been about four years since I was last out this way, I think, so how much could it change? I have never wanted to drive through the Interior during the winter, especially on the Coquihalla Highway, which is a top of the world sort of place and has high snow. In fact, they insist you have chains and/or snow…
Glasgow and the End of the Journey

colleenanderson

1 Jul 2009 | 9:50 am

Today is Canada Day and I’m off travelling out of town. So here is the last of my journey to Ireland and Scotland from Fall 2007. Our last day in Glasgow started with the museum and then we went off to St. Mungo’s religious museum. Housed in the oldest standing building in Glasgow, it was a fairly bland exhibition and the building wasn’t that interesting. So we walked up the street and over to the Glasgow Cathedral, but it was late in the day and it turned out it closed at 4:00. The guy was really just locking up so he said you have five minutes. I zoomed around taking…
Glasgow and the Kelvingrove Museum

colleenanderson

30 Jun 2009 | 12:48 pm

Ireland 2007–Glasgow Museum I have now hit the last of the Irish photos from Fall 2007 and these are the last of the trip spent in Glasgow on the way home. I’d love to write more on Ireland but that will take another trip and if anyone is willing to send me, I’ll gladly go. But my other travels will now be more local. Our lovely trip to Ireland ended and on Monday morning we flew back to Glasgow to Will and Erin’s place, wonderful people to put us up in their wee flat. I think my sister and I were a bit dragged out and didn’t really do more that snooze until…
Alcoholism and Life

colleenanderson

29 Jun 2009 | 10:31 am

I grew up with an alcoholic father. Some might debate this but he drank a fair amount, did terrible things to us and grew violent. It was not pretty and it marred us with scars we bear to this day. My mother went back to school at one point and worked as an alcohol and drug abuse counsellor so she knew the signs well. It’s interesting, before she moved into that line of work, the men she dated were all alcoholics. I also had a friend who became my best friend and lived across the alley from me. We got into various types of trouble together, went to parties, and drank underage, as most…
Michael Jackson: Shooting Star

colleenanderson

26 Jun 2009 | 10:34 am

I grew up with Michael Jackson, or his music anyways. But that’s not hard to say for most of us. After all, when a career spans forty-five years, many people can say the same thing. As the news rolled in, people and media have expressed their shock, that they were stunned. Sadly, I can say I was not. I have said that I expected that Michael would die an early death, like Elvis, than live to a ripe old age. I have called him a shooting star for years, for he is and was exactly that. A shooting star ascends high into the heavens, or so high up that everyone can see that light. But such a…

Eleanor Arnason
Think Galacticon

Eleanor

1 Jul 2009 | 5:31 am

I spent last weekend at Think Galacticon in Chicago, a very nice con at Roosevelt University in the Adler-Sullivan Auditorium Building. It is the first time I have attended a con in an architectural masterpiece.The building is on Michigan Avenue, opposite Lake Michigan, and our hotel was the same. Patrick and I spent Friday going to the Chicago Architecture Foundation and the Art Institute, then Pat wandered around downtown Chicago while I attended the con. So, blue lake, sailboats, Taste of Chicago in Grant Park, a look at the Impressionists at the Art Institute and a con in an Adler and…
Unemployment Yet Again

Eleanor

23 Jun 2009 | 7:34 am

Unemployment payments can be set up two ways: as a debit card account at US Bank or as direct deposit to the unemployed person's regular bank account. Patrick went with the debit card. Today he took money out of the unemployment account and deposited it in his checking account. Because the deposit was in cash, he thought he ought to explain it to the teller. He said, "If I'd known I was going to be unemployed this long, I would have told them to set the payments up as direct deposit."The teller said, "You can't believe how many times a day I hear that. It must be terrible out there."
Eyewitness News from Iran

Eleanor

22 Jun 2009 | 6:24 am

via Juan Cole's blog:Saturday, they watched from their apartment window a clash between the police and the construction site workers at the Towhid Tunnel (which is predicted to connect Parkway to Nawab). The police tried to make a shortcut to reach the protesters, and ambush them on the other side, when the workers told them they would not let them through this led to a clash between the workers and the police. The workers used all types of construction machineries to halt the police from shovels to bricks and the cement truck. The situation between the workers, mostly from Lor and Turkish…
The Last Watch on the Midland

Eleanor

21 Jun 2009 | 12:13 pm

Here is Ian Bruce singing the great Stan Rogers song. The opening is rough, but I love the wallpaper and the lamp and the chair and the audience singing. And Ian Bruce's overalls.
YIP Harburg

Eleanor

21 Jun 2009 | 11:42 am

About YIP Harburg, lyricist for "Brother Can You Spare a Dime":Yip wrote the lyrics to over 600 songs with a variety of composers. "It's Only a Paper Moon" (1932, with Arlen), "Over the Rainbow" (1939, Arlen, which won the Academy Award), "We're Off to See the Wizard," "Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead" and "Happiness Is Just a Thing Called Joe" (1943, Arlen, from the film Cabin in the Sky). Later, with Lane, he wrote "Old Devil Moon" and "How Are Things in Glocca Morra?" The team of Arlen and Harburg also wrote Groucho Marx's signature song, "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady" (1939, from At the Circus).

Fiona Avery
First Birthday - Tweeks Weekly

Fiona Avery

28 Jun 2009 | 11:56 am

Tweeks Weekly celebrates its first birthday! July 2009 marks the month in which Tweeks Weekly turns one-year old. To celebrate we gave the site a face-lift. Wouldn’t d’Arka be proud?A thank you to all our readers, all of you! In the past year we’ve had at least 670 unique visitors and 1,555 visits to Tweeks Weekly. We’ve only mentioned the site in a few areas of the vast net that we all share and word of mouth has done the rest. At one year strong, there’s still much more story left to tell and we hope that you all will stay around and enjoy the adventures of Severin, Genesta,…
Memorial Day

Fiona Avery

25 May 2009 | 11:31 am

While I know these days it is recognized more for soldiers of war than civilian memorials, I just wanted to say that it has been almost exactly six months since the passing of Great Uncle Bill and Neferkiti in our family and that for the first time, I have a reason to celebrate a Memorial Day holiday in my entire life. I consider myself blessed to have gone 34 years without a specific, family-related loss which relates to this holiday. But I also consider myself blessed that on this holiday I have a moment to recall the beautiful aspects of those I have lost to the long sleep.I hold my dear…
So Long! And Thanks for all the Vorlons!

Fiona Avery

15 May 2009 | 11:08 am

Dear friends, family, fans, community members:I'm leaving the Los Angeles area in about two weeks. I'm retiring from the Hollywood Scene and I have a ton of Babylon 5 and Crusade memorabilia in my garage that's just sitting there being sad that no one wants it. Off the top of my head, because I haven't dug into that room yet during packing, there's a huge HUGE artwork piece of starfuries dogfighting and at least one Crusade Poster there. I'm also trying to convince myself to part with my Vorlon ship (this one's hard!) that was the only mock-up from the art department. I also have a $600…
someone else said it better

Fiona Avery

18 Apr 2009 | 6:37 pm
Chapter 32 for Unit 32, on 3-22!

Fiona Avery

23 Mar 2009 | 1:34 pm

A year or so after writing it, who would have guessed that Chapter 32 was the pivotal Seven Point Defense test in Tweeks Weekly? We just portion out the chapters per week without any forethought as to what will go up, just what's comfortable to read under 25 manuscript pages. And here it is, Unit 32's little golden girl, and her big test for Tweeks Headquarters. How fun is that? We've got a new blog in the works too, once we figure out all the feed set up. We're hosting it at Wordpress. That should make updating behind-the-scenes and stuff more personal and keep it right on the site rather…

Paolo Bacigalupi
Cover art for The Windup Girl

Paolo

3 Jul 2009 | 11:57 am

I’m blown away by the cover art that’s come in for The Windup Girl. Hats off to Night Shade Books, and Raphael Lacoste, the artist. Can’t wait for the September release.
EcoGeek Interview crops up on io9

Paolo

7 Apr 2009 | 7:13 am

I give an interview over at EcoGeek.org where I display all of my tact and verbal discipline (LOL) to talk about green technologies and my jaundiced views of the future. A sample bit: As environmental ideas have entered the zeigeist, mostly thanks to global warming–and still mostly focused on that issue–plenty of technology companies are lining up to tell us how they’re helping green/save/clean the environment. Advertising agencies and PR firms are delighted to sell us any number of “green” gizmos and they’re throwing in some nice self-esteem blowjobs for…
Nominated for the Hugo

Paolo

20 Mar 2009 | 7:32 am

I’ve just been nominated for the Hugo Award for my novelette “The Gambler.” I want to thank everyone who voted for the story, and also Lou Anders over at Pyr Books who leaned on me to sit down and write the thing when I wasn’t sure I had a story in me. So again, thanks, and congratulations to all the other nominees. It’s an honor not only to be nominated, but to find myself in such good company.
Reading Tonight in Minneapolis

Paolo

7 Feb 2009 | 6:47 am

Just a quick reminder that I’ll be reading and signing 6:30 tonight at Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis. If you’re in the area, come on by. Should be fun.
Minneapolis Reading (SOON!)

Paolo

27 Jan 2009 | 8:14 am

On Saturday, February 7th at 6:30pm, (that’s just a week and a half away), I’ll be doing a reading and book signing at DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis. I give pretty good read, so it should be a fun time. Here’s the location info on DreamHaven Books, taken from their website: The store is located in south Minneapolis, on East 38th Street, between Cedar Avenue and Hiawatha (Hwy 55). We have free store parking in back of the building (you can enter from E 38th St). The 22G, 22H, 14B, and 23 buses run by the store. There is also a Light Rail stop 7 blocks away on E 38th St…

Steven Barnes
Elephant-man in the living room

Steven Barnes

29 Jun 2009 | 8:16 pm

I don't know if anyone, or anything, could have saved Micheal Jackson. But the willingness of millions of people to lie to themselves and each other about the glaring, obvious dysfunction is exactly the kind of "elephant in the living room" thinking that affects our health, relationships, racial relations, educational system and more. My plea is to ask yourself where do you have a Micheal in your life--your behaviors, or those of people close to you. What won't you look at, for fear of losing love? Fear of being rejected from your core group? Honesty is hard. Living with the results of lying…
On Micheal Jackson's Downfall

Steven Barnes

28 Jun 2009 | 10:57 am

It was suggested that homicides are responsible for 75% of the difference in life expectancy stats between black and white men. For that reason, the government should concentrate on reducing homicides. Good call. Let's see...do I believe that Universal health care would reduce homicides?I'd look at the homicide stats between countries with and without Universal health care, for a starter. Don't have 'em in front of me, but I'm betting they're pretty interesting. But let's go deeper. What, in my mind, drives homicide?Fear. Fear of death, sickness, poverty, loss of ego-shields. Many homicides…
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen

Steven Barnes

26 Jun 2009 | 10:04 pm

Making cinematic history with (arguably) the fewest IQ points per dollar spent on production, Micheal Bay's Transformers 2 comes loaded with critical and audience accusations of racism, mysogyny, and raping our childhood memories. Is it true? Well, yes and no. The truth is that in this tale of humans caught between warring tribes of robots, there is nothing remotely resembling a human heart. This is 2 1/2 hours of stereotypes and clanging metal. So when you hear that there are two hip-hop robots, one with gold teeth, and they look like monkeys, act clownish, speak in ghetto accents and have…
Thanks, Erich

Steven Barnes

26 Jun 2009 | 7:59 am

Tobias Bucknell sent me the following email this morning about the health care debate:By the way, the comment you got about scores of Canadians coming to the US is another anecdotal fantasy:http://content.healthaffairsorgcgi/content/full/21/3/19Turns out it's a small handful. Usually rich Canadians who don't want to wait.Meanwhile, millions of Americans actually go to Mexico:httpwwweurekalertorg/pub_releases/2009-05/uoc--n1m052609.phpAbout half of the million Californians who flee to Mexico to seek medical care are Mexican immigrants, so it might be reasonable to halve the numbers. What…
Micheal Jackson, dead at 50

Steven Barnes

25 Jun 2009 | 5:25 pm

Micheal Jackon's body died today. He himself died years ago. Every time he was accused of another atrocity, he died a little. Every step he took trying to turn himself white he died a little more. I mourn the incredibly talented boy he was, but the man he became was painful beyond belief. People's unwillingness to see the obvious truth of his sickness disgusted me. I remember seeing him sitting alone in the CBS commissary while his brothers ripped and ran around the building. He looked so lost. I wish I'd sat with him and spoken. What an incredible talent. What an incredible waste. I thought…

Max Barry
Now that's real-time

12 Jun 2009 | 12:29 am

Yesterday I did something very cool. You might not think so. If you’re the sort of person who paraglides, for example. Or leaves the house most days. But for me: totally exciting. In the morning, I carried my coffee upstairs to my office and checked my email. This is almost always a bad idea, but still, hard to resist. I had a message from Meredith, who said she was very much enjoying Machine Man. That wasn’t the cool part. Well, it was. It’s always cool when someone tells you they like something you wrote. It never gets old. But what came next was even cooler: Meredith was…
Machine Man update

4 May 2009 | 12:03 am

Seriously: I’m making this story up as I go. I didn’t say that just to lower your expectations. It’s a work in progress. I haven’t plotted it out in advance. I write each page a few days before you see it. I’d like to believe the reason I keep getting emails like, “Come on, tell me: how much of this have you written already?” is that people think Machine Man is so amazingly brilliant that no mere mortal could dream it up on the run. Unfortunately, I have to face the fact that you just think I’m shifty. So look, I swear: it’s for real.
Terrifying Love

20 Apr 2009 | 2:48 pm

Forgive me, but I need to get this off my chest. I am a Richmond Tigers fan. That’s a football team. And by football, I mean Australian Rules. I don’t want to get into a whole debate about which football code is best, but it’s this one. Let’s just stipulate that and move on. I began following the Tigers when I was about eight. Looking back, I think it was the exact moment they transitioned from a league powerhouse to the most spectacularly unsuccessful football team of the last quarter-century. I love the Tigers, but so far the journey has comprised three or four…
Memory Bones

9 Apr 2009 | 12:04 am

I don’t want to freak you out, but MY DAUGHTER’S STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY HAS BEEN BREACHED. Her bones have bent. One has cracked. She has broken her arm. It happened at an indoor play center, one of those technicolor places with dizzying heights and terrifying drops, trampolines that launch children through the air like patriot missiles and treacherous plastic balls that sneak out of pits to slip beneath tiny sneakers. Naturally, Fin navigated these with contemptuous ease, then tripped over her own feet on a stretch of flat carpet. Exactly how you break an arm falling two and a half…
Lessons from the Machine

25 Mar 2009 | 9:58 pm

A writer friend emailed me about Machine Man: I’ve managed to get to the FAQ, but am I REALLY supposed to believe what you have posted there? I think he means that writing is a good way to send yourself insane before you ask everyone in the world to watch you work and post comments. True, it’s not a method I’d generally recommend. It’s essential to stay excited about a work-in-progress, and there may be no better way to deflate yourself about a promising story than to show it to people before it’s ready. But I am a big boy. And I did set expectations before I…

Christopher Barzak
Stonewall at 40

Christopher Barzak

28 Jun 2009 | 8:44 am

Rick Bowes writes a guest blog over at Matt Cheney’s blog The Mumpsimus, on Stonewall forty years later. Read it. It’s not only good, it’s a great perspective.
“Political Shifts on Gay Rights Lag Behind Culture”

Christopher Barzak

27 Jun 2009 | 10:49 pm

Duh!
C’est Moi

Christopher Barzak

25 Jun 2009 | 10:00 pm

I rarely post pics like I did all the time in Japan, since it was like, you know, another country and all that. But my friend Jan took a pic of me tonight at a board meeting for the Oakland Center for the Arts, and I didn’t realize it. I always like the candid photos better than the ones I actually know people are taking. Somehow, as soon as I know a photo is being shot, I turn into ice. But I like this one. It’s in the artist’s gallery in the Oakland, one of my “places” here in Youngstown, where I give my time and energy and thought and all that good…
Charlie Brooker on the American News Media. Funny

Christopher Barzak

25 Jun 2009 | 9:13 am

Seriously funny, seriously pathetic, seriously. Thanks to my friend James in Manchester for sending me this.
One resolution accomplished

Christopher Barzak

22 Jun 2009 | 11:01 am

Back around New Year’s, I made one writerly resolution. From that blog post: “One of my goals for the year is to write something joyful instead of melancholy, extroverted instead of introverted, playful instead of serious. I suspect I will have to change some of the ways I perceive things to do so. But that could be a good thing. Fingers crossed and intentions set. Full steam ahead.” And finally, in May and June of this spring and summer, I think I’ve done it, in a short story. It’s a more irregular way of writing for me, but it was definitely fun.

Lee Battersby
JUST WONDERING

Lee Battersby...

26 Jun 2009 | 5:25 pm

Am I the only one who wonders what would have happened if the young Bruce Wayne had fallen down that hole and landed in, say, a badger’s set instead?
A CONGREGATION OF CANTLETS

Lee Battersby...

25 Jun 2009 | 5:31 am

1. I’m sick, Connor is sick, we go to the doctor’s for a checkup. It’s sniffles and running noses all round, so it’s bound to be just a cold, but Connor’s got a chesty cough and I need the sick note for work, so we find our nearest medical centre and make an appointment.This is our first visit to a doctor in Mandurah, so Connor receives The Talk before we go. Once there we’re called up; enter the doctor’s room, and the doctor, who is the kind that keeps a big plastic tub of his jelly beans on his desk, turns to Connor first. After the usual “What’s your name? And how old are…
JUST ANOTHER BORING OLD WEEKEND IN MANDURAH

Lee Battersby...

31 May 2009 | 6:04 am

This is what we moved down here for. Yesterday, after Connor returned from his friend's birthday party, we piled into the car and drove out to the Pinjarra Show, where we spent three hours wandering around stalls, listening to horrendously bad country music (by a band named, wait for it, "The Lone Rangers". Yup, the only four blokes in town who haven't seen Airheads....), and fondling antiques while the kids went on camel rides, fondled snakes, and stuffed themselves full of strange-flavoured licorice. (Sour ice-cream flavour? Really?). And, of course, underwent the obligatory face-painting.
TIDBITS TO TIDE YOU OVER

Lee Battersby...

26 May 2009 | 6:04 am

Things are still mega busy at the new Batthome, so just to keep in contact, a couple of thoughts--ON THE PREMIER LEAGUEIs the anything funnier than seeing a fat, shirtless, toothless Geordie man crying?ON POULTRY BEHAVIOURSo to bide our time while Mum nipped into the shop, Erin, Connor and I sat in the car and told each other jokes. I was still crying with laughter from this effort when Lyn got back:ERIN: Connor, why did the chicken cross the road?CONNOR: (Pauses for well over half a minute while he contemplates possible answers. Finally....) Because he's stupid?Laugh? I nearly wet…
INCIDENTALLY...

Lee Battersby...

15 May 2009 | 7:50 am

... and those of you who know me will realise what a big thing it is that I say this:I loved Star Trek.

Jes Battis
Obama and Stonewall

Jes Battis

29 Jun 2009 | 6:17 pm

Fulltext of Obama's June 29 equality speech:President Obama: Hello, everybody. Hello, hello, hello. [Applause] Hey! Good to see you. [Applause] I'm waiting for FLOTUS here. FLOTUS always politics more than POTUS. Mrs. Obama: No, you move too slow. [Laughter] President Obama: It is great to see everybody here today, and they're just -- I've got a lot of friends in the room, but there are some people I want to especially acknowledge. First of all, somebody who helped ensure that we are in the White House, Steve Hildebrand. Please give Steve a big round of applause. [Applause] Where's Steve?
Prop 8 Upheld

Jes Battis

26 May 2009 | 10:23 am

*** Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight Fight ***---From the Advocate:After nearly three months of waiting for a decision, California's supreme court justices voted Tuesday to uphold Proposition 8, the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.The court ruled that the decision to eradicate the ban would go against the will of the people if overturned.Despite the ruling, the 18,000 gay and lesbian couples that wed after the supreme court's original decision in May 2008 will be allowed to stay married. Six of the seven supreme court justices voted to uphold Prop 8.Protests…
13 love stories

Jes Battis

24 May 2009 | 12:24 am

From The Advocate's 13 Love Stories to Counter Prop 8:
16 May 2009 | 2:09 pm

Jes Battis

16 May 2009 | 2:09 pm

From the AdvocateUruguay May Repeal Gay Military BanAndrew HarmonWhile the Obama administration grapples with its stated intent to repeal the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, Uruguay has moved one step ahead.The Uruguay defense ministry confirmed on Wednesday that minister of national defense Jose Bayardi (pictured) has signed a decree lifting a ban on gays serving in the nation’s armed forces. President Tabaré Vázquez has yet to sign the decree.The ban, which barred people with “open sexual deviations” from attending military academies and said gays were not…
Thanks

Jes Battis

10 May 2009 | 2:13 pm

A list of things I'm currently thankful for:1. My family and everyone, of every species, whom I love and who love me. I have blessings literally coming out of my ass. I'm so lucky. 1. Having a job that I love, and for which I'm very well-compensated.2. Living in Canada, where 90% my medical costs are federally absorbed by a healthcare system that, while by no means perfect, still operates semi-adequately and saves lives. I'm hoping that, by 2011, the cost of gender-reassignment surgery will be covered as a category of non-discrimination, and that this definition of being 'categorized' will be…

Elizabeth Bear
matociquala @ 2009-07-04T00:16:00

it's a great life, if you don't weaken

4 Jul 2009 | 12:16 am

Just got back from a really delightful Clarion West Party, and I have realized over the course of a wonderfully social day that I am still thinking--and telling people--about gregvaneekhout's debut novel Norse Code. I was talking with friends today about something that the book does really well, which is that it gets a peculiar and wonderful aspect of Norse mythology: Einsteinian time. Time as a navigable dimension,as it were (and I love that he has Fenrir, among others, explaining this.)Essentially, in Norse mythology, all events are inevitable because they have already happened and are…
matociquala @ 2009-07-03T15:28:00

it's a great life, if you don't weaken

3 Jul 2009 | 3:28 pm

This morning, I went climbing with a friend of the mighty Kij's (just bouldering, as we were pressed for time) at Seattle's Stone Gardens climbing gym. The bouldering was good--no idea how many problems we attemped, but I found most of the v0s and v1s doable, and I even tried a v2 or two. Sadly, I do not have a lot of courage for bouldering, but I am doing better than I was, and it was really, really good to get out and climb. I'm going to try to go out at least one afternoon next week, because my students will like me much better if I get some exercise around the pedagogy.
(originally, i typed "him.")

it's a great life, if you don't weaken

3 Jul 2009 | 7:57 am

All right. Seriously need to get out of this bed and shower and dress so I can go climbing.*emits a 60 cycle hum*Seattle may *actually* be The Glamour. *g*
the same four chords with different faces

it's a great life, if you don't weaken

2 Jul 2009 | 9:58 pm

So today I climbed a mountain.Okay, not very much of one. Just a little bit. But it was lovely, and easy enough that I found myself feeling confident that I'm in shape for Kilimanjaro if it ever does shape up that we can go (ashacat and I are currently planning to try to do it for our fortieth birthdays).Today was a hike on Rainier with medievalist and mac_stone, an absolute highlight of the trip. My first volcano and my first rainforest, all in one. On what may have officially been the most beautiful day of the year. We hiked about eight miles, all told, which means (DUN DUN…
imitation = flattery

it's a great life, if you don't weaken

1 Jul 2009 | 11:17 pm

Ooo. truepenny tells me it's time for the first lines meme!baaaaa....LONG!1) Vethulf and Skjaldwulf did not get along. (A Reckoning of Men, with truepenny)2) Tin laced her fingers together across her gravid belly and frowned along her nose at the feeble human child. (An Apprentice to Elves, with truepenny)3) The first hint of returning consciousness was the icy tickle of fluid dropping across his lids, lashes, nostrils. (Chill)4) It's harder to get good roles when you're dead. (Smile)5) Nothing made Matthew hate himself more than waiting for the elevator. (Patience & Fortitude) 6)…

Greg Bear
NEWS: Personalize Your Books

1 Jul 2009 | 6:01 pm
DISCUSSION: You're on TV

1 Jul 2009 | 6:01 pm
DISCUSSION: Question Regarding The Forge of God Series

23 Jun 2009 | 6:01 pm
DISCUSSION: Sci-Fi novel that is a tribute to Poul

23 Jun 2009 | 6:01 pm
DISCUSSION: Well, this was ABOUT to be published

21 Jun 2009 | 6:01 pm

John Birmingham
Rick Norman wrote a new blog post: Would you like a woman to escape from you? Do the following things:

3 Jul 2009 | 1:45 pm

Rick Norman wrote a new blog post: Would you like a woman to escape from you? Do the following things: When it comes to the conquered women, many things work, as long as we stricam own chances with mistakes that lack of education on women’s health and lack of successful models, the cause. I saw boys and men behaving VERY bad with women and having sex with the most beautiful of them (and he wanted them, [...]
Steve Mills wrote a new blog post: Reselling The Eve Accounts

3 Jul 2009 | 1:44 pm

Steve Mills wrote a new blog post: Reselling The Eve Accounts You will find many resellers of EVE account resellers, worldwide. There are close to 3,000 EVE accounts available with hundreds of level 70 and 80 characters ready to move to your server. Many resellers sell typeset and EVE accounts which were previously bought from other creators, mostly living in Europe and the USA. Some of [...]
P. C. Ocampo wrote a new blog post: 1067: Vicious Cycle of Error Messages

3 Jul 2009 | 11:40 am

P. C. Ocampo wrote a new blog post: 1067: Vicious Cycle of Error Messages The computers in the student lounge (three of them) are now up for the students’ use. There’s no internet though, so far that they still have to go to the computer lab or ask friends with WIFI capabilities. And by that I mean friends with laptops that have WIFI capabilities, not that the friends can access the [...]
Jeff Edwards wrote a new blog post: I see a bad moon rising

3 Jul 2009 | 8:48 am

Jeff Edwards wrote a new blog post: I see a bad moon rising Now for something from “Creedence clearwater revival”, and the fantastic “Bad moon rising”. It’s a great song in my opinion, and this gave me the chance to use some of the effects available on my sound card. The maximum simultaneous effects I can use are 2, so I opted for Reverb and Slap Back Echo. [...]
D. J. Black and Darkcloud are now friends

3 Jul 2009 | 2:27 am

D. J. Black and Darkcloud are now friends

David Bishop
2009: first six months progress report

David Bishop

1 Jul 2009 | 4:54 am

Half the year gone already, time for a recap. What have I achieved thus far, and what remains undone? Not enough and plenty are the short answers, but this is blog [not a twitter] so I'll elucidate. The biggest change is becoming a part-time lecturer in creative writing at Edinburgh Napier University. This consumes half the working week [and sometimes more], but provides financial freedom from having to do hackwork to pay the bills.It's worth mentioning how much I'm enjoying the job. We've been interviewing potential students for a while now, and it's a blast discovering what makes people…
I've been and done Dundee, you see

David Bishop

30 Jun 2009 | 10:49 pm

Sunday was Comics Day at the Dundee Literary Festival [and how nice that a literary festival has a comics day - others take note!]. Organiser Chris Murray did a wonderful job pulling everything together, and I got to natter with creators I haven't spoken to for years [Alan Grant, Warren Ellis, Gary Erskine, Colin MacNeil]. Met lots of new people too, like artist Emma Vieceli and graphic novels evangelist Mel Gibson [no, not that one].I ran a workshop on writing for graphic novels in the morning, before chipping in an afternoon presentation about Alan Moore's treatment of time frames in his…
Thank God almighty, draft three at last

David Bishop

26 Jun 2009 | 12:19 am

Finished the third draft of my Lighthouse project script this week, after an elephantine gestation process. It's effectively a first draft, as I had to throw nearly everything out from first two drafts and start again - and it shows. Pacing's hinky, characterisation inconsistent and it lacks a consistent tone. Some glimpses of good stuff, but project fatigue has taken its toll. Not even close to my best work, alas.I'm waiting on feedback and will make a decision after that whether I want to attempt a fourth draft. In truth, I'm more than ready to move on. The Lighthouse team writing project…
The unbearable Darkseid of being

David Bishop

18 Jun 2009 | 11:48 pm

Jack Kirby stripped bare. More existential madness here.
Two steps backward, one step forward

David Bishop

16 Jun 2009 | 2:29 am

I hate writing scripts in a bitsy, stop-start manner. Unfortunately, that's exactly how I've having to write the third draft of my Lighthouse project script. Been fitting it in around other things for what feels like forever, and not making much progress. Every time I get some momentum, I have to stop for something else: a week's holiday, three days in Belgium, three days on family business, and two or three days at week at my part-time job.Every time I come back to the script, I have to go back through what I've already done to remind myself of the characters' voices. Even that wouldn't be…

Jayme Lynn Blaschke
Friday Night Videos: Sarah Palin edition

Jayme Lynn Blaschke

3 Jul 2009 | 6:43 pm

Self-explanatory. :-)Previously on Friday Night Videos... Dave Brubeck Quartet.Now Playing:
Nothing to Hide

Jayme Lynn Blaschke

3 Jul 2009 | 7:36 am

Okay, this must be a whole ad campaign from Air New Zealand, because I just found this "Nothing to Hide" video which is more inventive and makes good use of their body painted crew:I love this. Makes me want to fly down to Wellington or Auckland...Now Playing: Various Classical Masterpieces vol. 2
The Bare Essentials of Safety

Jayme Lynn Blaschke

3 Jul 2009 | 7:14 am

Being a fan of body paint, and to a lesser degree New Zealand, I'm more than a little amused by this safety video produced by Air New Zealand which features crew members going through the step-by-step of flight safety procedures wearing nothing but painted-on uniforms: Sadly, the video never shows a full-body shot (which is kind of the whole purpose of body paint, no? To present the illusion of being covered without actually being so?). I suppose the whole concept of the video was risque enough as it was for general consumption, but still, I dearly hope they took a good amount of…
Apollocon post-mortem

Jayme Lynn Blaschke

29 Jun 2009 | 2:12 pm

After a shaky start, Apollocon weekend turned out pretty well. Having stayed up late the night before, as is my M.O., I headed off to Houston from New Braunfels in my PT Cruiser sans air conditioning. I wouldn't recommend this during times of the year when temperatures reach triple digits--as the weather here in Texas has for the past few weeks. It was so hot I ended up eschewing one of my flamboyant convention vests for the sake of comfort, opting instead for a silk Hawaiian shirt Bug gave to me for Fathers Day.Around 1 p.m. I stopped in Brookshire to interview a subject for the Chicken…
Apollocon

Jayme Lynn Blaschke

24 Jun 2009 | 1:37 pm

Got my preliminary schedule for Apollocon this weekend. Because of other conflicts, I'm only going to be attending Friday and Saturday this year. And the schedule worked out so that I'm only on panels that Saturday. Which is fine, but it'll be hectic there for a bit. Drop in and say hi if you get a chance.Sat 2:00PM - 3:00PMThe Edge of Forever, Seattle IILee Thomas, Nancy Jane Moore, Bradley Denton, Jayme Lynn BlaschkeSat 3:00PM - 4:00PMIt Wasn't Always a Cliché, Seattle IIKathy Thornton, Rhonda Eudaly, Erika Frensley, Martha Wells, Jayme Lynn BlaschkeSat 4:00PM - 5:00PM Beg, Borrow, or…

Gwenda Bond
Monday Hangovers

Gwenda

29 Jun 2009 | 11:44 am

Save Ohio Libraries. John Green ponders different possibilities for advance and royalty structures. Villains gloat. Teens still watch plenty of TV. Michael Chabon has a dead interesting essay in the New York Review of Books: "Manhood for Amateurs: The Wilderness of Childhood." Another Boston Globe review may have been more talked about over the weekend, but Liz Rosenberg's consideration of some new paranormal titles for teens makes some intriguing assertions about why teenagers dig the supernatural. Arguments, comments, etc.? Sarah Dunant on historical fiction, and the Guardian…
The Glove Is Off

Gwenda

25 Jun 2009 | 5:04 pm

Some of you who've been reading this blog so long you recall its previous homes on blogspot and journalscape might also remember a great number of "Glove Monster" posts during a certain time period. I find it hard to mourn such a problematic personality, but I certainly mourn the kid who gave us some great music, and then grew up too damaged and famous to quite be a whole person. Here's the longest post I ever did about MJ (that I can remember) from 2003, oddly and creepily about how he'd never believe he could die*, and here's my favorite related video: …
Wednesday Hangovers

Gwenda

24 Jun 2009 | 8:02 am

Actual posts on hold until draft is finished. In the meantime: Some chatter about first-person, present tense. I do love some point of view chatter. Andrea Seigel got a truck, and it's way fancier than Janet Reno's. "The Lie that is Bookscan." Alan's fantasy world-building guide: "7. Are feelings considered to be insects or mammals?" Colleen's latest "What a Girl Wants" finds several authors considering the girl detective. Well worth a read. Maud posts some delightful snippets of her exchange with Alexander Chee about Ford Maddox Ford and Jean…
Thursday Hangovers

Gwenda

18 Jun 2009 | 9:20 am

I'm sure you've seen this elsewhere, but just in case--Jeff VanderMeer has tons of good stuff up about the Shared Worlds summer camp for teens to learn about writing SFF. Jeff also asked some Shared Worlds faculty about real cities they think have a fantasy/SF quality. Great program, great read. Steve Berman of Lethe Press fame wrote with an exciting announcement, the launch of a new quarterly magazine called Icarus bringing together his two great literary loves, speculative fiction and gay-themed stories. The first issue is now available. Speaking of gay issues, YA author Sara Ryan…
Oversaturated With Meaning

Gwenda

18 Jun 2009 | 7:18 am

Errol Morris responds to some of the letters he received about his characteristically excellent seven-part piece "Bamboozling Ourselves" (scroll to the bottom to start at the beginning), about the Vermeer forgeries of Han van Meegeren during the World War II era. The whole thing is full of provocative ideas and well worth your time, but this caught my eye:I was standing in the Mauritshuis on a visit to The Hague. And there it is, hanging on the wall, one of the most famous paintings in the world, "The Girl with the Pearl Earring." O.K. It was something of a letdown. (I had…

Marie Brennan
want to read Clockwork Phoenix 2?

The Swan

2 Jul 2009 | 1:08 pm

It's been available for order a little while now, but Clockwork Phoenix 2 is officially out now, and editor Mike Allen is offering a PDF copy to anybody who promises to blog about it in return. See that link for more details.
more available stories

The Swan

1 Jul 2009 | 4:06 pm

I've posted four more stories of mine up at AnthologyBuilder. The new additions include "Nine Sketches, in Charcoal and Blood," which (just between you and me) is one of my personal favorites.
This will only really shock the people who have read the first two books, but . . .

The Swan

1 Jul 2009 | 2:47 am

How the hell did I manage to get Rosamund and Gertrude into a fight?With each other?This is even weirder than the algebra.
double-you. tee. eff. -- Part Two

The Swan

30 Jun 2009 | 4:30 pm

Okay, the algebra has moved on to calculus and from thence to astrophysics (kniedzw's idea), picking up a side order of Norse mythology along the way, and now I'm trying to decide on a suitable driving weight for what started out as the world's most improbable clock and has gotten weirder since.. . . I love my job.Even if sometimes it randomly requires math.
double-you. tee. eff.

The Swan

30 Jun 2009 | 2:37 pm

How the hell did I put myself in a position where my historical faerie novel is requiring me to do ALGEBRA?

David Brin
The World Moves Ahead to More Cool Stuff

David Brin

1 Jul 2009 | 1:21 pm

Time for my monthly cornucopia of cool (and non-political) news from the exciting world around us. Brinvolved Items:"FiRe CTO Design Challenge": Author, physicist, and host David Brin leads the challenge of "Water Beyond Tomorrow: Using Technology and Innovation to Provide San Diego (and the World) with Adequate Safe Water for Future Decades" at this year’s “FiRe Conference (Future in Review). I had the honor of hosting and stimulating and challenging some of the brightes high technology officers in modern business, including: Sophie…
Yin vs Yang on Health Care: conservatives make a few points

David Brin

14 Jun 2009 | 11:46 am

Lighting the political lamp... Let’s start with evidence that something special is going on. Everybody, you must watch this. Get to know the guy. And make your conservatives watch, too. Of course, if there are folks on the right who remain impervious to reality. (As there are some on the left.) Indeed, the more sensible and moderate and consually wise Obama seems, the more extreme the fantasies concocted by the crazies. And the more imperative it becomes, for reasonable conservatives to choose the real world. Speaking of which...=== Some…
GM, Health Care, Transparency & Prisoners of War

David Brin

31 May 2009 | 6:03 pm

Keeping my number of political postings to a bare minimum, let’s just make a potpourri-pile of topical observations.First... that the bankruptcies of both GM and Chrysler seem to be pretty much following a path I suggested earlier, sending them on a path where they’ll likely become largely employee-owned companies. Ideally - and if they avoid repeating the (deliberately planned-in) mistakes that turned United Airlines sour - this should turn grumpy hourly workers into motivated owners, and allow American ingenuity to thrive. It’s been a long time coming. …
Announcements... Coolstuff... and Halliburton

David Brin

24 May 2009 | 8:42 pm

See my latest manic comedy story “Gorilla My Dreams” in UNIVERSE Magazine (online). This is a very different flavor of humor than my more - well - level-headed comedic serial “The Ancient Ones.” Subscribe to UNIVERSE with this coupon code EE329517B2 and get $5 off!And yes, this is one of my catch-all postings, filled with wonders... zipping from topic to topic but ending on a serious (and political) note.) Please drop by the GoodReads web site and see if this endeavors, helping readers connect with authors and books, appeals to you. (Of course,…
Why Obama is Upping the Border Patrol

David Brin

15 May 2009 | 11:55 pm

First - see me blather in the next “Life After People” - Tuesday on the History Channel. I offer some way-out speculations!And now the political lamp is lit: This item wasn’t at the top of the news, but it did make page one of the Times: “Obama budget puts security first at the border - He'll ask Congress to help curb the flow of arms to Mexico before seeking any immigration reform.” This is a complex topic, with some strange twists. But first, let me quote a forecast that I made, way back in December 08, in my “100 Suggestions for the…

Poppy Z. Brite
Shady Grove

Poppy Z. Brite

3 Jul 2009 | 2:50 pm

My latest gardening project is a small, shady grove at the back of the yard -- near the giant tiki head, if you remember the geography from my Flickr photo sets -- whose entrance will be marked by banana trees and Carara ginger. (Yes, I know these plants need sun, and will get it -- they'll be providing part of the shade, that which isn't already provided by the scrubby trees and brush I've left covering the rear quarter of the yard as bird habitat.) I cleared and mulched the whole area, planted asparagus ferns, and arranged lots of container plants -- mostly bromeliads, as well as one tiny…
Wherefore Art Thou, Assbook?

Poppy Z. Brite

2 Jul 2009 | 7:38 pm

My Facebook account has been disabled, and I have no idea why. Is there something wrong with the site, or do I just suck so bad that even Facebook doesn't want me? My last status update was, " ... is worried about my hypothalamus. If my brain is worrying about my brain, does that make me meta?" I don't think that violates any FB TOS ... (Actually, come to think of it, my Amazon Connect page recently disappeared too. I didn't care enough at the the time to try to find out why, but this is clearly a conspiracy!)
Conversation Over Coffee

Poppy Z. Brite

2 Jul 2009 | 7:20 pm

PZB: ...blah blah blah blah blah Stephanie Meyer.CdB: Uh-huh.PZB: You don't know who that is, do you?CdB: Who?PZB: Twilight?CdB: What?PZB: Edward?CdB: Who?PZB: Sparkly?CdB: Huh?PZB: You don't have any idea at all what I'm talking about?CdB: No.PZB: Oh, I love you. I love you so much. You are the most wonderful man in the world.
Green Goddess 4th of July Persian Party & Menu

Poppy Z. Brite

2 Jul 2009 | 6:41 pm

Just wanted to mention that Chris is doing something really cool at the Green Goddess for the Independence Day of the Colonialist Power (a.k.a. the 4th of July): they've rented the penthouse apartment on the fourth floor of their building and will be serving a Persian buffet in honor of the people's struggle for independence in Iran. As Chris points out in his entry, "This will be a private RSVP party, and the only way to find out how to attend, with a lush Persian banquet, a clear view of the fireworks display on the Mississippi River during the night of Independence Day, and a preview of a…
The Last Time I Wore A Dress (Was Today)

Poppy Z. Brite

1 Jul 2009 | 6:40 pm

Last night I had occasion to send "Enough Rope" to a gay couple from my OLGC rosary group. Rereading the essay, thinking about it and my other, somewhat less serious gender essay "Cocksucker Suit" (published in Greg Herren & Paul Willis' anthology Love, Bourbon Street), I came to a realization that I hadn't ever really admitted to myself before:I like wearing dresses.Mentally and emotionally I identify as male and always will, but the older I get, the more fluid my feelings on gender seem to become. It makes me happy that terms like "genderqueer" are used in casual online conversation. It…

Steven Brust
Dark fantasy recommendations, please

skzbrust

3 Jul 2009 | 12:17 pm

A friend just asked me to recommend some dark fantasy, and I realized that, with the exception of anything by Tim Powers, I don’t know much about it. You can argue about what “Dark Fantasy” means, if you wish*, but also throw in some reading suggestions. Thanks! *One friend recently explained, “If I like it, it’s dark fantasy, if I don’t like it, it’s horror.” Originally published at Words Words Words. Please leave any comments there.
…but I’m his biggest fan!

skzbrust

29 Jun 2009 | 9:14 pm

So, I just joined my fan club on Facebook. Is that, um, weird? Originally published at Words Words Words. Please leave any comments there.
TWoN Book 2 Chapter 2 Part 5

skzbrust

29 Jun 2009 | 9:39 am

On page 251 he discusses what happens when a bank tries to circulate more currency than what the country can employ, and how the excess is almost immediately returned. I suspect this is another area that is no longer applicable; at least directly. Similarly, on page 254: “What a bank can with propriety advance to a merchant or undertaker of any kind, is not either the whole capital with which he trades, or even any considerable part of that capital; but that part of it only, which he would otherwise be obliged to keep by him unemployed, and in ready money for answering occasional…
TWoN Book 2 Chapter 2 Part 4

skzbrust

28 Jun 2009 | 5:46 pm

On page 244, Smith reiterates what he said before about not counting money when reckoning wealth. This–both his reasoning and my problems with it–are covered in my earlier posts, so there’s no point my restating them. On page 245 he talks about the substitution of paper for gold and silver, and from there discusses the proportion of money (gold, silver, and paper) that is in circulation at any given time to the total value of the produce of a nation. He speaks in particular of the money destined for maintainance of industry. What is interesting here is that he seems to…
Vlad novels - Spoilers - Part 2

skzbrust

25 Jun 2009 | 7:27 am

Topic started by request. I’m about a third of the way through the first draft of Tiassa. Or, as I affectionately call it, Hadassah. – Hadizsákmányapa Originally published at Words Words Words. Please leave any comments there.

Tobias Buckell
My story Placa del Fuego is now available to read at Clarkesworld

Tobias Buckell

2 Jul 2009 | 5:00 am

The July issue of Clarkesworld Magazine has gone live, and it includes the story Placa del Fuego. For those of you who are fans of the novels Crystal Rain, Ragamuffin, and Sly Mongoose, this story is very much aimed at you. You can also hear the story in audio form via Clarkesworld. Tiago would normally have taken his cut of the picked pockets and stopped right here at the Seaside Plaza. On the very edge, past the vendors on the cobblestone sea walk, Tiago would sit with his legs over the rocky sea wall and look out over the harbor. Today he only detoured through the plaza to throw the crowd…
The Sword-Edged Blonde

Tobias Buckell

1 Jul 2009 | 2:06 am

Alex Bledsoe’s book The Sword-Edged Blonde is now out in paperback from Tor. It was one of my favorite fantasy reads back in 2008, mixing hard boiled detective fiction narrative voice with classic Fantasy tropes. From a review I wrote praising it: If Conan the Barbarian had to hire someone to shadow his wife to see if she was cheating on him with Kull of Atlantis, Eddie’d be the man he would find in an office above a tavern to hire.
I used to think I knew…

Tobias Buckell

30 Jun 2009 | 1:54 pm

For a long time I’ve been scribbling ideas down for a website, or maybe just a series on this blog, that I would call “Things I thought I used to know.” I’m always fascinated to learn about things I was demonstrably wrong in ‘knowing were true.’ Maybe it is because I’m an agnostic rationalist or something along those lines, but the moment of ‘deconversion’ for me is something that is not like it is for others. In a lot of cultures, social pressure asks you to hang on to a position and defend it. Most religions, belief systems, politics,…
Jim Hines is taunting the internets

Tobias Buckell

26 Jun 2009 | 1:15 pm

Jim Hines is taunting the internets. This is one of many bullet points, and made me spit my strawberry smoothie out I laughed so hard (I’m pretending to be a writer by hanging out at a coffee shop down in Lima): Dear Cory Doctorow - Information does not want to be free. Information wants to be bound, gagged, and spanked hard.
Steampunk and people of color

Tobias Buckell

25 Jun 2009 | 10:11 am

Racialicious writer Jha has a very fascinating essay up about Steampunk and the mixed feelings one may have about it due to the neo-Victorianism aspect of it. I’ve brought this up at a couple panels now, and made some uneasy or unwilling to talk about it, but Jha nails my dual issues (and this is speaking as someone who calls his first novel a Caribbean Steampunk novel, by the way) with how to juggle enjoying an aesthetic that comes form a culture that was oppressive to minorities: one of my main issues as a steampunk of colour: if I buy into this aesthetic, what does it say about how I…

Emma Bull
This is your last warning.

Coffee Em

29 Jun 2009 | 4:42 pm

Flee while you still can.I'm going to have to blog about crochet off and on, since I want to brag and post photos and muse about the ways crochet is like writing (and sometimes not). This is your chance to opt in. Would you like to be on my crochet filter?(And now we'll see if I can correctly set up a LiveJournal filter, other than my basic friends list... *g*)Edited to add: So many of you hardy souls are willing to subject yourselves to this! Thank you. I take it as a compliment and an homage to my irresistably magnetic somethingorother. *g*No, seriously, thank you. This is a pretty cool…
Hey, go read this!

Coffee Em

29 Jun 2009 | 9:42 am

Yeah, this right here. Then come back.For me, as regards writing, that's exactly what it feels like is happening. How about you? How does your brain feel on art?
New DVD extra!

Coffee Em

28 Jun 2009 | 11:02 pm

Over at Shadow Unit, that is. And next Sunday......new episode!
Apologies.

Coffee Em

27 Jun 2009 | 12:34 pm

I deleted my last post. I apologize to everyone who thought I meant to discuss the crisis in Iran, and I especially apologize to those who thought I linked to the article I did because I agreed with it. I'm terribly upset by what's happening to the Iranian people no matter what their beliefs or politics. I choose not to talk about how I feel on LiveJournal, but that doesn't mean I don't care.I wanted to talk about Twitter, some of the things about it that alarm me, some of the trouble it has the potential to cause. But because I included a link to someone else expressing those concerns, who…
The truth will bust you one in the nose!

Coffee Em

23 Jun 2009 | 11:19 am

Andrew Drilon knows everything about storytelling. Again.

Stephanie Burgis
On our way...almost

Stephanie Burgis

2 Jul 2009 | 9:34 am

This has been a week of miserably hot & humid weather, which always inspires great angst in me, as a transplanted Michigander - I did not move all the way to England just to have this kind of weather!!!! (Just in case you've never spent a summer in Michigan, I'll tell you the way my Michigander grandfather described our state: "9 months of winter and 3 months of damn hot weather!")However, this has also been the week when I finally finished Chapter One of Kat Book3 and - better yet - finally slipped into the groove I'd been searching for with it. I know exactly how Chapter Two begins, and I…
Today's entry...

Stephanie Burgis

29 Jun 2009 | 4:26 am

...is at the Tenners: Top 10 Ways to Fight Writer's Block .Come on over and share your strategies, please! (And yes, I'll confess that this is a very timely subject for me...writing the entry was totally cathartic, because it reminded me of what had really worked in the past. My new plan for this afternoon is to make a Book 3 collage!)
Today's entry...

Stephanie Burgis

26 Jun 2009 | 12:26 pm

...is at SFNovelists.com: Website Help!I would love to hear what you guys think - please do leave comments there if you have ideas.
Eeeee!

Stephanie Burgis

25 Jun 2009 | 2:57 am

Okay, so there was a bit more neutral progress on Book 3 - I wrote a page on Tuesday, then deleted it on Wednesday - but today I got my best writing motivation ever: I found out that A Most Improper Magick is already available for pre-order in the US and in Canada! Looking at the listings on Amazon and Chapters...wow. I guess I really am a 21st-century author, because that was one of the most magical moments I've had in this entire process. I actually stopped breathing for a moment. Because, wow...proof positive. This book really is going to be published. People can put it on their wishlists.
Community and anniversary

Stephanie Burgis

23 Jun 2009 | 2:58 am

Whew. I don't have to feel too much shame on Day 3 of the write-a-thon after all - I have finally made positive progress! Yesterday afternoon while Mr Darcy napped, I wrote the first 721 words of Kat Book 3, and Patrick says they really are good. (Yes, I know I should know that myself...but I'm a writer, I'm insecure, that's how it goes.) So yay! 2 pages in, 98 pages to go...it's a good thing I've got almost 6 weeks left!In about an hour, I'll be heading out with MrD for lunch out with friends for both of us, the women and babies from my prenatal class. It's funny, we only signed up for that…

Michael A. Burstein
Personal Update: Oral Surgery

mabfan (Michael A. Burstein)

3 Jul 2009 | 4:41 pm

For those of you who don't know, or were wondering, yesterday I had my wisdom teeth taken out. I'm doing generally okay, and gnomi has been taking good care of me.In the meantime, tomorrow afternoon I'm giving a talk at shul. In honor of the Independence Day holiday, I'm going to speak about one of two topics: either the Jewish roots of Captain America, or the letter George Washington sent to the Jews of Touro Synagogue.More later....
A Surprise Gift; or, Sometimes, My Life is Cooler Than I Ever Expected It to Be

mabfan (Michael A. Burstein)

3 Jul 2009 | 4:35 pm

So, a few weeks ago, madwriter asked me if I wanted a Hebrew copy of Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions that had come into his possession. Now, while it's true that I can pronounce Hebrew, I don't read it too well, but I figured why not. After all, Nomi could read it, and maybe one day I'd be able to. Dangerous Visions in Hebrew Photo copyright ©2009 by Michael A. Burstein Dangerous Visions in Hebrew, Frontispiece Photo copyright ©2009 by Michael A. Burstein Danny explained to me why he wanted me to have the book, though, and when he did, I felt a lump in my throat. I said to him, "I'm…
Audio Drama – Decisions by Michael A. Burstein – on The Chronic Rift

mabfan (Michael A. Burstein)

30 Jun 2009 | 8:00 am

Back in December, I entered a competition over at the podcast The Chronic Rift, which is devoted to discussion on the latest in science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comic art. They were looking for a script to turn into an audio drama, and I thought that my Hugo-nominated short story "Decisions" (Analog, January/February 2004) might work well as an audio drama.So, relying heavily on The Complete Book of Scriptwriting by J. Michael Straczynski, I sat down with a copy of the manuscript of "Decisions" and adapted it into an audio play. An audio play has different requirements from a short story…
My Main Thought About Yesterday's News Stories

mabfan (Michael A. Burstein)

26 Jun 2009 | 6:35 am

I kind of feel sad for Farrah Fawcett.
Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Day

mabfan (Michael A. Burstein)

23 Jun 2009 | 6:33 am

Apparently, today has been declared Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Day. Not sure what I should do to celebrate...

Bonnie Burton
The Cramps - "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"

Bonnie Burton

29 Jun 2009 | 7:57 pm
Tweets for the Day

Bonnie Burton

29 Jun 2009 | 1:01 am

Tweets for the Day01:25 Drag queen nuns, a giant disco ball, bears and more at the San Francisco Gay Pride Pink Party in the Castro! bit.ly/Ramm7 # 01:38 Bondage Care Bear! bit.ly/HqDqG # 13:05 LA folks: Milo Ventimiglia (@dividepictures), @russcundiff @jerhaun signing noon-3pm at Collector's Paradise! bit.ly/4liP1 # 13:07 Hugging bears at SF Gay Pride Party! bit.ly/SMlKt #sanfrancisco # 13:14 Robot Babies! bit.ly/4dyajS (RT @boingboing) #robots # 13:36 Speaking of Gay Robot Pride, here's @JaneWiedlin wearing my fave shirt: bit.ly/13vrz1 #robots #gaypride # 15:25 "You know those guys with the…
Bob Fossil describes some animals

Bonnie Burton

28 Jun 2009 | 5:43 pm

"You know those guys with the little hands? Ya know, with the big pockets?"
Make Your Own Star Wars Rings

Bonnie Burton

28 Jun 2009 | 5:21 pm

Show off your Star Wars style by making these fashionable rings featuring your favorite characters from The Clone Wars and Star Wars.Make Your Own Star Wars Rings (via Starwars.com)
Tweets for the Day

Bonnie Burton

28 Jun 2009 | 1:01 am

Tweets for the Day23:12 Nuclear family sitcoms are so much better with mannequins. Meet the Fuccon Family! bit.ly/1e2gD # 23:37 Check out my craft on how to Make Your Own Star Wars Rings! bit.ly/nQGrx (RT @starwars) #starwars #crafts # 23:40 Milo Ventimiglia (@dividepictures), @russcundiff @jerhaun signing this Sunday + EXCLUSIVE COMIC COVER! comicsandcards.net # 00:54 Vortex UFO over King's Dominion! bit.ly/HRvmq (RT @boingboing) #ufos #Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter

Rachel Caine
BITTEN BY BOOKS Release Event!

30 Jun 2009 | 11:08 am

I'm very excited to say that the lovely people at BITTEN BY BOOKS are graciously hosting a new contest and release party for me ... click here or the image below to read the blog and enter the contest!P.S. - Yep, finished with the next Outcast Season book, UNKNOWN ... and I don't yet have a release date yet, sorry. Probably February 2010, I'm guessing.
23 Jun 2009 | 8:00 am

23 Jun 2009 | 8:00 am

Yes, okay, no, there's NO MOVIE OR TV NEWS, okay?! So just hang on to those horses, there.But since I've gotten an avalanche of emails and questions about who I see in my head as the character of Myrnin (from the Morganville Vampires series, for those not up on the latest), I thought I'd give it a shot to show you what I imagine.So I present to you a couple of candidates for Myrnin. And a poll. NOT THAT EITHER OF THEM ARE REMOTELY INVOLVED WITH ANY FILM PROJECT OF ANY KIND RELATED TO MORGANVILLE. There. That's clear, right? I'm just playing, here./disclaimers.So. A completely nonsensical…
All right ... how about a scientific way to do this request thingy?

19 Jun 2009 | 7:28 pm

I've registered at Eventful, so now you can tell me where you want me to go. (NOT THERE. Stop that. I am not going there.)View all Rachel Caine tour datesNo idea if this will work or not ... but what the heck, let's find out! (If the widget shows "Dallas" as the location, just click on the DEMAND button and you can change the location on the other end!)Go for it! Release the travel hounds!ETA: Disclaimer! I'm sorry if it asks you for any personal info. If it does, don't complete the form. Obviously, I didn't intend that. If you don't mind giving your age, I think that's just for demographic…
Reminder: Book signing tomorrow @ Legacy Books

19 Jun 2009 | 4:00 pm

Just a reminder: Book signing tomorrow!2 p.m.Legacy BooksDallas North Tollway & Legacy Dr.Plano, TexasMap hereThere will be CARPE CORPUSing. And also, NEW GIVEAWAYS HOT OFF THE PRESSES.I'm just sayin'.-- Rachel
HALP!

18 Jun 2009 | 7:25 am

Okay, I know my LJ friends are the Font of All Knowledge, and I have become Dory from FINDING NEMO, with a three-second memory.Someone (and I'm so sorry I can't remember who!) either emailed me, Facebooked me, Myspaced me, or LJ commented me about a teachers or librarians conference being held later on this year that I might be interested in attending. I CAN'T REMEMBER A THING ABOUT IT, including which city it's in (although possibly Chicago?!). It had initials, like ETLA or ETLC or something like that, but I can't find it in any of my various funnels of information, because hey, when I…

Jeffrey Carver
Odyssey Interview

Jeffrey A. Carver

30 Jun 2009 | 9:54 pm

Workshops R Us. A week and a half ago, the advanced novel-writing workshop that I run with Craig Gardner came to an end for this year. It was a seriously good ending, as every one of the six participants is working on material with definite publication potential—some closer to being ready than others, but all good. It was a terrifically encouraging workshop, and I'm especially cheered that the group is going off and continuing to meet and support each other on their own now.With that done, I'm leaving shortly for a brief stint as instructor-for-a-day at the Odyssey Workshop in New…
SF Authors at Falmouth MA Public Library

Jeffrey A. Carver

16 Jun 2009 | 2:32 pm

Yikes! Can it really be two weeks since I last posted? Yes, I guess it has been. Well, I've been kicked into action by the need to let folks know (belatedly, yes, yes) about this:Tomorrow evening (June 17), I'll be appearing with a small group of other SF/F folk at the Falmouth Public Library on Cape Cod. Joining me will be Jennifer Pelland, Michael Burstein, and Walter Hunt, all from eastern Massachusetts. We'll be talking about our work, answering questions, and (we hope!) selling and autographing books.Falmouth Public Library, 300 Main St., Falmouth, Massachusetts. 7:00 – 9:00If you're…
And Now On To Baen Webscriptions!

Jeffrey A. Carver

1 Jun 2009 | 9:43 pm

A fine day, book-wise. My whole slate of E-Reads titles appeared today on Baen Webscriptions, along with two Rudy Rucker titles, as part of the E-Reads June package (11 books for 60 bucks). They are, of course, available individually as well. If you missed the Fictionwise sale (now over), this is a great segue: they're on sale at Webscriptions for $6 each, for a limited time. And at Baen the books are always multiformat and DRM-free.Meanwhile, I got word from E-Reads that the books at Fictionwise have been selling strong out of the gate, which is good news indeed. Before this big push and the…
Link and Seas Now in Ebook

Jeffrey A. Carver

25 May 2009 | 10:32 pm

The final two titles of the new Ereads push appeared yesterday on Fictionwise! Now available in multiple, DRM-free formats are The Infinity Link and Seas of Ernathe. (And for a limited time, they're 40% off.) This is the first time in over thirty years that Seas of Ernathe has been in print. The Infinity Link has been unavailable for close to twenty years.With the exception of Alien Speedway (see post of a few days ago), all of my novels are now available in ebook format. A number of them are, or soon will be, available in trade paperback, print-on-demand format, as well.If you were thinking…
What Do West Wing and BSG Have in Common?

Jeffrey A. Carver

25 May 2009 | 4:30 pm

I wrote this days ago, and then forgot to post it! Ah, me. I got busy picking up my daughter from college, and one thing led to another, and here we are. In the U.S., it's Memorial Day, a time to remember with gratitude those who have fallen in defense of our nation. Maybe that's not such a bad occasion to offer some reflections on Battlestar Galactica, whose fictional crew sacrificed much in the defense of humanity.As we all know, BSG ended recently, and my comments on that (which I posted earlier on another website) will follow in a moment. But lately my family and I have been watching…

Jay Caselberg
Okay, I'm Loving This Link

agamisu

26 Jun 2009 | 1:07 pm

http://tinyurl.com/ls2wu5
A Couple of Story Sales

agamisu

24 Jun 2009 | 4:24 am

I have been tardy in posting. Anyway, my story "Herd Mentality" has been picked up by French magazine Galaxies SF to appear any day now as "Instinct Gregaire." I've seen the translation and I have to say, it looks way cool. I have also sold "Radio Sounds" to Quantum Genre on the Planet of the Arts release TBA.
Idiot Thief

agamisu

20 Jun 2009 | 1:27 pm

Some arsehole has spent hours/days/weeks scanning millions of pages, pdf-ing them and posting them on various torrents.http://www.greek-force.com/ebooks/3648-ultimate-fiction-ebook-collection.htmlBastard fool.
A Science Fiction King Lear

agamisu

16 May 2009 | 1:53 am

BINARY is now completely madeover and available online at http://tinyurl.com/p8yzp3
New Stories Up

agamisu

25 Apr 2009 | 12:43 am

Several up at http://www.anthologybuilder.comBuild yourself a nice anthology...

Amy Sterling Casil
New SFWA Website Online

ASterling

2 Jul 2009 | 9:05 pm

SFWA, the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America, for whom I am serving as Treasurer this year, has launched its new website. Technically, the site is still in a beta phase, but there is plenty of great information there...
Michael Jackson: INFJ?

ASterling

1 Jul 2009 | 10:44 pm

OK, Typelogic says that Michael Jackson was an ISFP - or "Intuitive Sensing Feeling Perceiving" type of person. I honestly think this is based on the fact that Michael was a lifelong performer. I don't think it has anything to...
What's That - Clue-Lay, You Say? Of COURSE It's a Galvanized Corpse!

ASterling

29 Jun 2009 | 8:58 pm

I'm not a regular reader of Boing-Boing. But it seems to me that whenever I look at it, I'm inspired to say, WTF??? David Pescovitz put this on Boing-Boing last October with a title that said, "Odd drawing hanging on...
Bringing Sexy Snape Back . . .

ASterling

29 Jun 2009 | 10:41 am

This is it, I swear. My You Tube obsession knows no bounds. First, Michael Jackson DID have vitiligo, and it was the height of cruelty for people to continue to indicate he cosmetically whitened his skin. There are videos all...
Too Sexy For World of Warcraft

ASterling

28 Jun 2009 | 5:28 pm

It's embarrassing to say how I found this. Oh, well, okay. Ya got it out of me. For some reason, looking for "sham wow" on the internet came up with this: "I'm too sexy for your party . . ....

Mark Chadbourn
Why The Postman Hates Me

MarkC

23 Jun 2009 | 1:44 pm

Complimentary copies of World’s End, Darkest Hour and Always Forever (courtesy of Pyr), The Burning Man mass-market paperback and the hardback and tradepaperback editions of Destroyer of Worlds (courtesy of Gollancz) have all recently arrived and are now piled up in the middle of my study. And there’s still Lord of Silence to come from Solaris. Latest book deliveries I’m going to need a bigger study.
Fantasy Book Critic Interview

MarkC

18 Jun 2009 | 5:24 am

I’ve carried out a longish interview at the Fantasy Book Critic site, ostensibly about Lord of Silence, The Silver Skull and Age of Misrule, but also taking in some personal and writerly stuff too.
Walking the Age of Misrule

MarkC

16 Jun 2009 | 12:16 pm

Last week, UK newspaper The Guardian had a series of supplements detailing Great British Walks. The one which appeared on day five will be of particular interest to readers of this blog as it focuses on Lost Worlds and Legends-themed walks. Several of the trails are linked to sites featured heavily in Age of Misrule - Stonehenge, Loch Ness, Thomas the Rhymer’s Hills, Tintagel - and are a great way to soak up the atmosphere and discover more about these evocative places. You can buy the whole set of walks supplements for a tenner here.
Always Forever Sells Out

MarkC

16 Jun 2009 | 1:00 am

Always Forever, Book Three of the Age of Misrule has sold out of its first printing from Pyr before it even reaches the shelves. A second printing is on the way. The demand came in at such a high level I even had to forego my complementary copies of this printing to ensure the stores were supplied. I’m very pleased with the US launch. Pyr’s team has done a great job of getting the books into the shops, and they’ve been well-received by the critics (for instance, here.)
Destroyer of Worlds Extract

MarkC

10 Jun 2009 | 8:50 am

And for the second extract of the day (as both books come out within days of each other), here’s one from Destroyer of Worlds, Kingdom of the Serpent Book 3. Again, ordering details to the right.

Matthew Cheney
"Mimetic Fiction"

Matthew Cheney

1 Jul 2009 | 11:33 am

While reading (and enjoying) a recent review at Strange Horizons, I became obsessed with a single word: mimetic. Writing about Vandana Singh's story "Thirst", Dan Hartland says, "Indeed, 'Thirst' is a largely mimetic piece, which opens itself to the fantastic only towards its close..." and then at the end of the paragraph finishes by saying, "two planes often opposed to each other in fiction co-exist and co-mingle, rendering metaphor, allegory and mimesis one". He calls another of Singh's stories "essentially a mimetic story about the search for truth".There's a minor tradition within the…
The City and the City by China Miéville

Matthew Cheney

30 Jun 2009 | 3:38 am

If The City & The City is not my favorite China Miéville novel, that is only because I encountered Perdido Street Station at exactly the time I was ready for the riches it offered, and so the powerful, unforgettable experience of reading it will forever overshadow the experience of reading anything else Miéville writes. I think Iron Council possesses many virtues Perdido Street Station does not, but the latter is the novel that lives deep in my heart. It would simply be impossible for me to love a China Miéville novel more than Perdido Street unless I didn't think of it as a China…
Amanda Palmer's Michael Jackson Tribute: "Billie Jean"

Matthew Cheney

29 Jun 2009 | 8:27 am

I hate to admit it right now, but the only Michael Jackson song that ever really appealed to me was "Billie Jean". I encountered the video many times on the old MTV when I was a kid, and I thought the tiles and steps that lit up underneath Jackson's feet were just about the coolest things I'd ever seen.Amanda Palmer, though, I have adored since I first encountered her as part of the magnificent Dresden Dolls (I shall be forever grateful to Sonya Taafe for suggesting they might appeal to me).Amanda Palmer was in West Hollywood to play a concert the day Michael Jackson died. For a tribute, she…
Rick Bowes on Stonewall at 40

Matthew Cheney

28 Jun 2009 | 6:45 am

Knowing Rick Bowes is a privilege for many reasons, but one of my favorites is that he is a wonderful historian of New York City. Walking the streets with Rick becomes a magical tour through the wondrous and terrible changes the city has seen over the centuries. Having lived in Manhattan for most of his life, Rick has also sometimes been an eyewitness to history, including the history made in the early hours of June 28, 1969 in Greenwich Village: The Stonewall Riots.Richard Bowes is the author of such books as Minions of the Moon, From the Files of the Time Rangers, and Streetcar Dreams. He…
Twists of the Tail: The View from a Cat

Matthew Cheney

26 Jun 2009 | 10:11 am

The resident reviewer of all things feline (and catcher of all things rodent) at Mumpsimus Central is Ms. P. Martha Moog, whose incisive review of Predator vs. Aliens many readers will remember. She recently decided that the recent Wildside Press reissue of Ellen Datlow's Twists Of The Tale: An Anthology of Cat Horror made for good bedtime reading, as you can see:Ms. Moog does caution readers that the stories (from such writers as William S. Burroughs, Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, and many others) are sufficiently frightening that it's probably a good idea to do as she did and sleep with…

John Crowley
The Case of the Impossible Author

John Crowley

4 Jul 2009 | 8:00 am

A link in Rhe Dizzies homepage opposite led me to this:site.xavier.edu/polt/keeler/story.htmlCan this really be possible? Is it the sort of elaborate hoax that the Net invites and obsessed over-stimulated and highly intelligent college students create? It has to be real; follow the links and you get an actual novel, published by McSweeneys -- but then again McSweeneys is a doubtful enterprise and seems itself somehow impossible even when yhou hold its products in your hands.
crowleycrow @ 2009-07-02T18:22:00

John Crowley

2 Jul 2009 | 3:30 pm

So dragowicz in response to the previous entry, or rather in response to a responder, offers a parody of an old cautionary verse, one s/he may have encountered in a book of mine, but which isn't mine; my mother used to quote it , not quite seriously, but somehow hoping it would actually stop a quarrel among her five children -- and maybe it did. But who wrote it? Is there more of it? The following is a clip out of a Google book of sermons for children by a certain William Wilberforce Newton, but he gives no author, and neither do any of the other references I…
Ghost post

John Crowley

30 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

Thanks to all for the flood of ghost posts. It will take me less than a year to work my way through these and then ponder and produce a work of but a few hundred well-wrought pages placing them in context and illuminating the subject with exempla etc. When that's done maybe the partial people looking in my window pathetically and lying limply around the lawn will go away again. As to the associated thread re: publishing and the vanishing of books and the book trade (not unlike the gradual degrading of ghosts over time as dead souls come to understand their impotence and…
Ghosts & You

John Crowley

18 Jun 2009 | 5:52 pm

I am thinking about writing a piece about the sudden ubiquity of ghosts in modern fiction. Not in genre fiction, where they always ran rampant, but in non-genre or "mainstream" or sorta but not all that mimetic fiction. "Alive in Necropolis" was identified for me by dreamer_undone here. Kelly Link and George Saunders. Not Alice Sebold; that (as students of John Clute's Encyclopedia of Fantasy know) is an afterlife fantasy rather than a ghost story. Graham Swift certainly though -- that one about the Great War soldier taking up room…
Two Reviews

John Crowley

16 Jun 2009 | 6:37 am

One is in the About.com site, in the "Women's Issues" area, and it's wonderful to see it there -- womensissues.about.com/od/womenintheworkforce/fr/FourFreedomsReview.htm The other is by Bill Sheehan in the Washington Post:www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/15/AR2009061503059.html

John Dalmas
"Simple Gifts," Aaron Copland, and the Swedish connection

John Dalmas

3 Jul 2009 | 3:58 pm

a deeper look at the origin of "Simple Gifts"
MAUNDERING, June 2009

John Dalmas

19 Jun 2009 | 5:12 pm

personal thoughts and reminiscences
Rant on Our Times, With Reply

John Dalmas

6 Jun 2009 | 12:00 am

A dynamic of social evolution
Blogsite Newsletter June 2009

John Dalmas

1 Jun 2009 | 7:05 pm

overdue newsletter
HEALTH CARE

John Dalmas

11 Nov 2008 | 10:44 pm

Aspects of the issue

Ellen Datlow
It's hot it's raining it's hot it's raining...I'm off and dad news

ellen datlow

2 Jul 2009 | 8:53 pm

It's a weirdly crazy NYC summer that's more like tropical --sunny then downpour in the afternoon and then more sun. I don't care, I'm taking off for upstate NY tomorrow (where I gather it's also been raining) for a real vacation for a couple of days. Meeting with speech and physical therapists today (and my mom and dad and sister) and it went well. Dad's definitely improving. They're worried about his climbing up the stairs to the garden apt in Yonkers. And my sister, mom, and I worry too. But they just started putting him on steps a couple of days ago, so no surprise there. Ann gave us a…
Pina Bausch died Tuesday

ellen datlow

1 Jul 2009 | 8:12 pm

...and this evening is the first I've heard about it. She was an innovative and fascinating modern choreographer and I always loved to see her dances, even if I didn't always enjoy them. She died of cancer five days after being diagnosed.Choreographer Renowned for Innovative, Unconventional Works
Photos from Seattle and the Locus Award Weekend

ellen datlow

1 Jul 2009 | 6:47 pm

Unfortunately, I screwed up the sets and put a bunch of sunsets, etc into the people set and I don't want to have to delete a bunch and start again... http://tinyurl.com/nmynmjhttp://tinyurl.com/m3c5bp
July/August Discover

ellen datlow

1 Jul 2009 | 4:34 pm

I was hired to commission and edit three sf short-shorts for the special Invisible Planet (the Science we Don't see) double issue of Discover Magazine. It's out now, with 1,000 word stories by Bruce Sterling and Paul McAuley. Cory Doctorow's story will be in a future issue.
My Readercon program (tentative)

ellen datlow

1 Jul 2009 | 9:18 am

This does not included autographings or kaffeeklatsches or anything elseFriday: 11am The Seeds of Poe: Two AnthologiesSuzy McKee Charnas, Ellen Datlow, Elizabeth Hand, Delia Sherman, Peter Straub, Gary Wolfe--Gary is moderatingSaturday: 10 am Short Horror Fiction: The Art (and Market)Laird Barron, Jeanne Cavelos, Ellen Datlow, Adam Golaski, Paul Tremblay--Laird Barron moderatingSunday: 1pm The Year in Short FictionNeil Clarke, Douglas Cohen, Kathryn Cramer, Ellen Datlow, Theodora Goss--Theodora Goss moderating

Stephen Dedman
And then Buffy staked Edward...

Stephen Dedman

20 Jun 2009 | 8:18 pm

You loved the t-shirt, now watch the movie!Thanks, janni!.
Haunted Legends table of contents

Stephen Dedman

10 Jun 2009 | 12:50 am

Via ellen_datlow, the ToC for Haunted Legends, an anthology of stories inspired by regional ghost stories and urban legends, edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas and coming out from Tor in 2010 (we hope).Knickerbocker Holiday...Richard BowesThat Girl...Kaaron WarrenAkbar...Kit ReedThe Spring Heel...Steven PirieAs Red as Red...Caitlín R. KiernanTin Cans...Ekaterina SediaShoebox Train Wreck...John Mantooth15 Panels Depicting the Sadness of the Baku & the Jotai...Catherynne M. ValenteLa Llorona...Carolyn TurgeonFace Like a Monkey...Carrie LabenDown Atsion Road...Jeffrey FordReturn to…
The not-so-merry month of May

Stephen Dedman

7 Jun 2009 | 4:02 am

I put this off because I've been busy marking assignments and didn't want to let myself get distracted. Now that I've finished (at least until the exam papers come in), I can do my monthly update on my writing career.Sadly, it's sufficiently depressing that I'm going to put it behind a cut. The writers among you will find more useful information at Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Freelancers' Survival Guide.New work finished: none, unless you count an Australia Council lottery ticket grant application.New work started: none.Publications: none.Submissions: one proposal, and the Australia Council…
Smurched from yendi

Stephen Dedman

7 Jun 2009 | 1:53 am

Sir Ian McKellen as King Lear, with with Sylvester McCoy as the Fool.
Smurched from laura_seabrook

Stephen Dedman

15 May 2009 | 7:33 pm

Time Out's list of essential science fiction films. Italicise the ones you've seen, and bold those you like, and strike-through the ones you disliked.The List The Abyss (1989)Alien (1979) *Batteries Not Included (1987)Cocoon (1985)Battle Beyond the Stars (1980)Battlefield Earth (2000)The Black Hole (1979) **Cherry 2000 (1987)Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)ET: The Extra Terrestrial (1982)Contact (1997)Sphere (1998)Critters (1986)Dark Star (1974)The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)Dune (1984)Earth vs The Flying Saucers (1956)Enemy Mine (1985)Event Horizon…

A.M. Dellamonica
Manna from Brooklyn

alyx

3 Jul 2009 | 2:36 pm

The East Vancouver Magic Necklace Fairy left a birdie pendant, which was laquered to a Scrabble letter ("I") in a tree for me yesterday. I love it, and will post a photo when I get a minute. I am officially considering it a sign from the universe that certain things are about to look up.Finding the necklace made me think fondly of Manna from Brooklyn, the writer and treasure-hunter whom I apartment-swapped with this past holiday season.
Saturday part Four--Hotel Bellwether, gooey art shots

alyx

2 Jul 2009 | 5:43 pm

Kelly and I ate at a place called Pepper Sisters, where the servers were cute and the food was spicy. It was perfectly lovely--not the best food ever but far from the worst, and they had a lavalamp:Afterward, we checked into our massive room, with its massive king-sized bed, and filled our massive tub. We sat for quite a long time, talking about--among other things--childhood tub adventures and the water games we played with bubble bath. Somehow, this turned into a fascination with our spent bottle of hotel bubble bath:Afterward, we dried off, read our lovely new books and turned in.
Cafe Vancouver...

alyx

1 Jul 2009 | 1:36 pm

When the Normandy Diner burned down a few years ago, Kelly and I went through a rather extensive process of seeking out a new place for our weekly Wednesday breakfast date. We didn't want to go just anywhere. We wanted somewhere within a few blocks of her office that served the traditional eggs and bacon options, didn't charge a mint for it and was open early enough for us to eat before we had to be at work. This was surprisingly hard to find--you'd think in Kits it would be easy, but no--and eventually we settled on Paul's Place Restaurant and Omelettery. It wasn't perfect, especially in the…
Saturday, part three

alyx

30 Jun 2009 | 6:27 pm

After visiting the heavenly, heavenly Vista D'Oro Farms, Kelly and I actually went to the Fraser Valley Wine Association event, our pretext for the amble to the Fort Langley area. We arrived right on time. This usually means we're the first people there. Not this time. A small mob was working its way around a ring of restauranteurs and wineries who'd set up displays around the perimeter of a longish tent. There were freebie offerings to cruise and the Jesse Burch Band was playing "Summertime," which caught my ear because VLGC just sang it in our recent concert. Their arrangement was very…
Saturday, take two - Vista D'Oro Farms

alyx

30 Jun 2009 | 7:03 am

After Domaine de Chaberton we went to Vista D'Oro Farms. In some ways, just another winery. In others--totally where I want to move to! The farmhouse was beautiful, the landscaping was opulent and gorgeous, they have three big chestnut trees and a baby apple orchard. And they have other amenities too, both of whom let us pet them:I have Pollen Pants!

Cory Doctorow
Hugo voting deadline!

Cory Doctorow

1 Jul 2009 | 2:03 pm

Diane from the World Science Fiction Convention sez, "Just wanted to drop you a quick note to say that the voting deadline for the Hugo awards is this Friday. Eligible voters must vote online by July 3rd, 23:59PM EST. People should vote as early as possible in case of computer problems and to ensure their ballot is received before the deadline." You get a vote if you're signed up to attend the WorldCon (it's in Montreal this year). It's one of the best Hugo ballots I've seen in all my years as an sf reader. And yes, I'm eligible twice, once for best novel (Little Brother) and again for best…
When I’m dead, how will my loved ones break my password?

Cory Doctorow

1 Jul 2009 | 12:55 am

The Guardian
What happens to your crypto-secrets after you die?

Cory Doctorow

1 Jul 2009 | 12:55 am

My latest Guardian column, "When I'm dead, how will my loved ones break my password?" describes the process my wife and I went through when we drew up our wills and realized that our encrypted hard-drives and our network passwords would go with us if we died or were incapacitated, and how important it was for us to have a secure, long-term solution for decrypting our data if we croak. I don't want to simply hand the passphrase over to my wife, or my lawyer. Partly that's because the secrecy of a passphrase known only to one person and never written down is vastly superior to the secrecy of a…
To Go Boldly

Cory Doctorow

29 Jun 2009 | 10:48 pm

The New Space Opera 2: All-new stories of science fiction adventure (Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan)
New Space Opera 2

Cory Doctorow

29 Jun 2009 | 10:47 pm

Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan's new anthology The New Space Opera 2 came out today, featuring all original stories by me, John Scalzi, Robert Charles Wilson, Jay Lake, Garth Nix, Bruce Sterling, Elizabeth Moon, Justina Robson and many others. My story, "To Go Boldly," is a look at the LARPing ethic that lurks under the skin of any space navy. The New Space Opera 2: All-new stories of science fiction adventure (via Scalzi)

Marianne de Pierres
Supanova Perth

mdep

3 Jul 2009 | 4:37 pm

Haven't had proper internet the last few days, so struggling to get a post in. Terrible flight over against headwinds but a great few days recouping with my sister when I got here. Been out with the Hachette sales reps to some of the bookshops; caught up with Robin Pen in Planet and met some great new people (hi to Jeremy, Tim and Anne) at Dymocks Garden City. Dinner with my brother. When I got back to the hotel, Spike, Fel and Jenny Fallon and a bunch of others were heading out at 9pm for dinner, but I was SENSIBLE and and grabbed an early night in prep for Supanova today. Perth is COLD…
Death Works for Trent Jamieson

mdep

25 Jun 2009 | 7:31 pm

I'm SO excited to announce that my good mate Trent Jamieson has signed a three book deal with Orbit. The series 'Death Works': Death Most Definite, Managing Death, Business of Death will be out next year sometime. If you're looking for a reference point, then Jim Butcher's Dresden Files is the one to think of; only set in Australia. I feel like a had a personal hand in Trent taking this direction with his writing, so I'm lapping up his ecstatic karmic glow.I'm blogging this from my Sydney hotel room where I am getting some work done before Supanova starts tomorrow. More to…
Eventful

mdep

20 Jun 2009 | 5:20 am

I've been totally sucked into this software (this is what happens when footy is on the TV on Saturday night. I can't be trusted to be sensible). Check out my profile and get all sorts of neat widgets and reminders about my upcoming events. I'll paste the url in my links section as well.Also, if you'd like me to come and visit your town or city to talk about writing, click on the DEMAND IT widget on my myspace page and let me know.
Jiggedy Woo

mdep

19 Jun 2009 | 3:53 pm

Supanova gets a great mention in the Sydney Morning Herald today. I've started to pack, got my posters, bookmarks, cards and bookplates ready. Bought myself a u-beaut jacket and I'm nearly all set.This time I'll be at the Borders stall in Sydney, and moving between Borders, Planet Fantastic and White Dwarf in Perth. Looking forward to seeing you all!
WOW reviews Nylon Angel

mdep

16 Jun 2009 | 4:24 am

Intrepid reviewer and interviewer Mark Chitty has this to say about Nylon Angel.Does anyone know when BSG series 4.5 is out in Australia? I have two episodes of series 4 to go and I don't think I can stand the waiting.

Andy Duncan
"None of us is home ..."

Andy Duncan

28 Jun 2009 | 8:00 pm

"None of us is home until all of us are home."-- Sister Mary Scullion of Project HOME in Philadelphia, quoted in Parade
A flood myth?

Andy Duncan

28 Jun 2009 | 6:48 pm

Cumberland Times-News columnist Maude McDaniel recently passed along an anecdote that she acknowledges sounds a lot like an urban legend:My all-time favorite flood story, which is said to have actually happened although it sounds too good to be true, is about the man who had an old piano he had been trying to get rid of for months. No one wanted it -- it was just a piece of junk -- and when the Flood came along, he saw it as a wonderful opportunity for free trash removal. So he hauled it out onto the front porch and congratulated himself on his cleverness. After the water went down, he went…
A Cheat Lake mystery

Andy Duncan

28 Jun 2009 | 1:23 pm

Maryland novelist Gary Clites, a West Virginia University alumnus, tells an interesting story about the inspiration for his new thriller Seneca Wood:When I was in college, my friends and I spent a lot of time at Cheat Lake, just a few miles outside of town. There was an old disused road there that ran to an old abandoned bridge to an island where a bunch of bikers used to party. One day, the school scuba team went diving in the area and found a dead body. I don't remember what the situation was, whether it was a suicide, an accident, or what, but while the police were investigating, they…
So that's what June was

Andy Duncan

28 Jun 2009 | 1:07 pm

Did you know that President Obama commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall riots by declaring June 2009 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month? That didn't make the news, here in GOP Maryland.Added later: Meanwhile, Manifested Glory Ministries in Bridgeport, Conn., celebrated Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month by posting to YouTube a video of church members attempting to exorcise a 16-year-old boy's "homosexual demon."
"To Lift a Nation" -- and the bottom line

Andy Duncan

27 Jun 2009 | 7:28 pm

"To Lift a Nation," the Sept. 11 monument at the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation in Emmittsburg, Md., was financed by an illegal Ponzi scheme, says the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Now it's for sale. The asking price of $425,000 will go to creditors of the failed Coadum Advisors Inc., which allegedly commissioned the monument in hopes of a big tax writeoff, The Associated Press reports.I wonder how many monuments and other landmarks that we take at face value today were commissioned for less than honorable reasons or beneath a cloud of financial wrongdoing. If you can…

Hal Duncan
The Fiddler and the Dogs

Hal Duncan

2 Jul 2009 | 12:02 pm

1The man came from his caravan,In barking of dogs. The strangers stood.They said, we have to move you onFrom what has been and what has gone.The man replied, there’s nothing goneBut what you’ll lose not moving on.They summoned writ: but move you will.We’ve bricked a scheme for you, a dreamOf things made new by tick of tock.We are the shepherds of the flock.2A click. Twitch cord to calm a
Candy Floss on a Shitty Stick

Hal Duncan

29 Jun 2009 | 8:42 pm

Dear Anonymouse,I fear I may be about to be a bit brusque with you. I’m not even sure this is entirely necessary, to be honest, given that I’m going to be, for the most part, simply reiterating what I’ve already said in response to your comment to Sulla on my archive post, “The Homosexual Agenda”. There are even, in fact, some aspects of your comment that I find sort of charming, like your
Critique From HereNow

Hal Duncan

25 Jun 2009 | 2:47 pm

The Fan and the Last ManBy way of Larry of OF Blog of the Fallen, by way of Jonathan McCalmont of Ruthless Culture, quoting from Mark of K-Punk, here’s a quote I want to get my pointy little teeth into:“In many ways, the academic qua academic is the Troll par excellence. Postgraduate study has a propensity to breeds trolls; in the worst cases, the mode of nitpicking critique (and autocritique)
Notes Toward a Theory of Narrative Modality

Hal Duncan

24 Jun 2009 | 11:02 am

A One-Sided Conversation“The lemurs must have done it!”“No, Jack, I did not make the lemurs eat your -”“But I don’t give them peyote that often.”“Stripy is not giving you the evil eye.”“I will not use ritalin on them just because you -”“Well, you could stop aggravating them for a start.”“They wouldn’t be doing that if you hadn’t shot at them.”“Yes, you can, Jack. It’s called self-control.”“It
And On A Lighter Note

Hal Duncan

17 Jun 2009 | 8:13 pm

If you didn't already see this on SF Signal, max the screen, spark up a J, sit back and enjoy. This is... impossible to describe.Civilization by Marco Brambilla from CRUSH on Vimeo.

David Dvorkin
Cups outlasting companies

David

3 Jul 2009 | 6:49 pm

I was washing dishes this evening (no, we don’t have a dishwasher) (the mechanical kind, that is), when it struck me that some of the cups and glasses we use are imprinted with the logos of software companies where I used to work – and the companies are gone, but the cups and glasses are just fine. “Gone” can mean acquired or evaporated. In either case, the companies where I worked don’t exist. But the logos and the breakable items bearing them go on and on. It’s sorta like some kind of metaphor for the software biz, man!
Green shoots

David

1 Jul 2009 | 9:43 pm

Here we are on the first day of the second half of the year, and I got a whole bunch of promising job-related nibbles and bites today. It’s a sample population of one, and maybe nothing will come of any of these contacts, but the sudden increase is striking, and it makes me hopeful – for me, and for everyone else. No agent nibbles, unfortunately. (Every silver lining has a dark cloud.)
SFWA

David

30 Jun 2009 | 2:27 pm

It's time for my annual internal debate about whether to renew my membership in SFWA, the Science Fiction Writers of America. Every year I wonder if there's any real point to it. This year, I'm also worried about the money. I suppose if I get a job before the deadline, I'll probably sigh and grumble and shake my head and write the check, just as I did last year. Coming up: the same internal debate about renewing my membership in HWA, the Horror Writers Association.
The economic upturn that matters most

David

29 Jun 2009 | 4:49 pm

I’m seeing more job postings for developers and tech writers, and I’ve been getting more nibbles, including an interview today. All of which is of course very encouraging and a hopeful sign for the future. But I’m wondering when we’ll see the rise in the statistic that matters most: number of new books being bought by publishers. That one should be explooooding any day now!
Stop living from paycheck to paycheck!

David

28 Jun 2009 | 9:25 am

I just got an e-mail that promised to tell me the secrets that will enable me to stop living from paycheck to paycheck. Hah! I cast heaps of scorn upon your secret information! All on my own, without the help of strangers who send spam e-mails, I have learned how one stops living from paycheck to paycheck. Me and millions of other people. All you have to do is get laid off.

Kate Elliott
Writing Mentorship and CONTEST! Update

Kate Elliott

18 Jun 2009 | 6:00 pm

Trying to figure out how to improve your writing? Stuck on a plateau and needing a boost to move to the next level?Writer Judith Tarr is offering Writing Mentorships. You can find details here.I want to mention that way way back in the day, when I was still a struggling unpublished writer, she kindly read the first chapter of one of my manuscripts. She was compassionate ehough to treat me with respect: in other words, she was ruthless. After about 3 days of crying my eyes out, I read over her comments again. Her comments were some of the most valuable I have ever received, both because she…
The Happy Simple Rural People: Iran Version

Kate Elliott

17 Jun 2009 | 11:13 am

I grew up in a small town--actually, I grew up in the country outside a small town, not actually in it. But I'm quibbling.Therefore, I have long treated with the greatest skepticism various pronouncements, in any venue, about rural folks that are pronounced by people whose version of rural life is mostly marked by their own assumptions and prejudices about what it must be and how people are there.The current election in Iran is no different.Here's a useful take (from Tehran Bureau) on the so-called rural/urban divide from an anthropologist who has actually worked in rural Iran.Most villagers…
Beginnings and Ends, and a Contest

Kate Elliott

16 Jun 2009 | 1:20 pm

Meanwhile, major things are happening in Iran.While here at home I have reached the end of the beginning, as the saying goes. I've completed my revisions on Cold Magic, so it is now in a state to be sent to the editors (I will have two editors on this project, which I'll explain later once contracts are signed and delivered). What that means to me now is that the novel is in decent shape--that is, I wouldn't be horrified to see it published as is, but I expect there is still much to do on many levels and from many angles to continue to improve the narrative and setting.Also, the contest for…
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

Kate Elliott

13 Jun 2009 | 6:17 pm

I have for years and years watched Iran. The neo-con rhetoric about Iran, like the blind men and the elephant, describes only very partially what is Iran in this modern age.So this election and its stunning aftermath--still unfolding--has completely gripped me.Some coverage and links that I've found useful are:TehranBureau.The NYTimes Lede blog.Andrew Sullivan's blog.War and Piece (Laura Rozen)The inestimable Juan Cole.This piece by Gary Sick, linked from all over.One thing I read (and obviously can't verify) is that while cell phones, text messaging, Facebook and etc were shut down or…
the votes of women may determine this election

Kate Elliott

11 Jun 2009 | 1:13 am

"Women have always been just under the skin of history. Today, we assert ourselves." Zahra Rahnavard, wife of presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi.If you haven't been following the Iranian election, I recommend you do. Photos, especially, this being my favorite. Google is your friend. No telling how it will turn out, but the revolution this time is in green. Last election Iran had 80% turn out. 80%. (Yes, yes, I know that ultimate control in many elements of public life and law rests with the council of mullahs, but this is still a real election with real consequences.)

P. N. Elrod
Research--food for thought

P. N. Elrod

24 Jun 2009 | 7:28 pm

You'd think my abused digestive tract would be safe if I stick to frozen meals. Pricy, but cheaper than eating out. Just nuke them and chow down, right?Not always. Over years of trial and more trial, I've determined that Banquet's roast beef dinner smells worse than canned dog food.Since what smells good tastes good, that means canned dog food is tastier than a Banquet roast beef dinner.I had such a frozen dinner-- cooked it, smelled it, and tossed it. Fortunately, before eating.This is a telling point: my dogs came sniffing, they usually do when I'm in the kitchen, then ran outside, tails…
Help wanted: cook

P. N. Elrod

14 Jun 2009 | 9:28 am

Wanted: one or more cabana boys to drop by several times a day. If more than one, you can alternate hours.Must be a good cook, like dogs, and classical music.I'll do dishes, laundry, and the rest of the house if you can just please COOK.Chicken soup a must if I'm ill. Extra points if you hand feed me.A nicely rounded, bounce a quarter off it tight arse is optional. I won't grope unless you absolutely insist.Conversation not required.-----------------------Oh-- the party yesterday went well, no ill effects from the food, thankfully. I got the super extra high grade…
STRANGE BREW! Coming July 7!!!!

P. N. Elrod

12 Jun 2009 | 5:25 pm

As promised, here's the author's list for the soon to be released collection with a witchy theme: STRANGE BREW!(Sorry, but Bob and Doug Mackenzie are not on the list. I wanted them, though!)We have:Patricia Briggs -- Seeing EyeJim Butcher -- Last CallRachel Caine -- Death Warmed OverKaren Chance -- Vegas OddsP.N. Elrod -- Hecate's Golden EyeCharlaine Harris -- BaconFaith Hunter -- Signatures of the DeadCaitlin Kittredge -- GingerJenna Maclaine -- Dark SinsWhat a line up! I'm proud as anything to have been the editor of this amazing collection. Everyone outdid…
Quick update

P. N. Elrod

5 Jun 2009 | 11:38 am

..First off, thank you everyone who sent all the kind mails and messages about THE DEVIL YOU KNOW!I read them all, but I don't have the time for individual replies, and really hope you don't mind this one here on the blog.I'm delighted you're enjoying the book! THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!!What's keeping me busy since my last entry? Getting ready to go to a MAJOR con, going to the con, coming back from the con, dealing with a bout of post-con crud.I came home from Project Akon with a nasty cold and between it and the meds, have been flat on my back for almost…
The Devil You Know goes INTERNATIONAL!

P. N. Elrod

21 May 2009 | 2:17 pm

I *think* I got all the bugs worked out. Ya'll who live outside the USA can now order!INTERNATIONAL ORDERING FOR THE DEVIL YOU KNOW IS NOW AVAILABLE! WHEEEE!Yes, there are copies left of what's been titled by Tom Knowles as "The 500 Elves Edition."It has a ring to it, kinda like "The 300" but without the manly abs and shoulders. (Meh, can't have everything!)And just to give it a bit of class, I quoted Father Tim's poetry, so everyone else check out the updated webpage for a giggle. Hope you don't mind, Father Tim, and I'll take it down if you do, no prob. Now I gotta…

James Enge
Practice Makes Perfect

4 Jul 2009 | 12:15 am

A happy 4th to those who celebrate it; a great Saturday to all.Someday we'll be as good as Ray sang we were, and we'll let America be America again.
Cast Not the First Pod; It Casts for Thee!

24 Jun 2009 | 1:45 pm

I don't think I've often posted three times in 24 hours--three times in a week has been a lot for me lately. But my narcissism sense of public duty compels me to point out that I'm interviewed in the latest Dragon Page: Cover to Cover podcast. It's available in a couple formats on their site, and will eventually be on iTunes, although it wasn't up there the last time I checked. There were some sound issues (at least from my end) and I said "uh" about fifteen thousand times, but I think it was a pretty good conversation.
Time to Panic

24 Jun 2009 | 7:40 am

Isn't there a giant virus inside this thing? It's only five hundred light years away. And light years are not as heavy as regular years, I understand, so they pass more quickly.
Truthiness and Kindling

23 Jun 2009 | 11:06 pm

1. My Blog Gate post for the week is up. This one is about legends, the pirate queen of Ireland, phlegm and other types of humor.2. Morlock may be immune from fire, but he has been Kindled.
Sandtrout Are Served at the RTCA Dinner

20 Jun 2009 | 12:56 pm

I expected this to be all over my flist today, what with the densely layered genre refs (especially a great turn on the novel Dune around the 11 minute mark). But maybe people are paying more attention to things that are really happening. Which, on balance, is probably a Good Thing.But for those who need a break, here's John Hodgman (the Daily Show's "resident Expert", PC from the Mac commercials, etc) at the Radio and TV Correspondents Dinner.As he mentions, Obama was his warm-up act, and the President did pretty well too. He's no John McCain as far as telling jokes goes; he has trouble…

Josh English
Home again

Josh English

29 Jun 2009 | 6:27 pm

Another Ashland trip is over. I am back home in my familiar place, and ready for a long nap in my own comfy chair before I go to sleep in our own bed.Then it's back to normal.Yes, we saw Henry VIII last night. Costumes were [flaming queen]faaaabuloouus[/flaming queen], as a friend of ours described them. The play itself? Two and a half hours of Shakespeare.That is all.
Non-Ashland explanation

Josh English

28 Jun 2009 | 5:55 pm

Celebrity deaths come in threes. I don't know if this an LA county statute or the mortuary lobby rules or the agents trying to get special deals on final publicity for their clients. But there have been four deaths in the past week, so something doesn't fit.I've examined the evidence and I am sorry to say Farrah was the odd death out. Ed McMahon, Michael Jackson, and Billy Mays all worked towards being annoying. Farrah was the exception to the rule.I also have a brief conspiracy about Mays. He probably died of a terminal disease, like bravura glossolalia (the inability to stop shouting…
Equivocation

Josh English

28 Jun 2009 | 5:42 pm

This morning I was thinking about theater and its limitations in storytelling. This evening, I realize I was a fool. Bill Cain has written a wonderful play, one that is damn near perfect in writing, was perfect in casting, and simply amazing in production.Yes, I am smitten. I joined the rush to purchase the script after the show.This afternoon we watched Equivocation, written by Bill Cain and dealing with Shakespeare and the King's Men. Shakespeare is called Shag (from one of Shakespeare's own misspelling of his name) and he is commissioned to write a play of current events, a piece of…
Much Ado About Nothing

Josh English

28 Jun 2009 | 10:41 am

I heard someone, somewhere, say that Robynn Rodriquez and David Kelly are too old to play Beatrice and Benedick. Whoever said that was wrong. Stephanie adores David Kelly. He holds first place in the best ad-lib ever at Ashland (in Two Gentlemen of Verona). I understand her admiration. I don't think I've seen him in a leading part before, and that was a shame.The production of Much Ado is set after World War Two, in Italy, and the costumes and music match the setting. No complaints there. Like Peter Macon, David Kelly is a full-body actor, but for comedic effect and he plays it well. Every…
Macbeth

Josh English

28 Jun 2009 | 10:18 am

One of the hardest things to narrate in any storytelling art is the internal cracks of a character. One may think that with movies we could use the visual language clearly, or in a graphic novel, demonstrate the internal story a person feels, but this is not easy. It is harder on the stage, where there is no hope of CGI to save the day.And that is the challenge of Macbeth. It was easier in Don Quixote, because the division of reality and the illusion are meant to be crossed up (and they are crossed up well.) In Macbeth there are few illusions (Is this a dagger I see before me...?) and lots of…

Jennifer Fallon
Eat tour heart out Twilighters...

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

Ok, so Karl, Dirk and Richard flaked on us. But look what I found... Jealous much? hehehehe
A kind of normal day... for me

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

Spent the day with family doing non "celebrity" stuff in Perth after 24 hours awake after flying from Christchurch. Went shopping with my little sister (good fun). Argued about global warming with my brother-in-law - something of a family tradition (even more good fun). Played balloon volleyball with my 8 and 4 year-old nephews (bucketloads of fun). Did and interview with the ABC in Bunbury about Supanova and I'm about to go to dinner with the original Apollo, Starbuck and Boomer. Oh, and Kevin 11 from Ben 10. And Karl Urban. Okay, so that will probably be fun too. hehehe
If only I was a criminal mastermind...

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

I almost got my 15 minutes of fame today. Channel 7 were filming an episode of Border Security when I came through Customs this morning. There I was with nothing to declare, nothing illegal to set the drug dogs off, nothing to smuggle in, no wads of unexplained currency... nada... I was so clean they didn't even bother x-raying my bags. Just waved me through with a look that said "no self-respecting criminal mastermind trying to smuggle anything remotely illegal into the country would walk through Customs wearing an ankle length fox fur coat that makes them stand out like a Wookie at an…
About New Zealand...

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

OK... so here's the thing. You must not come to this country. It is not actually real. Sonny keeps telling me there are mountains on the horizon, but she is lying, becasue all there is are lots of thick clouds. And the crime rate! Seriously, below is the crime report printed in the local paper. Let me quote it verbatim: 22 Jun 09 A lonely sheep was chased off Oxford Rd east of Cust, on to a local dairy farm. 23 Jun 09 We attended a traffic complaint on Tram Road 29 June 09 Report of a wheelbarrow lost off the back of a trailer on Ashley Gorge Road 30 Jun 09 A local couple have reported the…
I am in New Zealand...

31 Dec 1969 | 4:00 pm

Oxford, to be exact. It is very cold. I have been plotting with Sonny and drinking the most awesome cabernet merlot, I have ever tasted. Life is good:)

Mick Farren
AND THE ROCKETS’ RED GLARE/THE BOMBS BURSTING IN AIR...

Mick

4 Jul 2009 | 12:20 am

Happy Fourth of July to all our American comrades as they recall they're revolution. Rockets, ribs, hamburgers sizzle on an open grill night and day, while Larry the Mattress King dresses up as George Washington in his TV commercials. The Empire has staggered through another year. And now Sarah Palin wants to be president. OMGThe secret word is IndependenceAnd, for some notes on independence,
WHAT IS THE ABSURD WOMAN UP TO NOW?

Mick

3 Jul 2009 | 3:36 pm

My response to the news was one of profane bafflement. Palin is resigning as Governor of Alaska? Say what? If anything, it was even weirder than the announcement that she was running for VP. Does she really think that for the next three years, she can bounce around the planet – without any tangible powerbase – and wind up being elected president of what would have to be a totally insane
SOMETIMES THE ONLY SOLUTION IS CHEMICAL

Mick

3 Jul 2009 | 3:30 pm
THIS IS AL FRANKEN

Mick

2 Jul 2009 | 12:23 am

This is Al Franken. I never liked Al Franken. An asshole. A tiresome wizeass blowhard. On the original SNL he was never as funny as he though he was which is why they never let him work with Belushi. And later he almost wrecked Air America by never being as smart as he thought he was – and dull to boot. I think it’s safe to say I loath Al Franken, but now he’s a fucking senator and – supposedly a
SPACE OPERA

Mick

2 Jul 2009 | 12:20 am

Charles Coleman Finlay
F&SF and Gardner Dozois team up for workshop

Charlie

2 Jul 2009 | 6:35 am

This announcement is from Gordon Van Gelder's Editorial in the Aug./Sept. issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction.The last news item is the most exciting. I don't know why we never tried this before, but F&SF is going to begin hosting a writing workshop.We're fortunate to have the great Gardner Dozois running the show. I'm sure most of our readers know Gardner already, but just in case, he's the author of dozens of short stories (his most recent F&SF story is “Counterfactual,” which appeared in our June 2006 issue) and he edited Asimov's Science Fiction magazine from 1984 to 2004. He also has…
We had birthday cake at work today...

Charlie

1 Jul 2009 | 9:56 am

...and they brought out the multimedia to play the Simpsons episode clip where everyone stops fighting to sing "O, Canada!" It was awesome. (Our smallish office has eight birthdays in July, including the acting provost, who is a Canadian citizen. But mine was the only birthday that is actually today.)Happy birthday, Canada!
It's the Award season

Charlie

30 Jun 2009 | 4:12 pm

Congratulations to James Alan Gardner! His story "The Ray Gun: A Love Story" won the 2009 Theodore Sturgeon Award.
One small step for SFWA...

Charlie

30 Jun 2009 | 7:08 am

Via Tobias Buckell and Jason Sanford on Twitter:Old SFWA website: http://sfwa.orgNew SFWA website: http://sfwasite.orgNebula reform was more important, but this is another step in the right direction. I haven't rejoined SFWA yet, but I'm very happy with what I'm seeing from the outside.
Congratulations!

Charlie

27 Jun 2009 | 5:29 pm

The Locus Awards have just been announced and I see several friends and colleagues on the list this year. A huge congratulations to Paolo for both his awards and to Melko, aka paulmelko, for earning his second award for Singularity's Ring. And congratulations go to Kelly Link, Ted Chiang, and the magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction as well.Here are all the winners: Science Fiction Novel: Anathem, Neal Stephenson (Atlantic UK, Morrow)Fantasy Novel: Lavinia, Ursula K. Le Guin (Harcourt)First Novel: Singularity's Ring, Paul Melko (Tor)Young-Adult Book: The Graveyard Book, Neil Gaiman…

Lynn Flewelling
Today's Buddhist Thought

LynnF

19 Jun 2009 | 11:13 am

Accept my words only when you have examined them for yourselves; do not accept them simply because of the reverence you have for me. Those who only have faith in me and affection for me will not find the final freedom. But those who have faith in the truth and are determined on the path, they will find awakening.- Majjhima Nikaya
More audio books!

LynnF

15 Jun 2009 | 7:58 am

I'm happy to announce that Audible.com has acquired the rights to Shadows Return and The White Road, which means that soon all of my books will be available in audiobook format. The rest can be found here.
Movie Rec: Pelham 123

LynnF

14 Jun 2009 | 8:25 am

Saw "Pelham 123" last night, in the mood for an action flick and with a headache that precluded 3-D "Up." I read the book years ago, and may have seen the original movie--I think there was one-- but had fortuately forgotten enough for it all to be fresh. It was really enjoyable. The action was good, with plenty of crashes and assorted acts of unglorified violence, but the character interplay between Ryder (John Travolta--even today I almost say Vinnie Barberini) and Denzel Washington's dumpy, tired, middle aged hero Walter Garber is what really carries the film. Other characters--weasely…
Ghosts

LynnF

9 Jun 2009 | 9:14 pm

Sitting here on the couch, half paying attention to the TV, look up and there's David Carradine on a show called "Mental".
Evangunicals

LynnF

4 Jun 2009 | 11:01 am

Louisville, Kentucky pastor Ken Pagano has had a "bring your gun to church" "Open Carry" day. Of course, they have to be unloaded and not concealed . . . And there will be a raffle. The prize: a handgun. Don't know if he did a blessing of the handguns.He says, and I quote, "Christian pacifism is an option, not a requirement." He interprets "turn the other cheek" as "purely an act of disrespect" (to the slapper). Somebody show me in the Gospels where Jesus ever sanctioned violence? I've read 'em all and the closest I remember is when he cleared the money lenders from the temple in Jerusalem.

Eric Flint
BY HERESIES DISTRESSED — Snippet 47

Drak Bibliophile

2 Jul 2009 | 10:00 pm

BY HERESIES DISTRESSED — Snippet 47: .VI. The Temple, City of Zion, The Temple Lands “Well, this ought to be an interesting dog and dragon show,” a voice muttered quietly, and Vicar Samyl Wylsynn looked up as his brother settled into the chair beside him. “Not, perhaps, the most tactful — or safe — thing to say,” Samyl replied even more quietly. “Maybe not, but that doesn’t make it inaccurate,” Hauwerd Wylsynn half-growled. “No,” Samyl agreed. “Well, then.” Hauwerd shrugged, and Samyl grimaced. Actually, there…
TORCH OF FREEDOM — Snippet 02

Drak Bibliophile

2 Jul 2009 | 10:00 pm

TORCH OF FREEDOM — Snippet 02: “Interesting.” It was Barregos’ turn to lean back, and he clasped his hands in front of his chest, leaning his chin on his thumbs while he tapped the tip of his nose gently with both index fingers. It was one of his favorite thinking poses, and Rozsak waited patiently while the governor considered what he’d just said. “The thing that occurs to me,” Barregos said at length, eyes narrowing slightly as they refocused on Rozsak, “is that I don’t think Elizabeth would’ve let Ruth Winston stay on as…
TORCH OF FREEDOM — Snippet 01

Drak Bibliophile

1 Jul 2009 | 5:36 pm

The regular snippet schedule for these will begin Friday the 3rd. TORCH OF FREEDOM — Snippet 01: TORCH OF FREEDOM by David Weber & Eric Flint PART I. Late 1919 and 1920 Post-Diaspora. (4021 and 4022, Christian Era) Beyond the Protectorates, starting at a distance of 210 light-years or so from Sol and extending for depths of from 40 to over 200 light-years, was the region known as “the Verge.” The Verge was very irregularly shaped, depending entirely on where and how colony flights were sent out, and consisted of scores of independent star systems, many of them…
BY HERESIES DISTRESSED — Snippet 46

Drak Bibliophile

30 Jun 2009 | 10:00 pm

BY HERESIES DISTRESSED — Snippet 46: “Which ones?” the man who’d questioned Dahryus asked, and the priest raised his hand, counting off points on his fingers as he made them. “First, I don’t think he truly wants to admit she’s become an enemy of God. He desperately wants to believe she’s only temporarily mistaken. That, given time, she’ll return to her senses. And, second, he doesn’t want to admit how deeply and sincerely attached to her the majority of her subjects actually are. I think he underestimates the importance of her…
BY HERESIES DISTRESSED — Snippet 45

Drak Bibliophile

29 Jun 2009 | 5:37 am

I don’t know why this missed its scheduled time, but here it is. BY HERESIES DISTRESSED — Snippet 45: He twitched his head in the direction of the taproom’s shuttered windows, and the man who’d assumed the name of Dahryus chuckled. “At least it should mean you’re unlikely to meet anyone who might wonder where you’ve been, Father,” he pointed out, relaxing his own security rules in recognition that all of those remaining already knew one another’s identities. “In fact, that might be the very reason God provided this little…

Diana Pharaoh Francis
more questions and updatery

Diana Pharaoh Francis

3 Jul 2009 | 10:15 pm

I am slightly better. Have managed some writing. Had to take a puppy to the vet today. He’s okay, but his foot’s sore. In a week we start heading for Oregon for our annual camping trip. Looking forward to it. Hope my neck/shoulder is better, and I hope i get all the work done that I need to before then. But in the meantime . . . mela_lyn asked: How well do you know your characters before you write? Do you do any kind of character study or discover them as you go? I used to start out with some basics–characteristics, jobs, background, appearances, etc. The basics. And…
I need your help

Diana Pharaoh Francis

30 Jun 2009 | 11:23 am

Right now I’m working on some FAQs for the new website–you’ll have noticed that things are getting added and developed quite a bit. My list of resource links will be back eventually and the maps will be posted and all sorts of things besides all the new fiction–has anybody poked at that? Cause I thought for sure you’d be liking my love story: Blood on the Knife. So anyhow, one of the FAQ questions is this: What should readers know about your books before they buy them? And you know, I think you guys are a whole lot better judge of that question than I am. So…
One more day

Diana Pharaoh Francis

29 Jun 2009 | 7:21 pm

So first, last night we went to a friend’s house and ate ribs cooked in a smoker. Delicious. And excellent company and the kids had huge fun. But my husband baked one of his specialties. He invented the recipe. It was dubbed Chocolate Peanut Butter Orgasm by a friend and so that is its name. Anyhow, the bottom is a peanut butter chocolate cookie thing with a layer of brownie on top with cinnamon chips. It’s soooooo good. Today I went into physical therapy. She prodded my trigger points and made me hurt a lot. But it was amazing how the pain let up after awhile of the prodding.
Next question

Diana Pharaoh Francis

28 Jun 2009 | 10:41 am

Keep asking questions and I’ll keep answering. Anything you want to know about me, the writing, the books, and so forth. So here’s the next one, from newguydave: what do you most love to write about that you haven’t had the chance to yet? I’d really like the chance to pursue my ugly vampire story. (if you go to the tab on my main website under stories, it’s the one called All Things Being Not Quite Equal). And I’d like to write Soka’s story–what became of him after the end of Path of Blood. Same with Juhrnus. I’ve got some ideas that are…
next question

Diana Pharaoh Francis

27 Jun 2009 | 3:22 pm

So cathschaffstump asks: Do you identify with any of your characters? In what ways? Has that changed as you've continued on your writing journey?I suppose I identify in some ways with them. For instance, with Reisil I made her dreadfully afraid of heights (which I am). Course she gets over it and that's just wishful thinking for me. I've also used some of my experiences to give flavor to the characters. For instance knowledge about horseback riding or what it feels like to get saddle sores (which I did when I spent time riding bareback in a saddle one time). I know what it's like…

Dave Freer
e-books and royalties.

davefreer

3 Jul 2009 | 9:19 am

It appears the tree of greed and short-sighted insanity is well watered right around the world. Here we have car prices going UP - an average of 11.3 % I believe as sales fall throught the floor. Or as for e-books (http://www.ereads.com/2008/10/random-house-changes-e-book-royalty.html). Sigh. Firstly as demand is increasing, it means you can bring your prices down, secondly, as some of the major expenses - namely, printing, paper, warehousing, physical distribution and RETURNS - are not a factor. Costs actually compare VERY favorably to the costs for other media, and therefore the rates of…
davefreer @ 2009-06-28T21:01:00

davefreer

29 Jun 2009 | 12:09 pm

Onward. Just over a 1030 today. Good stuff but still. It's MGC blog day and dear Discovery Health are BAAACK. Now claiming I am the one that never changed my address. Well, ODD they had my present address. Odd that i still have the archive of the general notification, odd that they successfully send their bum-fodder to me - but not invoices or notifications. And even odder that they have an 8 year old address that... after I shat on them about it... 6 times I think in 2 months they managed to 'correct' once.... only to go back to the old address again the next time. They have a problem. They…
Thinking... and midwinter visitor

davefreer

28 Jun 2009 | 11:45 am

This little fellow came in from the cold today. I had to take him out again - not only would the cats not leave it alone but B is not fond of them. I don't like puff-adders but this little natal greensnake - I think - was more afraid of me than I was of it. I was thinking today about just how I was letting things get on top of me. Believe me, a midlist author (where the reality is virtually any publisher leaves you to sink or swim - and really all you can do to swim is produce lots of good stuff) and all the other cr*p and uncertainty have been getting me down badly, and that in turn affects…
Radio sytem down

davefreer

25 Jun 2009 | 10:10 am

I am accessing through very slow, very bad dialup. Sorry i haven't been able to reply to messages. My apologies. This is the first time I've managed to get a webpage in 2 days.Dave
Go and look

davefreer

23 Jun 2009 | 11:42 am

The clerics that rule Iran do NOT want the world to see this. For the sake of this young woman killed for no reason go and look at it. It's a small bit of spitting in their eye. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OjQxq5N--KcTo her family, my deepest sympathy. I can barely imagine the sadness.

Allyn Gibson
On Sarah Palin’s Resignation

Allyn

3 Jul 2009 | 1:51 pm

A year ago, I hadn’t heard of Sarah Palin. A year ago, I hadn’t thought of Alaska since, oh, the Clinton administration. And then, one day, John McCain decided that he wanted Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, to be his Vice Presidential running mate. I’ve written a number of things about Sarah Palin in the last year. I see no reason to recapitulate them here. Suffice it to say, my opinion of Governor Palin’s fitness for the Vice Presidency could be boiled down to three words — “No fucking way.” Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic described Palin thusly…
On Super Mario, As Never Seen Before

Allyn

2 Jul 2009 | 4:33 am

The Nintendo generation passed me by. It didn’t make me cry. It certainly didn’t make me blue. But when my friends had the Nintendo Entertainment System, I didn’t. I didn’t really even care. That rectangular controller? All those buttons? It made no sense to me. So, the whole appeal of Mario? I don’t get it. I just don’t. Yes, this made working for EB Games for so long a little strange. I knew the history, and I could talk the history like I’d been a game-nerd my entire life. I could even fake the excitement of knowing the Konami cheat code.
On the Mid-Week View

Allyn

30 Jun 2009 | 7:35 pm

Work made my brain melt. This happens sometimes. The problem is that there’s only so much cranial capacity, there’s only so much mental space that words can be drawn from. And what happens, on days that I have to write a lot (and this was one of those days), is that the gears in the brain overheat. Smoke pours out of the ears. The eyes glaze over. The brain melts. By 3:30, I felt mentally useless. So, I switched gears. I did some more writing; I wrote an article about Mickey Mouse comics. I’ll be honest; it’s not a great article. I’m not even sure that it’s…
On Life as a Music Meme

Allyn

29 Jun 2009 | 4:42 pm

A friend of mine passed this along recently. Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people (or not) and include me. Try not to repeat a song title. It’s harder than you think. It’s not that hard. I did a similar meme with the Beatles about two years ago. Pick Your Artist: Elbow Are you male or female:Picky Bugger Describe yourself:Asleep in the Back How do you feel about yourself:Scattered Black and Whites Describe your current boy/girl situation:An Imagined Affair Describe where you currently live:The Long War Shuffle If you could…
On the Pernicious Evils of the FCC

Allyn

28 Jun 2009 | 9:29 am

Fuck the FCC. Fuck the cell phone companies. A year ago, I went out and dutifully bought a digital converter box for my television. Analog signals were going away, because the cell phone companies wanted the analog spectrum for who the fuck knows what reason. I set up the digital converter box, and I had absolutely no problems with it. I got all the Baltimore stations crystal clear. I got all of the DC stations (except for two of the PBS stations) crystal clear. Life was good. Flash forward to mid-June. The transition from analog to digital was made, and stations recommended that people…

Gary Gibson
This is what it looks like when I try to work out the logistics of my next book.

gary gibson

1 Jul 2009 | 2:08 am

And it makes my head hurt.
Evil Chickens

gary gibson

26 Jun 2009 | 12:48 am

Dakota Merrick Book Three is almost done. I'm still knee-deep in words and racing to get everything finished by the deadline, but I found myself reading an article by Sam Jordison on The Guardian Online this morning that included the following quote from Soul of the Fire by Terry Goodkind (in one of the comments) that I feel, naturally, compelled to share."Hissing, hackles lifting, the chicken's head rose. Kahlan pulled back. Its claws digging into stiff dead flesh, the chicken slowly turned to face her. It cocked its head, making its comb flop, its wattles sway. "Shoo," Kahlan heard herself…
Hard Slog

gary gibson

9 Jun 2009 | 1:41 am

And it is. A hard slog, that is. I'm nose-deep in the third Dakota book, and will be by the time I get it into Tor - hopefully - by the deadline at the end of the month. I've still got another eighty thousand words needing serious editing and tidying before then, so as you can imagine I may be a wee bit scarce around here until then.
Star Trek

gary gibson

24 May 2009 | 11:01 pm

Everybody loves the new Star Trek but me. Well, me and George RR Martin. And possibly several other people, except I can't remember who they are just now. Like the embarrassing relative at a wedding party who keeps following you around and bugging you, I'm here to tell you just how shit I think the new movie really is.For a start, it's basically Dubya: The Trek Years. Seriously. Wayward kid with daddy issues who aspires to his daddy's job, but instead of applying himself spends his time getting drunk, hanging out in bars and getting beat up until a father-figure stand-in turns up to give him…
Dentists

gary gibson

12 May 2009 | 11:02 pm

Back home, dental offices have front desks with all the nasty needles and drills and stuff tucked away in rooms at the back. In Taiwan, you're practically on display. You walk in, there's a desk ... and the dentist's chair right behind, with some poor woman lying there staring up into the bright light.Mind you, the service is excellent. Even if you end up feeling a bit on display as upwards of HALF A DOZEN PEOPLE including your other half stand around you once you're in the chair yourself, chatting casually in Chinese, while whirring pointy things are lowered into your gaping mouth.Note to my…

William Gibson
WHOLE THEORY OF BEAUTIFUL LANGUAGE

Bill

23 Jun 2009 | 9:46 am

'My whole theory of beautiful language holds that it comes from nameless, groups of people looking for a more expressive way to say something. I'm always thankful to get a note where someone praises a sentence I wrote. But what I really want is the kind of genius that takes "I'm leaving" and turns it into "I'm ghost" and then takes "I'm ghost" and turns it into "I'm Swayze." Seriously, what kid decided to pull "Ducat" out of obscurity (at least obscurity for us 80s city kids) and use it as easy as bread, or ends, or greenbacks? Who decided that a gun should be called a "heater" and then a…
"LAWFUL INTERCEPT FUNCTIONALITY"

Bill

21 Jun 2009 | 7:03 pm

Nokia Siemens Networks on the job in Iran.
FRANZ KAFKA, MEN'S OUTERWEAR DESIGNER

Bill

18 Jun 2009 | 8:45 pm

He was slim but firmly built, his clothes were black and close-fitting, with many folds and pockets, buckles and buttons and a belt, all of which gave the impression of being very practical but without making it very clear what they were actually for. "Who are you?" asked K., sitting half upright in his bed.--The Trial
FESTO AIR JELLY

Bill

10 Jun 2009 | 10:06 pm

I have become a huge fan of all things Festo .
CIVILIZATION

Bill

5 Jun 2009 | 8:55 am

Video mural art for the elevator in New York's new branch of The Standard . Stuff's finally starting to look like the 21st Century. Next, your shower curtain.

Felix Gilman
yes alright yes i know

felix

16 Jun 2009 | 7:46 am

yes yes alright yes i know i know i haven’t touched this thing in months. But who has time for blogs anyway? I speak through my deeds. on the other hand here and here is a very good interview with the very wonderful juliet ulman
Pre-eminence

felix

2 May 2009 | 9:12 am

They’ve made a Mike Tyson movie, apparently. The central event in Tyson’s life, of course, is his encounter with the philosopher Sir Alfred Jules Ayer, who was at the time 77 years old: “At yet another party [Ayer] had befriended [Fernando Sanchez, a fashionable designer]. Ayer was now standing near the entrance to the great white living-room of Sanchez’s West 57th Street apartment, chatting to a group of young models and designers, when a woman rushed in saying that a friend was being assaulted in a bedroom. Ayer went to investigate and found Mike Tyson forcing himself…
request

felix

1 May 2009 | 1:39 pm

Help! Internet! All my bananas have gone brown and mushy, and it’s raining outside. I have some pears but I want bananas instead. How do I transmute stale bananas and/or pears into fresh bananas? Secondly, iTunes keeps crashing when I try to add new music. I have an alembic of aqua regia, a small pouch of antimony, some cinnabar, a live toad and a Hand of Glory, if any of that helps. No mandrake root, no bat wing. Any suggestions appreciated.
Psst!

felix

28 Apr 2009 | 6:46 am

This is Sarah not-so-secretly posting on the blog to let you know that we’re giving away books in celebration of the news that Thunderer has been shortlisted for the 2009 Locus award for first novel. Go to the homepage to enter!
tiny, tiny things and people

felix

4 Apr 2009 | 10:51 am

Tilt-shift; best actually-existing photographic gimmick, or best possible photographic gimmick? Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

Laura Anne Gilman
today is our Independence Day!

Laura Anne Gilman

4 Jul 2009 | 3:18 am

Once upon a time July 4th meant Too Many People overload that left me an exhausted heap by the time the fireworks rolled around. The plan for today is for a much more stress-free, enjoyment-filled ID4, and I wish the same for all, celebrating or not. Booms in the Night optional -- I'll be on the West Side, watching the NYC Booms, myself. Should be pretty spectacular.And smile at a a serviceman/woman today! This, even more than Memorial Day, is the time to acknowledge their service, past present and future....
not dead. not on vacation.

Laura Anne Gilman

3 Jul 2009 | 4:51 pm

Home again, home again. Many thanks to the intrepid team of Assistant Feline Keepers, who did such wonderful work I was only greeted with an hour of OMG YOU LEFT US! wailing. Usually it goes on for several hours/all evening.So. Vacation. In a quick roundup:22 acres of GREENERY! (plus a spring-fed, frog-filled pond). Huge house filled with books. No t.v. No cell phone coverage. Limited internet connectivity. Frogs and a gaziillion fireflies makin' whoopie in the dusk (not together). 8 hours of sleep every night. Food -- OMG the FOOD! (Although I passed on the chance to eat antelope last night…
not dead. still on vacation

Laura Anne Gilman

1 Jul 2009 | 4:32 am

new thing scratched off to-eat list: sweetbreads. Surprisingly good, although I'd be hesitant to order them somewhere I wasn't damn sure of the chef.Also: flocks of wild turkeys! thunderstorm-related blackouts! chocolate tastings! 8 hours of sleep a night (!!!!)How YOU doin?
buh-bye! be good! (or at least entertaining)

Laura Anne Gilman

25 Jun 2009 | 1:56 pm

Some work done today, but not enough, and most of the things scratched off my to-do list, but not all.It will have to do.I'm on vacation, people.* You should be able to reach me via e-mail... but don't**.*all right, a vacation that involves two freelance projects and polishing a manuscript draft, but it's still vacation!** unless you're offering me money, or someone's died
when good words go bad...

Laura Anne Gilman

24 Jun 2009 | 5:03 pm

Grrr. Staring at what I wrote this morning, damn full aware that, while all the individual words and sentences are solid, and the overall scene is quite enjoyable, it just. doesn't. work. It's the scene itself; it starts in the wrong place, ends in the wrong place, gives the information in the wrong order. I know damn-well I have to rework it, come at it from Another Angle. I even -- almost -- know what that angle is.But I don't want to give up the 2,000 words already written.I could leave it alone. I could wave a hand over it and wait until I'm done, hope that my beta readers and my editor…

Shannon Hale
Our little drummer girl

halespawn

4 Jul 2009 | 9:33 am

Happy Independence Day to all (since Bill Pullman declared in that movie that it's no longer just a US holiday). Hats off to Nathan Hale for this divine drawing! And if you haven't been following his blog lately, it's worth...
In which there is pie, aprons, karaoke, and chops

halespawn

1 Jul 2009 | 2:02 pm

Photos from the actor and the housewife release party at The King's English! My brother-in-law kindly took a bunch. Here's a random handful. Three sexy ladies pose in their aprons next to Colin Firth, duly outfitted. Sexy lady on left...
Austenian slip

halespawn

26 Jun 2009 | 12:59 pm

Blerg. Sinus infection. Can't get myself to do much all week. Feel half buried. A&H release party photos still coming... So when I spoke at BEA a couple of weeks ago, I was talking about the hope fairy tales inspire,...
Creative mommies

halespawn

22 Jun 2009 | 9:11 pm

Unless you have 45 minutes to spare, never bring up the topic of mothers and creativity to me, because it's one I can't shut up about it. In fact, I blog about it very little because it's such a huge...
She-Hulk loves Austenland

halespawn

18 Jun 2009 | 7:27 am

I'll post pictures of the King's English event soon (as I get time to go through the photos...) It was good fun! Recently my husband (comics geek) was ruminating over which comics characters he thought would be fans of my...

Peter F. Hamilton
June 2009 blog entry

25 Jun 2009 | 1:05 pm

Peter's blog entry for june has just been added, and can be read here
Book signing in Paris

12 Mar 2009 | 12:59 pm

As a last minute update to the Paris booksingin, Peter writes in with the following: "I will be signing books at the Paris book fair on Saturday 14 March at 2pm and Sunday 15 March at 4pm. I don't know the exact location, but I'm sure it will be signposted. If you are in the city and want to say hello, please feel free to come along. Be warned my French is very bad, but there is a translator with me."
February 2009 blog entry

25 Feb 2009 | 2:57 am

Peter's blog entry for february has just been added, and can be read here
Paris Book Fair

4 Feb 2009 | 5:39 am

Peter will be going to the Paris Book Fair Saturday 14 & Sunday 15 March 2009. His French publisher Bragelonne will be organizing some events and signings in Paris. More details will be announced here as they become available.
Christmas 2008 blog entry

18 Dec 2008 | 3:52 am

Peter's christmas blog entry has just been added, and can be read here

M. John Harrison
miller originals

uzwi

3 Jul 2009 | 10:17 am

Among the goodies at his bazaar of the bizarre, Ian Miller now has for sale some original pages from The Luck in the Head.
more on the Theory Cadre

uzwi

3 Jul 2009 | 1:05 am

B writes, of my recent post the Theory Cadre in Snowdonia, “Mike, although a picture is mentioned, there’s no picture here.” Yes, B, there is a picture. But the Theory Cadre, unwilling to give away anything of itself even in such a deliberately revelatory document, has encoded it as text. Another way to look at this is that while the image exists, but is not present, “AE Fenell” does not, & yet is. Another correspondent asks the more difficult question, “Mr Harrison, is there a Theory Cadre at all ?” Evidence suggests that any answer to such a…
my 3-d constitutional

uzwi

1 Jul 2009 | 10:50 am

A hot sunny afternoon. Polished trade routes at the very bottom end of the grades, perfect for absolute beginners & old men who have made it back to being beginners again. If you squeeze through that flake crack up on the right, you come out in a dry vegetated corner of reality a million miles from your life. No one wants it. An insect trundles through a soft dusty ray of light. Why are you here ? Why be anywhere else ? Children’s voices filter down from an instructional group on the upper tier. They’re abbing! In helmets! (They’re really quite excited by that.) If I had…
the Theory Cadre in Snowdonia

uzwi

1 Jul 2009 | 3:49 am

In its earliest years, Michael Jackson & Mickey Rourke committed the Ambiente Hotel’s shadowy but powerful Theory Cadre to a regime of Crowleyism, mechanical engineering & systemic self-doubt. This docufictional image restages a crucial moment from the 1948 May Day Phenomenology Camp: an anonymous member of what was then little more than a clique retreats down the Watkins Path from “a sudden organic lurching movement half-glimpsed along the lowering ridgeline”. “Several hanging cubical structures,” AE Fenell was later to recall, “were observed…
“your Mari foaled of the starry skies”

uzwi

24 Jun 2009 | 1:26 am

I’m going to Wales now. Back next Tuesday.

Jess Hartley
In whiche we've never been so impressed with a rejection...

jesshartley

1 Jul 2009 | 8:23 am

Less than two weeks ago, I applied with Jagex, a game company in the UK. I'm going to refer to them by name because, honestly, I have nothing but GLOWING things to say about them.I sent in a cover letter and my resume, along with my list of published works. They responded back, within a week, directing me to an online test site. I completed the three online tests (including the Rock-Paper-Scissors descriptive here) and sent it off, expecting (based on my recent experiences with job hunting) to never hear from them again.Today, less than a week later, I got an email from their HR department,…
In which the storm hits...

jesshartley

30 Jun 2009 | 6:58 pm

The desert is a dry and sunny place - except when it isn't.Check out the videos and pics of the monsoon that hit our home earlier this evening!Or check out the still shots here.
In which we write the rules...

jesshartley

25 Jun 2009 | 9:25 pm

I've been steadfastly applying for jobs, from filing clerk to technical writer, and from game designer to receptionist. I've had a few interviews (okay, two, and one of them was the one in Georgia with White Wolf in April) but it's not from lack of trying. I estimate I've turned in several hundred applications in the last three months... it's just a bear of a market out there, and searching for work outside of the area adds another layer of complexity to the equation.I've gotten a few "decided to interview applicants with experience that more specifically meets our needs" letters,…
In which we spread the news...

jesshartley

18 Jun 2009 | 8:39 pm

The Fabulous Lorraine(who, along with Emma Bull, was half of the Flash Girls, and is the current assistant to the infamous Neil Gaiman) has been befriended by an abandoned mama kitty and the three survivors of her litter. She's taking care of them, along with her five Bengals who are long-time members of her family. She's putting out a tip jar to raise money for spaying the mama, who she has named Hope. Details and how to donate here: Donate because you love kitties.Donate because you love The Fabulous Lorraine.Donate because you love The Flash Girls.Donate because you think it…
In which there are now more of me...

jesshartley

17 Jun 2009 | 4:01 pm

Thanks to the generous Miss Lili, I am now on Dreamwidth... But does anyone know if there's some way to auto link posts there and here?

Angeline Hawkes
Book signing in Wylie, TX July 4, Sat, 12 -6 pm...Holy Firecrackers Batman!

angelinehawkes

4 Jul 2009 | 9:04 am

Don't forget to come see me in Wylie, Texas at Eerie Books & Collectibles this Saturday, July 4th from noon to 6 pm! Texas's only ALL HORROR bookstore! I'll be signing copies of my horror collection, Symphony for the Forgotten, 2008 Bram Stoker nominated anthology, Beneath the Surface ["The Relic: Father Santiago's Bone"], and the 2007 Origins Award nominated anthology, Frontier Cthulhu ["In Waters Black the Lost Ones Sleep"].[If you want to repost this on your facebook, blogs, etc to help spread the news, that would be awesome! :)]
Bleuette ensembles closing on ebay soon...

angelinehawkes

1 Jul 2009 | 2:16 pm

Bleuette ensemble ebay auctions closing today...all have been marked down to $20 or less with free shipping.
Pre-order goodness for Ancient Shadows: Dark Tales of Eldritch Fantasy

angelinehawkes

30 Jun 2009 | 5:18 pm

Available for pre-order now, from Elder Signs Press, scheduled for release March 2010! My story, "Upon this Forgotten Altar: A Tale of the Barbarian Kabar of El Hazzar", will make its long awaited appearance. This anthology was originally slated as Eldritch Steel. Stories by moi [Angeline Hawkes], Steven Shrewsbury, Christopher Fulbright, Lon Prater, Tim Curran and others. I'm waiting on the final Table of Contents.Presenting an eldritch dimension that is familiar and unsettling, this anthology of alternate-history tales touches upon a dark mythos unseen beneath the surface of the…
Dallas Examiner article promoting book signing July 4th

angelinehawkes

28 Jun 2009 | 4:37 pm

Journalist Ethan Nahte wrote an awesome article for the Dallas Examiner about my upcoming signing this weekend, July 4, Saturday, 12 pm to 6 pm at Eerie Books & Collectibles in downtown Wylie, Texas.Thank you Ethan! I hope to see my faithful minions and potential new minions this weekend...there is always room on the Ghoul Squad for new recruits!
Signing books in Wylie, TX July 4, Sat, 12 pm - 6 pm.

angelinehawkes

27 Jun 2009 | 3:11 pm

Mark your calendars for the Fourth of July! I will be downtown in Wylie, Texas signing books at Eerie Books & Collectibles from noon to 6 pm. In stock are copies of my horror collection, Symphony for the Forgotten, 2007 Origins Award nominated anthology, Frontier Cthulhu; and 2008 Bram Stoker nominated anthology, Beneath the Surface. Come on out and say hello!

Simon Haynes
Still writing

Simon Haynes

29 Jun 2009 | 7:25 am

If you're wondering where I am, the answer is ... writing. I set myself a breakneck pace to get the Hal Spacejock 5 draft finished and that leaves little time for other forms of writing - such as email and blogging. (And people wonder why I embrace my twitter account like a drowning man...)Anyway, my Hal 5 schedule looks something like this:By July 3: Finish the rough draft. (Still have 4 chapters to write, one per day)By July 15: Finish the first edit. Much cutting, pasting, chopping, wailing.By July 31: Send the finished second edit+ off to my first readers for commentBy August 15: Complete…
Writin' night

Simon Haynes

5 Jun 2009 | 7:43 am

Tonight was a good night for writing ... it was funny, it was sad, it was moving, it had a terrific plot and the characters were great. Then I stopped watching Deadwood and started working on the novel instead.
MythOS launch interview

Simon Haynes

26 May 2009 | 11:52 pm

Today marks the release of Kelly McCullough’s latest book MythOS, and you'll find a new interview on the SF Novelists site.
How to plot a novel ... now with extra plot!

Simon Haynes

23 May 2009 | 2:41 am

Not sure whether you've seen my article on How to plot a novel, but there's a tantilising pic of a completed outline where the font is just too small to read.I keep getting emails from people asking me to make the pic bigger so they can read the text, or to provide the Freemind outline it belongs to. In the past I've said no because the outline was written for my own use and could contain just about anything. The pic was deliberately designed so it couldn't be read.However, tonight I caved in and skimmed the plot outline for objectionable or actionable content, and after a cleanup I've…
Writing: you call that a scene?

Simon Haynes

14 May 2009 | 8:03 am

I posted a version of this to the yWriter 5 group earlier today, but realised it might be useful to others outside that list.I've been working extra hard on my novel for the past week or so, and after much editing and re-editing I suddenly realised that working on dozens of scenes with 1500-3000 words in each is not much fun. After a few dozen changes to each scene, usually involving a bunch of new notes and comments, it's impossible to do anything with such big chunks of text unless I reread them to work out what I've stuck in there - and all that re-reading takes time.So, today I took a…

David Herter
Vlad Verano's Cool Cover

David Herter

23 Jun 2009 | 3:51 pm

Here's the near-final cover art for One Who Disappeared, due in August from PS Publishing. Thanks, Vlad!
Great News All Over the Place

David Herter

13 May 2009 | 5:11 pm

This week I turned in my 175,000 word manuscript for October Dark to Paul Miller at Earthling Publications. My shoulders feel a bit lighter. There's more work to do, but for the most part, the huge, huge project is over, and I'm very happy with it. I'd like to thank Christopher Paul Carey for helping me wrangle the first half of the manuscript into presentable form. And I'd also like to give a shout-out about his cool new compilation of the late Philip Jose Farmer's Venus on the Half Shell and others.These last few months, with the huge workload on OD, I'd pretty much abandoned this blog. As…
Universal Robots

David Herter

20 Feb 2009 | 12:45 pm

Vlad V drew my attention to the play Universal Robots, a reworking of Čapek's RUR. I just now saw a link at Locus Online. Check it out. There's also a review of the play here. Sounds cool, and strangely in league with my novel The Luminous Depths. Too bad I'm on the opposite coast. (I wonder if they pronounce "robot" in the true Czech manner, ROW-but)?
An email from Ray Bradbury. . .

David Herter

11 Feb 2009 | 9:20 am

Some may wonder about this blog's new title (formerly Crazed Feuilliton). I changed it in anticipation of my new novel, which (as you can read in posts below) is partly a fantasia on Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes.Those familiar with SWTWC may recognize A Manual of the Air Kingdoms as one of the books Mr. Halloway finds in the Green Town library.". . . to twelve stood a copy of Dr. Faustus, at two lay an Occult Iconography; at six, under Mr. Halloway's trailed fingers now, a history of circuses, carnivals, shadow shows, puppet menageries inhabited by mountebanks, minstrels,…
A recent letter

David Herter

6 Feb 2009 | 9:40 am

Dear Mr. Herter,A few weeks ago, I chanced across a review of The Luminous Depths on the internet. Intrigued, I ordered the book through Abe.books, along with On The Overgrown Path. I have now read both books (twice) and cannot resist writing to tell you how greatly they intrigued and moved me. Partly, my strong response is probably due to the protagonists, Leos Janacek and Karel Capek. I have loved Janacek’s orchestral and piano music since I played some of the latter when I was a kid. And I remain a great fan of Capek’s War With The Newts, of which I have a battered, aged paperback…

Jim Hetley
Variety

4 Jul 2009 | 8:08 am

Raining now. Wet firecracker Fourth?
Weird scenes inside the gold mine

4 Jul 2009 | 7:16 am

(Reference to The Doors song "The End", for youngsters ignorant of The Classics)Okay, we have this ongoing "situation" with Neighbor Daughter dumping things out her bedroom window, whence they end up on our lawn. Propinquity and all that, life in the big city. Cigarette butts, which presumably she thinks she's hiding from her mother, used condoms, whatever. So when I see a bottle over there this morning, my first assumption is "alcohol" -- Neighbor Daughter being a teen. Bud Light, Smirnoff Ice, Allen's Coffee Brandy.Turns out to be an…
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

4 Jul 2009 | 6:13 am

When in the course of human events . . .www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
Damp, just for variety

4 Jul 2009 | 6:03 am

Drizzle this morning. Overnight thunderstorm, of the minor variety -- no reports of blasphemers struck dead or even houses set afire. As opposed to the previous night:www.bangordailynews.com/detail/109906.htmlCelebrate the Glorious Fourth! Revolt against a tyrannical overlord! Blow something up!Just do it in an environmentally-responsible manner . . .
And, just for a change, drizzle

3 Jul 2009 | 5:28 am

Rather spectacular thunderstorm in the wee small hours of the morn. Various electronic clocks blinking this morning, implying a power glitch or two.Local fireworks display tomorrow may end up illuminating the interior of a fog bank.

Jim C. Hines
Vacation and LOLPrime

Jim C. Hines

1 Jul 2009 | 8:15 am

Tomorrow morning we head off on vacation. I’ll be away from cellphone signals, wireless … not even reliable land lines to dial out and connect. I’m sure I’ll be sneaking out with the laptop to hunt the Wild Wireless Signal of Northern Michigan from time to time, but there will be little blogging for the next week and a half, and if you e-mail me, don’t expect an instant response. In the meantime, negative reviews or other complaints should be directed to my friend Optimus. Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
Bookscan

Jim C. Hines

30 Jun 2009 | 11:28 am

Busy day, so this is gonna be quick. Agent Andrew Zack blogged the other day about Bookscan, a service to track and report book sales: The Lie that is Bookscan. My own agent, Joshua Bilmes, has posted his own thoughts, disagreeing with Zack’s assessment: A Bookscanner Darkly Personally, I tend to agree with Joshua, and not just because he sells my books. As far as I know, most writers, publishers, and agents know perfectly well that Bookscan represents a percentage of total sales, and that percentage could be anywhere from 70-80% for one author but under 50% for another. Bookscan…
Transformers 2: The Defacing

Jim C. Hines

29 Jun 2009 | 6:34 am

Amy and I snuck out yesterday to see Transformers 2 while the kids were at their cousins’ place. (Please note - this was Amy’s suggestion, not mine. Because my wife is that cool.) Currently, the movie is getting trashed in the reviews. 21% at Rotten Tomatoes as of this morning. But you know what? I liked it. It’s silly, over-the-top, with problems ranging from a cartoon plot to Prime’s face fetish, but like the first movie, that’s not the point. You go in with low expectations, turn off your brain, and enjoy the spectacle of giant robots pounding…
Day in the Life

Jim C. Hines

27 Jun 2009 | 5:43 pm

I talk about wanting to quit the day job some day and write full time. Every once in a while I get a weekend with nothing planned, and I get to see what that might look like. It ain’t pretty, folks. Done so far: Wake up to a little boy crawling into the bed with us. Take care of dogs and cats. Quick home repair job, thanks to dog’s chewing habit. Grumble. Front lawn mowed. Back lawn procrastinated until tomorrow. Lunch for kids. Lunchtime already? Dang. Finally, some actual writing! 3000 more words on the final (for now) rewrite of Red Hood’s Revenge. Dinner…
Taunting the Internets

Jim C. Hines

26 Jun 2009 | 5:51 am

Two quick reminders first: 1. BSC Review will be giving away a set of Goblin Quest miniatures on June 29. Enter now! You know you want ‘em. 2. I’m giving away a copy of Stepsister over at SF Novelists. Dear Anton Strout - I seem to have sold a werejaguar story. With zombies in it (sort of). You wish you were as cool as me. Dear John Scalzi - Cherry Coke Zero is far superior to regular old Coke Zero. Dear Catherine Shaffer - Didn’t I ever tell you I was polycatherous? Dear Alethea Kontis - <Dr. Drakken>You think your feet are all that, but they’re…

M.K. Hobson
I got a haircut, and eight years!

M.K. Hobson

3 Jul 2009 | 3:27 pm

I got my hair chopped and highlighted again, and it feels great. I can't do long hair anymore, not even 2-inch long hair. Especially not in this heat.In other news, I totally failed to remark on the fact that my LiveJournal had its eighth birthday on June 13. Eight years of this crap, and somehow I still have friends. The mind boggles.Now, I must go do things. What things, I will not say. But things.
My Head Hurts ...

M.K. Hobson

2 Jul 2009 | 7:54 pm

... and someone keeps blowing off M-80s in the street in front of my house. I wonder if the two things are connected.
My Daughter, The Bad Seed!

M.K. Hobson

1 Jul 2009 | 8:17 pm

Yes, it seems that my one and only offspring, with her dimples and curls, is destined for a new nickname, "The Blonde Widow." She was the only one in my whole family to figure out the "correct" answer to the following riddle:A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did not know. She thought this guy was amazing. She believed him to be her dream guy so much, that she fell in love with him right there, but never asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed her sister.Question: What is her motive for killing her…
My Labrador "Retriever"

M.K. Hobson

29 Jun 2009 | 7:38 pm

My puppy has this whole "chase" thing sussed out.So this evening (and a lovely warm evening it is) we're out walking along a deserted gravel road where she can roam off-leash. I've got the chuckit, and I'm throwing a tennis ball for her, and she's LOVING the chase. However, each and every time she finally runs the ball down, instead of bringing it back to me (i.e., retrieving it) she plops her furry ass down in the middle of the road, ball in mouth, and waits patiently for me to catch up.I must say, I greatly respect this dog's intelligence.
It's the little things ...

M.K. Hobson

29 Jun 2009 | 8:21 am

You know, I hadn't realized how completely trained my daughter is to not bug to me when I'm on the computer until she started bringing untrained friends over to the house for sleepovers. I'll be sitting there, innocently typing away on a post or an email, and some 11-year-old will settle herself next to me ... peer over my shoulder ... ask me what I'm doing ... ask me who I'm emailing, and what about ... launch into some interminable and incomprehensible story about "The Wizards of Waverly Place" ...Now I know how Mr. Wilson felt!AAAALICE!

Sarah Hoyt
And yet more kitten

sarahahoyt

26 Jun 2009 | 7:27 pm

Valeria sitting on my husband. As you see her training as a writer's cat continues. :) Advanced shoulder sitting while writer reads, in this case.
The kitty progresses

sarahahoyt

25 Jun 2009 | 7:05 pm

Her name is Valeria Victrix -- Val, for short, and also Brownie :) -- after the little girl character in Operation Chaos. this is from Yesterday and our friend Charles, who would like to keep her, is holding her. We'll see if he DESERVES her.Our vet said about three weeks. Not eating yet, nursing well but the night feedings are killing me. Her right eye is almost okay today. I'll take picture later. She climbs all over me and caught on to "writer surpervisor is my job" by sitting on the keyboard shelf and watching my fingers.
In which I stuff my bra

sarahahoyt

23 Jun 2009 | 1:09 pm

Orphan kitten. girl. Very young Sleeping in my bra.Send good thoughts. She's very young.
Light a candle

sarahahoyt

23 Jun 2009 | 8:52 am

In the nineteen eighties when Solidarity looked like they had a chance against the government of Poland, the first significant crack behind the iron curtain since the Prague spring, a whisper went around "Light a candle."I lived in Portugal then and our media assured us it was all very complicated and we just couldn't know what to do. We knew exactly what to do. We lit candles. Real ones, on my parents' cement and stone balcony, electrical ones in the windows of those houses that didn't have a balcony.Did it help? I don't know. The media…
Blogging today at MGC

sarahahoyt

10 Jun 2009 | 2:11 pm

*Considering how most of my days are still being devoted to sleeping -- I think this grief thing is more difficult than I thought! -- I don't know how coherent it is, but...*http://madgeniusclub.blogspot.com/

Charlie Huston
Avoiding the Internetty

Charlie Huston

28 Jun 2009 | 11:46 am

Really, it’s not that bad. Some writers, they literally never post the their blogs. Speaking of that blog thing. Folks who have been here from the start will remember my classically grumpy first post in which I expressed my distaste for the word. Followed a couple years later by a post in which I mentioned that I was long over it and could give a fuck. Blog, blogging, blogger, whatever. I may want to think of myself as an online journal keeper, but what I really am is another blogger. Except that I’m not. A realization that came to me when I similarly realized that I am not a…
Pleased as Hell

Charlie Huston

15 Jun 2009 | 11:08 am

Kyle BakerÂ has posted some art he’s done for a short story I contributed to an upcomingÂ DeadpoolÂ anthology thatÂ MarvelÂ is putting out. Â I didn’t know Kyle was doing the art, but I’m pleased as hell. The work is vastly different from what he laid down in his awesome “Nat Turner,” but equally cool. Though one should not expect the same emotional impact in a Deadpool story. Â Find the pagesÂ HERE.Â
Hacking at Other Things

Charlie Huston

8 Jun 2009 | 12:08 pm

The ghost of Joe Pitt is behind me. The last book isn’t published and already the fucker is haunting me. On this occasion his spirit has taken the form of copy edit pages that I need to review. Curse you! The accelerated pace of putting MY DEAD BODY together continues unabated. The good/bad news is that this is it. After I review these pages, make whatever slight tweeks I think they may need, the manuscript will travel downriver to a bend that takes it out of my hands. Better or worse, this fucker is all but done and I can’t do a fucking thing about it. I am, it is fair to say,…
A Knob of Tendon

Charlie Huston

26 May 2009 | 11:02 am

I just discovered that what appears to be the entire text of the extreme noir anthologyÂ EXPLETIVE DELETEDÂ is viewable online via Google. Â Including my own contributionÂ LIKE A LADY. Â A few caveats:First, I have no idea ifÂ Jen Jordan, editor of the anthology, or her publisher,Â Bleak House, know that the entire text is up there. I’m guessing that they do not. I’ve had previous experience with a Google “excerpt” from one of my own books turning out to be every last word. They were perfectly agreeable about pulling it down, and I certainly do believe…
German Mystic Arts

Charlie Huston

20 May 2009 | 11:47 am

The German’s are back at it. Â Here we have their cover for THE MYSTIC ARTS OF ERASING ALL SIGNS OF DEATH, retitled CLEAN TEAM. Â And, you know, I understand the title change and don’t think I can really expect anyone to keep the American title. Â As for the artwork, I love it. Â Nice and splattery. Â Mop and bucket, natch. Â More like this, please.Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â

Paul Hutchinson
the batsman's holding the bowler's willy!

hutch0

3 Jul 2009 | 2:32 am

A little something for Thog...
if it's friday morning, it must be...

hutch0

2 Jul 2009 | 5:03 pm

...LOLcats!moar funny pictures'Nuff said.
they can take our lives, but they can never take our horse urine-dyed clothing!

hutch0

28 Jun 2009 | 3:57 pm

A little something for calcinations...
under the rose...

hutch0

25 Jun 2009 | 4:35 pm

...*waves hello*'Nuff said.
freebie korner

hutch0

21 Jun 2009 | 4:25 pm

Just in case there's anyone still out there without a Dreamwidth presence, I've been sent a couple of invites to hand out to friends.

Alexander Irvine
Free Sample of Mystery Hill from PS

Alex Irvine

2 Jul 2009 | 1:26 pm

Over at PS Publishing, there are a host of free samples, including one from Mystery Hill (which is expanded from the version that appeared in F&SF last year). SF Signal has the list of the other available samples. I'm off to check them out.And by the way, I've got another novella coming from PS sometime next year (I think). It's called Mare Ultima, and is a substantial expansion of two stories from F&SF--"Wizard's Six" and "Dragon's Teeth" (the latter forthcoming).
New Initiatives at F&SF

Alex Irvine

1 Jul 2009 | 9:11 pm

Recently F&SF editor Gordon Van Gelder announced that the magazine is going to create an online workshop, run by Gardner Dozois, with the aim of nurturing new writers. For the record, I think Gordon has taken a lot of undeserved heat about the number of new writers breaking into the magazine. (I would say that, though; my first sale, "Rossetti Song," was to F&SF, in 2000.) Even so, this workshop initiative might pay some interesting dividends. There's been some controversy over the fact that the workshop will charge to join, but do people think that everyone at the magazine (plus Gardner) is…
Happy New Comics Day

Alex Irvine

1 Jul 2009 | 5:27 am

Daredevil Noir #4 is out, concluding my dalliance with The Man Without Fear. These are the issue's two covers, by Tomm Coker and Dennis Calero. (Update: forgot to include this early (p)review by Comics Bulletin's Dave Wallace.)
Dear Olympia Snowe

Alex Irvine

30 Jun 2009 | 12:38 pm

You are my favorite of my adopted state's two senators. This makes me bang my head on the desk when you say something like this:In an Associated Press interview in Portland, Snowe said it would be unfair to include a government-run health insurance option that would take effect immediately."If you establish a public option at the forefront that goes head-to-head and competes with the private health insurance market ... the public option will have significant price advantages," she said.See, an industry which has doubled its premiums over the last 10 years...... while increasing profits by 428…
Dear Alice Hoffman

Alex Irvine

29 Jun 2009 | 7:50 am

I...Well, that is...Nevermind. Ron Hogan said it better than I could have. So did Beau Dure.You ought to be ashamed of yourself.Sincerely,A fellow writer

Ben Jeapes
Oink

Ben

3 Jul 2009 | 12:33 pm

Only kidding. I'm reasonably certain that I just have a typical summer cold, nothing worse. Grounds for this are the regular metronomic progression of symptoms – a sore throat earlier this week, a day or so of no discernible symptoms and then yesterday the awareness that I was sneezing more than usual. Then I woke up at 2.30 this morning with a blocked/runny nose, one of the most irritating symptom combinations ever devised, and thereafter it was a couple of minutes sleep maximum, clutching a Kleenex, each time waiting for the next sudden gush of snot. Lovely.But it meant that come 6am I…
Corporate and bilingual

Ben

1 Jul 2009 | 5:34 am

Just been doing some web surfing to see if I need a visa for Canada next month. (I was pretty sure I didn't, and I was right, but you know how these panic attacks can be ...)I'm pleased to be able to report that the Canada Border Services Agency "delivers innovative border management". Or, if you like (this is Canada) L'Agence des services frontaliers du Canada "assure une gestion novatrice de la frontière". Which means pretty much the same thing.I personally wouldn't want my border services agency to be innovative. I would want them to keep the bad guys out and let the good guys in, which…
Separated at birth

Ben

29 Jun 2009 | 11:43 pm

One of these is Dr Conrad Murray of Los Angeles. The other is Dr Julius Hibbert of Springfield.I know which I'd rather be right now.
Alpha beater

Ben

29 Jun 2009 | 12:17 pm

Just watched Channel 4's Revelations: How to Find God, which this week was a documentary about the Alpha course as run by St Aldates. Interestingly it highlighted several of the reasons why I am no great fan of the course ... and threw up some problems that I hope are unique to St Aldates.I myself have Done Alpha. I held out for a long time but eventually I cracked, and I enjoyed it. I had no great revelations myself but then I was already about as committed a Christian as I will ever be. I met some nice people. My group leader was one of the saintliest, wisest, most head-screwed-on people I…
A whole in my mind

Ben

28 Jun 2009 | 1:22 pm

I have fragmented knowledge of bits of Oxford. The Wycliffe area. St Giles. Broad Street, the High Street ... I very rarely travel from one to the other, though. I make each one my destination for whatever purpose, and go there and back again. So, how do all those fragments fit together?I could look at a map, or, I could walk it.Park the car at Wycliffe. Along Norham Gardens and then down through the University Parks to the High Street, via St Cross Road - a handy back-alley route I didn't know and the first of the threads to link the different bits together. Past Magdalen and over the…

Trent Jamieson
A Typical Writing Day

Trent Jamieson

1 Jul 2009 | 3:10 am

Today was a typical writing day. Once I'm in a project the writing doesn't really stop, the file stays open and I'm back and forwards, adding things, thinking about things. Trying to find the right way to describe a character's movements, or their voice, or the way a particular bit of the world works. The writing tends to fuse with the rest of my day creating a bit of tension between what's going down on the page and what's distracting me from it. It seems to work, but is never really all that relaxing. That said, it's one of my favourite bits of the novel writing process. It's still all new…
Some things to get Excited About

Trent Jamieson

29 Jun 2009 | 2:24 am

There's a whole heap of stuff be excited about if you're a reader of a somewhat dark and fantastical bent.For one Jeff Vandermeer has podcast the first chapter of his new Ambergris novel Finch. You can click to it from his blog here. He's going to do the whole thing in November, but, for now, this will have to be enough. Can't wait to see the book in print.And then there's China Mieville's new novel "The City and The City" and who wouldn't be excited about that? A police procedural that explores the idea of crosshatched spaces. A term I first came across in Clute and Grant's Encyclopedia of…
Ziggy Sleeping

Trent Jamieson

27 Jun 2009 | 6:08 am

After a night of chasing Chris and Sandra McMahon's kids around the house - while we adults discussed the serious matters of the world (and I lent Chris one of Glen Cook's great Dread Empire novels) - Ziggy collapses into a deep and dreamless slumber - you can tell when he's dreaming, he yips and yaps and scrawls weird automatic poems onto yellow pieces of card.Good night all.
A Little on Process

Trent Jamieson

27 Jun 2009 | 5:40 am

And I mean a little. Having written a little on my process (or lack of) over at ROR, along with Tansy and Rowena, I think the most important thing is to not get too hung up on it, or on how anyone else writes. I used to panic, or feel an immense sense of guilt, if I wasn't approaching my writing in the same manner as writers I admired. But the truth is you can only do what you can do, which isn't to preclude being open to change, but an acceptance of this can remove a lot of the anxiety tied up in writing. And anxiety can stop you dead.It's the end result that matters, talking about how I get…
It's Finally Official

Trent Jamieson

25 Jun 2009 | 7:08 pm

So, it's true - it still doesn't feel like it, and I've had a couple of months to digest it - I've sold three books of a series called Death Works to Orbit UK, US, and Australia. The first one called Death Most Definite will be launching at World Con in Melbourne next year, the second around Christmas 2010, and the third around Easter 2011.I've got a lot of work to do, but this is a series I've been chipping away at for years so the groundwork is pretty much laid. It's bleak, it's funny (I hope), it's Australian, and it's about my favourite obsession: Death.I promise I'll provide more details…

Vylar Kaftan
Clarion West Write-a-Thon

Vylar

30 Jun 2009 | 2:46 pm

I’m participating in the Clarion West Write-a-thon this year. Clarion West is a wonderful science fiction and fantasy writing workshop, and a great program to support. Here’s my project page. I need a kick in the butt–so any sponsors are greatly appreciated! You can support me in in a few ways: 1) Pledge a donation to Clarion West if I meet my goal. Any amount is helpful. 2) Offer friendly support if I want to talk through ideas or bitch about something. 3) Or both, of course. Here’s the page that talks about my writing project. I’m building a wiki about my…
I’m back

Vylar

30 Jun 2009 | 12:32 pm

I’m catching up on things. Hawaii was awesome. Pictures soon.
Off to Hawaii

Vylar

20 Jun 2009 | 7:01 am

I’ll be offline. Don’t talk about anything interesting while I’m gone.
Things to do in Hawaii next week

Vylar

17 Jun 2009 | 9:02 am

–stick my nose into a volcano –make a bed of fresh pineapple and eat myself to sleep –survey my underwater empire via snorkel –build a fort out of umbrella drinks –SLEEP
How approachable are you?

Vylar

15 Jun 2009 | 8:25 am

How often do people ask you for directions? Some of my friends report it happens frequently. Others never get asked. Presumably it has a lot to do with snap judgments: how approachable do you look? Do you seem like someone who knows where they’re going? Do you look like someone willing to talk to a stranger? And so on. The number of people asking me for help lately has increased sharply. Something has changed. Here’s the two major changes I’ve made in the last year. 1) I cut off 30 inches off hair. I went from a sort-of Berkeley college student look to… whatever I am…

Nicholas Kaufmann
On the Eve of the Anniversary of Our Independence...

International Bon Vivant and Raconteur

3 Jul 2009 | 1:54 pm

...I bring you this interesting bit of news.Everyone's favorite governor is stepping down at the end of this month, a year and a half before the end of her term.I can only assume the truth has come out about her secret lover in Argentina.Enjoy the holiday weekend!
Most Welcome News Headline Ever

International Bon Vivant and Raconteur

29 Jun 2009 | 5:58 am

Eleven Time Lords Unite for Doctor Who Special.While I would much rather see a full episode, or even a two-parter, uniting all the Doctors in celebration of the, um, 46th anniversary of the series, this news still fills me with the same childlike glee I felt when I first saw "The Five Doctors" in 1983.It's a shame Patrick Troughton is no longer with us. He and David Tennant would have gotten on so well together. Still, the prospect of my three favorite actors in the role -- Tennant, Christopher Eccleston and Tom Baker -- all sharing the screen at the same time makes me embarrassingly giddy.
No Readercon Either

International Bon Vivant and Raconteur

26 Jun 2009 | 3:03 pm

I just accepted another writing job with a pretty tight deadline in mid-July, so it looks like I won't have time for Readercon either this year. Sorry about that, I was looking forward to seeing a bunch of you there, but right now it's more important for me to make money than to spend it.It feels weird not to be going to any conventions this year. No World Horror, no World Fantasy, no Stokers, no Necon, and now no Readercon. Ah well, see you all next year!
Keyboard Cat Makes My Day

International Bon Vivant and Raconteur

26 Jun 2009 | 1:08 pm

This is the best use of the keyboard cat I've seen yet!
"A Horror Experience In the Toilet"

International Bon Vivant and Raconteur

26 Jun 2009 | 4:51 am

A Japanese author famous for his horror stories, including cult Japanese and eventually Hollywood film The Ring, has bizarrely produced a novel to be printed on rolls of toilet paper by manufacturer, Hayashi Paper.The Koji Suzuki novel called "Drop" will be printed in short form on millions of rolls of toilet paper in a marketing coup for the Hayashi toilet roll companyEach roll will carry several copies of the new nine-chapter novella "Drop" by Koji Suzuki. Who knows the story may even be made into a cult film."Drop," is appropriately set in a public restroom. The Drop toilet paper novella…

Caitlin Kiernan
Howard Hughes vs. the Murlocs

greygirlbeast

4 Jul 2009 | 9:50 am

Not sure I can make much of an entry today. My mind is too many places at once. But I shall do my best, which is usually what I try to do.Good writing day yesterday. I had Spooky read back to me everything I'd written on "The Sea Troll's Daughter," and as she read, the ending finally occurred to me. So simple, I don't know how I took so long to see it. But that's how writing works. I wrote 1,373 words. Today, I will finish the story, one day ahead of my deadline.Yesterday, well, more than anything, there was Palin's stunning resignation. Stunning or stupefying. I hear a lot of people telling…
Ding, Dong (The Witch is Dead)

greygirlbeast

3 Jul 2009 | 6:32 pm

In honor of Sarah Palin's resignation...I'm no pundit, but I say a woman resigns her post as Governor of Alaska, just because she can't take the heat, her chances at the presidency or vp are shot forever.Good riddance, you wart hog from Hell!
Seven Years

greygirlbeast

3 Jul 2009 | 10:22 am

Running a bit late today, but that's my fault. Anyway, I should try to make this short. It'll probably come out long, anyway.Today is mine and Spooky's seventh anniversary. Though we actually met in New Orleans in '99, it was a longish courtship, and we didn't get around to the commitment until 2002. But, yeah, seven years. Kind of boggles the noodle.Not a lot to say about the first part of yesterday. I'm having a perfectly awful time trying to find THE END of "The Sea Troll's Daughter." As sovay has pointed out to me, this is the sort of story that is told, not read, and I think that's part…
"Shipwrecks above Liverpool's tide. We walk alone against the sky"

greygirlbeast

2 Jul 2009 | 9:53 am

I slept more than eight hours last night. I think I felt too bad to do otherwise. Early this morning, Spooky and I were awakened by a tremendous clap of thunder. A wonderful storm, but I went right back to sleep.Yesterday was sort of a disaster. I did write, but only 561 words. Two problems prevented me getting any farther. Firstly, I appear to have picked up a cold at the damned doctor's office (one reason I try to avoid doctor's visits). Secondly, I've reached this last third of the story, and suddenly I'm not sure what happens next. "The Sea Troll's Daughter" is a sort of inversion of the…
"And then the sky began to crack. Like sticks it was upon my back."

greygirlbeast

1 Jul 2009 | 9:29 am

We're having a rather wonderful thunderstorm.I've seen a couple of people speculating that, because of Monday's seizure and yesterday's doctor visit, I won't be at ReaderCon 20. However, this is not the case. Despite yesterday's unexpected expense, I will be at ReaderCon (July 9-12). I have decided, though, that I am going to request people please not take photos (or audio recordings) during my two solo presentations, or at my reading and signing, or that I pose with them for photos. I have a feeling I'm just not going to be up to the camera. But I will be there.News from the neurologist:…

Crawford Kilian
A blast against clichés

Crof

4 Jul 2009 | 11:20 am

Via The Independent, Robert Fisk brings up points that all webwriters should heed: Tanks roll and guns fall silent, but the clichés go on for ever. Excerpt (but read the whole article):In real life, do we really call borders "porous" – even when, like the Durand line which divides Afghanistan from present-day Pakistan, few of the people living on the frontier believe it's real? In ordinary conversation, do ever refer to "iconic" or "defining moments", even though speech-writers like to sprinkle them around the lexicon of third-rate politicians? Indeed,…
A panel on writing for the web

Crof

29 May 2009 | 3:23 pm

About a year ago, I took part in an Internet Marketing Conference Writing for Web Panel. Now a 40-minute video of the panel is online. I turn up about 28 minutes into the video, but I thought everyone had something useful to say.
An early review of Wolfram Alpha

Crof

18 May 2009 | 8:20 am

Via the Guardian: Wolfram Alpha: the semantic web search starts to take shape. Excerpt:Wolfram Alpha is indeed a search engine, but it's not pretending to be Google, and unlike so many of the search engines that I've had pitched to me over the years, it isn't trying to do "search". It's actually doing something more subtle: it's doing semantic search. That thing that Sir Tim Berners-Lee has been banging on about. Whereas Google simply uses tweaked versions of its original "lots of people link to this page" algorithm. So don't write it off…
The next Google?

Crof

2 May 2009 | 9:55 pm

Via The Independent in the UK, a report that's high on hyperventilation but still interesting: An invention that could change the internet for ever. Excerpt:The biggest internet revolution for a generation will be unveiled this month with the launch of software that will understand questions and give specific, tailored answers in a way that the web has never managed before. The new system, Wolfram Alpha, showcased at Harvard University in the US last week, takes the first step towards what many consider to be the internet's Holy Grail – a global store of information that…
Surfing a news tsunami

Crof

29 Apr 2009 | 9:54 am

On Monday I published an article in The Tyee, Surfing a Swine Flu News Tsunami. It describes the events of three or four days spent tracking the rise of H1N1 at my blog H5N1. The experience has taught me something about the ability of the web to find and aggregate enormous amounts of information on a single subject—and about how hard it can be for a lone blogger to select and interpret the best items from that flood.

Kevin Killiany
Happy 4th of July

kvaadk

3 Jul 2009 | 9:30 pm

Happy 4th of July, everyone.(Even if you're not a citizen of the USofA, you might as well enjoy the day anyway.)In related news: The Declaration of Independence has finally been delivered to Britain. Hopefully this will clear up some of what's been going on recently.
My first column is up

kvaadk

3 Jul 2009 | 9:07 pm

My first column is up at Novel Spaces.
Novel Spaces launch

kvaadk

30 Jun 2009 | 6:45 pm

Announcing the launch of Novel Spaces on July 1, 2009.A group of talented writers with credits in such diverse fields as children's television, erotica, fantasy, romance, science fiction, and romance have gotten together to produce a blog about the writing life. Essays will cover a variety of topics from the mechanics of writing to the business of selling to creation of worlds and characters to just about anything you can think of. Not all the writers agree on every point, so there will be paired or grouped or tangentially linked essays addressing issues and topics from a variety of…
The word choice is the message

kvaadk

27 Jun 2009 | 12:48 pm

In the course of yet another story on soon-to-be-ex-Governor Sanford of South Carolina this morning on NPR, Pamela Druckerman, author of Lust in Translation was interviewed as an expert on infidelity.One sentence from that interview has annoyed me all day:"Only four percent of married men in America admit to having been unfaithful to their partner in the last year."I do not recall the study being cited so I cannot source the statistic, but it evidently involved interviews or questionnaires surveying married men and four percent of the men responded that they had at some point in the twelve…
Nerd in Chief

kvaadk

24 Jun 2009 | 6:37 pm

John Hodgman on President Obama as First Nerd President of the modern era.As a nerd, I really like this speech. (Though the Iran protest reference is sadly dated now.) In fact, I’m pleased that I can answer all of the questions Mr. Hodgman poses to President Obama. It is good to have one of our own in office.(To address an issue that has been raised by two of my friends in seperate venues: I admit I'm a little uncomfortable with the word "geek" being synonymous with "nerd." When I was growing up, and dinosaurs roamed the earth, a "geek" was a carny -- and lowest of the caries at that. They…

E. E. Knight
To SFWA or not to SFWA, that is the question

E. E. Knight

30 Jun 2009 | 5:02 am

Got a curt little email in my inbox this morning from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America informing me that my membership has now lapsed, and to contact them as soon as possible.Except, it hasn't. I renewed via PayPal a couple weeks ago and supplied them with all the necessary info as part of the transaction.While I do enjoy the phenomenal, cosmic power of being able to issue Nebula recs, nobody I recommend ever seems to make even the preliminary ballot. Then I've hardly ever read all the novels on the final ballot, so I don't vote, being unable to make an informed choice. So…
Hobgoblins 2

E. E. Knight

29 Jun 2009 | 3:32 pm

Well, I'm sure you're all waiting with bated breath to find out just how awful Hobgoblins 2 was.It was a meh. A little slicker than the first. Fewer scenes of cars being parked, sadly.A bit puzzling though. There was Kevin and Kyle and Daphne and Amy plus Nick, and of course Mr. McCreedy, but even though the roles were same people/different actors all the backstory had vanished and they were meeting Mr. McCreedy and the hobgoblins for the first time.No Club Scum, either. Just a strange psych hospital and plenty of continuity errors.But the whole having this group of characters meet a menace…
Thoughts in the tea aisle

E. E. Knight

28 Jun 2009 | 7:17 am

We were at Whole Foods (only our cats can afford to eat their groceries, we can't) and I was in the tea aisle thinking how dreadfully feminine all the packaging was. Soothing scenes of cozy corners and gardens full of irises and art of women curled up on throw pillows or hammocks. While all of the above is great, I believe there really needs to be a tea label for guys -- some utter fear-no-grapeshot-or-assegai badasses drank tea, you know. Old map parchment labels with rugged-looking stenciling:Guns of SevastopolIron DukeBoston Tea Party (Actually, this is a real flavor from Mark T. Wendell…
Countdown, with art

E. E. Knight

27 Jun 2009 | 10:54 am

As the countdown for the release date of Winter Duty really gets going, I'll post some fresh fan art now and then. The ever-intriguing "Nags" is at it again..."Bear Wagon"If I ever get popular enough to do a "Vampire Earth Sourcebook" this kid's gonna make some money.
Book Spot Central Review of Winter Duty

E. E. Knight

26 Jun 2009 | 11:39 am

The reviewer is an admitted fan of the series, but it's still nice to get opinions of those predisposed to like your work:http://www.bscreview.com/2009/06/book-review-winter-duty-by-ee-knight/

Mary Robinette Kowal
If you are reading this…

Mary Robinette Kowal

3 Jul 2009 | 1:33 pm

Then behold! I am on a new server. The real question is: Do my posts show up in RSS again, or am I still relegated to headline only. Related posts Who needs procrastination when you have computers? Where did all the posts go? Twitters for 9-8-08 Twitters for 11-21-08 Touch pad woes
AMC - Fantasy Revolutions That Make for Fantastic Holidays

Mary Robinette Kowal

3 Jul 2009 | 7:15 am

This week’s column was ridiculous fun to write. I looked at fantasy revolutions and made up holidays for them to celebrate in 233 years. July 4 means different things to different people: fireworks, barbecue, a day off from work. But the founders weren’t thinking about any of that in 1776. They were readying for war — an eight-year struggle of which we mark only a turning point. What turning points might some of our fantasy heroes celebrate, some 233 years after their revolutions? via AMC - Blogs - SciFi Scanner - Mary Robinette Kowal - Fantasy Revolutions That Make for…
August Asimov’s is out with my story!

Mary Robinette Kowal

3 Jul 2009 | 12:26 am

Forgive me for squeeing all over myself but I’ve been reading Asimov’s since I was a teen and I just had just had the dream experience. I went into the bookstore and bought a copy of the magazine with my name on the cover. My name. On the cover of Asimov’s. It’s my first sale to the magazine, which is cool enough but didn’t know until I went in that I’d made the cover. And then! I got home tonight and Lois Tilton at IROSF reviewed the August Asimov’s today. She gave my story, “The Consciousness Problem” a RECOMMENDED. This is a poignant…
You can tell I’m a puppeteer because…

Mary Robinette Kowal

2 Jul 2009 | 9:27 pm

So, I was watching this video about Disney’s Imagineers making an animatronic figure of Obama for the Disney Hall of Presidents. When Obama is recording his speech to the microphone, I couldn’t help but watch his hands and think that it was terrible puppetry technique. And this is the real man. If it were a puppet, I’d smack the puppeteer and tell them that the gestures were meaningless and to stop them. via The White House. Related posts World Puppetry Day Wing mechanism Why I hate riding the subway with puppets What a Giant Block of Foam can do for your career WEIRD…
Jay Lake’s Green

Mary Robinette Kowal

1 Jul 2009 | 9:35 am

I had the strangest experience while reading Jay Lake’s Green. I kept feeling like I’d read it before while absolutely knowing I hadn’t. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing derivative about the story and the plot turned in ways that surprised me. What it felt like was that this was a book that I’d read and loved, but so long ago that I’d completely forgotten it. I finally realized that it was because the character Green was so real and vivid to me that I recognized her the way I’d recognize a friend. You know how you meet someone and feel like…

Nancy Kress
Success and Failure

4 Jul 2009 | 8:15 am

Yesterday I finished reading Ted Morgan's biography of W. Somerset Maugham. Maugham goes in and out of literary fashion (currently out) but he is one of my favorite writers. I have read three of his Big Four, but not CAKES AND ALE. (The others are OF HUMAN BONDAGE, THE RAZOR'S EDGE, and the short story "Rain.") So yesterday I picked up CAKES AND ALE at a bookstore and started it. Since it is a satire about writers, I'm enjoying it on several levels.Maugham is a cynic, and he has a merciless eye. Here is his account of a successful writer having dinner with a less successful writer and…
Writerly Crankiness

1 Jul 2009 | 8:11 am

A student has sent me a rewrite in the mail, and I have re-critiqued it. Despite its merits (which were actually many), it contained one of my pet peeves of English prose, which got me thinking about the rest of them. Here they are:"... he thought to himself." Unless you are a telepath, there is no other possibility."An expression of .... on his face." Where else would an expression be? Omit "on his face."".... asked James." If there are more than two people in the scene, this is fine. Otherwise, I probably know it's James's turn to talk, and if his speech ends with a question mark, I already…
LOCUS Awards Weekend

29 Jun 2009 | 12:46 pm

Saturday combined the annual LOCUS Awards with the annual induction of Science Fiction Hall of Fame honorees. It was a very full day, starting with panels and ending fourteen hours later with drinks in the bar of Seattle's Courtyard Marriott. Some highlights:During my interview of Connie Willis, she explained the importance of ironing as a means of calming Writers' Nerves. AND you get wrinkle-free clothes!Michael Whelan's interview, conducted by Todd Lockwood, contained a moving account of how he "painted my way out of depression" with a picture, which he still has, of a stairway leading out…
Clarion party

27 Jun 2009 | 8:13 am

Last night was the first of the weekly Clarion parties for the out-going instructors, this one for John Kessel. Each week the old instructor, drained of all he knows, is hauled away like an empty suitcase and a fresh instructor is installed. Last night's party was particularly full because, in addition to students and local writers and fans, there are several visiting firemen in Seattle for tomorrow's Locus awards. Here is Gardner Dozois, grimacing at the 1,806th picture taken of him:Ellen Datlow and Ken Scholes were more cooperative:Jack Skillingstead, with me, is drifting along on a tide of…
Clarion Reading

24 Jun 2009 | 1:07 pm

Last night was the first of the Clarion Reading Series at the University Bookstore, in which each week's instructor at Clarion West reads from his or her work . John Kessel read from a story that will appear in Gardner Dozois's anthology THE NEW SPACE OPERA 2. John, usually a literary writer, said he had always wanted to write at least one SF story of the kind he enjoyed as a kid, "full of battles and heroes and derring-do." So he did. The story was great fun, and when it was finished, I'm sure there's not one of us in the audience who didn't want a secret nine-dimensional pouch with a…

Margo Lanagan
UK buzz

4 Jul 2009 | 6:15 am

Meg Rosoff's glowing opinion of Tender Morsels gets top billing in the Telegraph's summer reading list.Amanda Craig reviews children's fiction about fairies for The Times—well, kinda. And somehow TM gets caught up in the mess.Armadillo Magazine says: Lanagan's novel is often brutal, frightening, and bewildering, a challenging narrative, and as such possibly best suited for older teenage readers. It grips the reader from the outset, and as it is read, layer upon layer of psychological and intertextual meaning can be unpicked and analyzed. It is certainly an immensely powerful contribution to…
Wisdom from the mouth of a babe

4 Jul 2009 | 6:11 am

Kathleen was at my workshop at the Brisbane Writers' Festival last year—was it only last year?—and I apparently said pin-uppable things. I must dig out my own notes.
Meet me in Chicago next Saturday?

4 Jul 2009 | 6:10 am

I know, I can't quite believe it myself.
So much to do,

1 Jul 2009 | 3:59 pm

and only a week and a half until we fly out to Chicago, aak!I've been busy. I've had a lot of reading to do - Vogel entries, applications and acquittals for today-and-tomorrow's bureaucratting, Charlotte Roche's Wetlands, which I borrowed from Jan (which started off funny and ended up sad—the rewounding scene and the eating of blackheads were the wince-able bits for me).Plus, Nancy from Knopf sent me a box o' books to prime me up for the ALA weekend. I'm reading Christina Meldrum's Madapple and Candace Fleming's Lincolns scrapbook, and Tim Tharp's The Spectacular Now and Brent Runyon's…
TM as an adult book in the UK

21 Jun 2009 | 2:17 am

Here is the cover. Two of the hardbacks arrived during the week. Beautiful, beautiful things, and they're printed in such a way that I've written an almost-500-page novel! I'm terribly impressed.You like? In the meantime, Abigail from Now magazine has received a copy of the David Fickling Books edition (YA), and says it was amazing—she read it in one gulp. "Phenomenal novel, Margo, thank you. I absolutely loved it"!And here is a lovely review from someone tipped off by Nymeth.This is a beautiful, complicated book, that I will definitely be buying in the future so that I can reread it to my…

Justine Larbalestier
Stalker Song + Giveaway

Justine

4 Jul 2009 | 10:32 am

I have been promising for some time that I would write about how most love songs are actually about stalking. However that time is not now on account of I am behind with everything. So far behind that I can’t continue any feuds with other YA writers or—much much worse—follow the Tour de France. Yes, it’s that bad. Again. In the meantime tell me what your favourite/most appalling stalker song is in the comments below. I will send a signed (by me and Scott) copy of the anthology Love is Hell to the commenter whose stalker song selections most amuses me. Or at random if…
Why Does it Matter?

Justine

3 Jul 2009 | 10:54 am

Seems the authors v critics/reviewers thing just won’t go away. Today I was asked why I think it’s so important that authors not respond to critics. Basically what the question boiled down to was: Why does it matter? A close friend also demanded that I explain why I am so keen on silencing authors. I’ll take the second one first cause it’s so laughable. The very idea that I’m trying to silence anyone. I am an author. I am full of opinions. I share them here every single day. There’s nothing I don’t have an opinion on. Seriously. Ask me about anything…
Pontificating About How Writers Get Paid

Justine

1 Jul 2009 | 9:13 pm

John Green’s been posting about what he sees as the broken way in which most writers of books get paid in the publishing industry. He’s proposing smaller advances and higher royalties. Go over there and read what he has to say. Otherwise nothing I say in this post will make any sense. Finished? Okay then. First up, I agree with John that his model could be better for the industry. I would love to have higher royalties. However, the only agents I’ve known who’ve asked for them have not had much success. I don’t have as much faith as John does that it’s a…
Kendra

Justine

1 Jul 2009 | 12:54 pm

Last week I mentioned how much I loved Coe Booth’s Kendra. I have much to say about this book but let me start with the notion of realism. I am on the record as saying that I am not a fan. Yet Kendra is indisputably realist. It is set in the real world. There are no zombies, vampires, space ships or magic. So how can I say I don’t like realism when I love Kendra? Last night I was called on my anti-realism stance. It turns out that when I say I don’t like realism I’m talking about a very specific kind of book. I don’t like most John Updike or Philip Roth. I…
Some More Incoherent Thoughts on the Author/Reviewer Relationship

Justine

30 Jun 2009 | 9:06 am

My last post generated quite a bit of discussion. Some people seem to be under the impression that I was saying authors shouldn’t reply to any reviews at all. In my capacity as lord god of the internets1 I only forbid responding to negative reviews or reviews the author perceives as negative.2 I have yet to see an author respond to a bad review in any way that didn’t make them look like a petty loser. Responding to positive reviews is a whole other thing and as Diana Peterfreund points out can lead to very interesting discussions. Though I have seen authors respond to positive…

Richard Larson
Joseph O'Neill, Netherland

Richard Larson

2 Jul 2009 | 12:19 pm

Londoners remain in the business of rowing their boats gently down the stream. Unchanged, accordingly, is the general down-the-hatch, who-are-we-fooling lightheartedness that's aimed at shrinking the significance of our attainments and our doom, and contributes, I've speculated, to the bizarrely premature crystallization of our lives here, where men and woman past the age of forty, in some cases even the age of thirty, may easily be regarded as over the hill and entitled to an essentially retrospective idea of themselves; whereas in New York selfhood's hill always seemed to lie…
New story!

Richard Larson

1 Jul 2009 | 6:36 am

My short story, "Last Call," has just appeared at Eclectica Magazine, which has also chosen me as the spotlight author for the current issue. I am thrilled that the story found its home at this 'zine.
30 Jun 2009 | 6:40 am

Richard Larson

30 Jun 2009 | 6:40 am

... St. Louis as a ''city lost in the middle.'' ''I've always found it interesting,'' the narrator of ''Reunion'' observes, ''that it was both the boyhood home of T. S. Eliot, and only 85 years before that, the starting point of westward expansion. It's a place, I suppose, the world can't get away from fast enough.''
Oh, Richard Ford... amazing.

Richard Larson

30 Jun 2009 | 6:34 am

But people make such a big deal out of it - shooting a book - it's not like I shot her.
Pirates!

Richard Larson

19 Jun 2009 | 7:37 am

My review of Fast Ships, Black Sails, an anthology of pirate stories edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, has been posted at Strange Horizons.

William Leisner
More Review

1 Jul 2009 | 8:48 pm

Found another positive review of Losing the Peace from "GeekSpeaker" at GeekSpeakBlog.com. The money quotes:[The author] gives us pure, character driven drama that stands up right alongside the action filled previous books in the series. [...] William Leisner has continued the compelling storylines setup over the last two years of the Star Trek book line and is a fine addition to the ranks of great Star Trek authors. Losing the Peace is not a nail biter, but it’s definitely a page turner[...]And, in the interest of keeping my ego in check, I should also link Brendan Moody's (brendan_moody)…
Goodbye, Norm

30 Jun 2009 | 2:47 pm

Let's take a quick trip in the Wayback Machine, shall we, kids, back to November 6, 2008:Coleman urged Franken to waive his right to a recount, saying that the prospect of changing the result was remote and that a recount would be costly to taxpayers (about $86,000).Coleman not only cost the citizens of Minnesota far more than the $86K of the legally-mandated recount with his multiple, sometimes contradictory court challenges, but also cost us our equal representation in the United States Senate for no reason other than to stroke his own ego, and to appease his masters running the Republican…
Open Thread

29 Jun 2009 | 8:24 pm

Just finished up the interview at BlogTalkRadio, and since they gave out the address for the ol' blog here, I figured I out to put out the welcome mat, on the off chance anyone decided to stop by.So... welcome! Pull up a chair, help yourself to to a beverage, say hi or whatever else might be on your mind.... and for anyone interested in the original short story I had mentioned during the show, you can find that in this entry.
I Haz Bookes!

25 Jun 2009 | 10:43 am

UPS just delivered a box of books! My books!! With my name on the cover, and filled with my words!! They have mass and dimension and everything you would expect from a real object!!*squeeeeee!!*Sorry. I'll stop now.
Into The Wild

24 Jun 2009 | 7:58 pm

Amazon is now showing Losing the Peace as in stock, and the first civilian buyer has reported finding the book and reading it in one day. So, keep your eyes up at your local bookseller. If you don't see it out, ask the sales staff to check the backroom. If they check the backroom and come back with nothing, ask someone else to check the backroom. If you still can't get the book, start shouting about suppression of thought, then leave a Trek!Fail post on as many internet sites as you can think of. Or, just check back the next time you're in.

Edward M. Lerner
Juggler interview with Tor Books

1 Jul 2009 | 12:02 pm

For those who don't subscribe to the monthly Tor-Forge newsletter, here's my recent interview (motivated by the paperback re-release of Juggler of Worlds):Q: How do you describe Juggler of Worlds A: Juggler shows what happens when a paranoid government agent really does confront vast alien conspiracies. Sigmund Ausfaller comes by his paranoia honestly. He was ten when his parents disappeared amid a conflict with the Kzinti—and everyone knows the Kzinti eat their prey. He grew up to watch aliens for a living. It’s up to Sigmund to make sense of things when the super-secretive Puppeteers,…
Progress (not!)

27 Jun 2009 | 8:55 am

A surprisingly large chunk of writing happens away from desk and computer. Stories and characters evolve. Plot holes rear their ugly heads (yeah, a horribly mixed metaphor -- it amuses me). Exciting wrinkles suggest themselves. Those are all more likely to happen by free association than while pounding the keyboard. Long walks are an important part of the process.So: weather permitting, I walk daily. The neighbors know that if I fail to notice them, I'm in a writing trance and not snubbing them.And now about progress ... cell phones are wonderful technology. I truly believe that. I worked at…
Robots (first musings)

23 Jun 2009 | 8:14 am

So when will we have robot servants (like Rosie the maid on the Jetsons)? Probably not this year, but clearly we are getting closer. Already we can get autonomous robotic vacuums and robotic pets. The military, of course, uses teleoperated robots to spy from the sky and to find landmines. Robots -- albeit very specialized -- have long been at work in our factories.Eons ago, when I started work on my computer science MS, to make a robot that could recognize and react properly to its environment was a huge problem -- PhD dissertation material. I shared an office with a guy whose PhD thesis…
Potpourri

17 Jun 2009 | 7:31 am

Sifting through my "look at this someday" bookmark folder, some interesting stuff ...Smart sponges: At last! A use for RFIDs with which I can be happy. Smart imaging: In trouble, for lack of radioisotopes. Exploration of the outer solar system: Perhaps also in trouble, for a similar reason. With all the trillions the U.S. government is sinking into debt, can DOE get thirty million for a worthy cause?Now I hafta get back to writing ... I left Our Hero in a most precarious predicament.from "SF and Nonsense"
Ocean and water

10 Jun 2009 | 8:58 am

The Year of Science returns, this month to celebrate The Ocean and Water.I'm underwhelmed again this month. The Earth's surface is mostly water. Our cells are mostly water. Tell me something I didn't know in third grade (a long time ago).How is trafficking in the trite supposed to get anyone excited about science?Peeking ahead to July, though, we have astronomy. Yea!from "SF and Nonsense"

David Levine
Whiz, whiz go the days

4 Jul 2009 | 11:28 am

Word count: 6753 | Since last entry: 6753 Fourth of July already!? Went to the Iron Springs Writers Retreat on the Washington coast, where I was "writer guru" along with jaylake. Very strange for me to be Big Name Writer Guy. In addition to leading two critique sessions I also gave two informal talks, one on plotting and one on using sets and props to build character and display emotion. And of course there was much eating and chatting and walking on the beach (though my it was windy on that beach). Jay and I will be doing it again next year, though at a different location. I also used the…
Three excellent blog posts

3 Jul 2009 | 10:22 am

You really ought to check these out:sumanah writes about the city of New York as a system, as a religion: While Listening To Kraftwerkannafdd writes about The physics of dishwashing (which, incidentally, also explains why it's important to wash your hands for a full 20 seconds)dsmoen explains how gay marriage can save lives, in a heartbreaking post about the details of organ donation: How I Got Married and Donated a Liver
Space Magic is an Endeavour Award finalist!!

30 Jun 2009 | 7:33 pm

Now it can be told: Space Magic, my first collection of short stories, is a finalist for the Endeavour Award! The Endeavour is an award for a science fiction or fantasy book written by a Pacific Northwest author, and is presented each year at OryCon. The other finalists for 2009 are Anathem by Neal Stephenson, Ill Met in the Arena by Dave Duncan, Long Walks, Last Flights and Other Stories by Ken Scholes, and A World Too Near: Book Two of the Entire and the Rose by Kay Kenyon. (Tough competition! It's an honor just to be nominated.) The judges for this year, who will select the recipient from…
Kidnapping myself

24 Jun 2009 | 8:22 pm

Right. There's only one way to stop myself from obsessively researching this story and force myself to begin drafting the damn thing. I am kidnapping myself and squirreling myself away in an undisclosed location without access to the Internet or any other research materials. Well, not really. But almost. The fact is that I am, along with jaylake, "Writer Guru" at the Iron Springs Writers' Retreat on the Washington coast, which begins tomorrow. It should be a very cool weekend of hanging out with writers, critiquing, and writing. There is no Internet or cell phone service, so if you have…
"Teaching the Pig to Sing" sold to Analog

23 Jun 2009 | 10:14 am

I am exceedingly proud to announce that I just sold short story "Teaching the Pig to Sing" to Analog, my first sale to that market. No idea when it will come out, though if I know anything about print magazine publishing it will probably not be until 2010 or maybe even 2011. This story started as an idea I had for Federations, but December got kind of crazy and I didn't even start writing it until after the deadline for that anthology. It evolved quite a bit in the process of drafting and editing, and I finally wound up taking out the alien federation altogether, leaving it as a…

Paul Levinson
Timely, Masterful HBO Documentary about The First Amendment

3 Jul 2009 | 4:04 pm

Just in time for July 4, HBO debuted its First Amendment documentary, "Shouting Fire: Stories from the Edge of Free Speech," this past Monday. Its perspective - that the First Amendment has not been under such fire since the 1950s - is something that anyone who cares about the First Amendment can't help but agree with. The documentary features First Amendment lawyer Martin Garbus, and was made by his daughter Liz Garbus. She's already won two Emmys. Her work on this documentary should win her another and more.Martin Garbus has been an heroic champion of the First Amendment - I quote him about…
Love and True Blood in the Air

29 Jun 2009 | 8:29 am

Best True Blood - 2.3 - of the new season last night. Sookie is attacked by some human/bull creature who claws her back, and leaves some deadly poison that even Bill's blood can't cure. Fortunately, Bill brings her to Eric, who knows whom to fetch - a healer with the proper savvy. But this gets Sookie further into Eric's thinking and desires, and ...Who was the creature that attacked her? Surely not some monster she accidentally ran into on the road.Sam's a shape changer, and he was leaving Merlotte's before the attack, but Sam could never in any form attack Sookie. Who, then? Well, Maryann…
Michael Jackson, Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, and David Gregory

29 Jun 2009 | 6:35 am

David Gregory asked Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod a question near the end of their interview on Meet the Press yesterday that bothered me for two reasons. Why, Gregory asked Axelrod, did President Obama not say anything publicly about the death of Michael Jackson, given that "some African-American leaders say the significance of this popular cultural icon was significant. I mean, before there was Barack Obama, before Tiger Woods and Oprah Winfrey there was Michael Jackson crossing over, breaking barriers."First, I'm wondering why Gregory chose to attribute this astute obervation to…
Michael Jackson and the Ever Lasting Record

25 Jun 2009 | 3:36 pm

Michael Jackson died today. He was 50 years old. In his own way, he was the successor of Frank Sinatra in the 1940s, Elvis in the 1950s, the Beatles in 1960s, and no one recording artist or group in the 1970s. He was probably the most like Elvis, in that both died, way too young, of natural causes. Jackson was a voice, an image, and an icon that helped define the decade of the 1980s.He also help ignite a revolution in video that we are still enjoying. Not only was his "Thriller" album in the 1980s the best selling album in history, his "Thriller" video helped propel MTV to international…
President Laura Roslin vs. Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson on The Closer

23 Jun 2009 | 10:33 am

Fine, taut episode of The Closer last night, with Mary McDonnell, fresh from her role as the late President Laura Roslin on Battlestar Galactica, right in the face of Deputy Chief Brenda Leigh Johnson (Kyra Sedgwick), and the Deputy Chief of course giving it back as good or better than she gets.The confrontation is about Capt. Sharon Raydor's (Mary McDonnell) investigation of Sgt. David Gabriel's shooting of an unarmed man. We the viewers saw the flash of fire that Gabriel was responding to, so we know he's telling the truth, but Raydor did not and does not. Brenda Leigh knows Gabriel is…

Holly Lisle
DTD-Your words on Friday Night

Holly Lisle

3 Jul 2009 | 7:32 pm

As noted, I take the weekends off. My weekend is Friday night, and Saturday night… but I know you might actually be writing on Friday/Saturday… So here’s the Friday night, Saturday morning “write a book with me” post. And I’ll have a Saturday night, Sunday morning one popping up for you at the appropriate [...]
DTD—504 words and a rock band

Holly Lisle

2 Jul 2009 | 7:39 pm

A short run through the bowels of Madison Square Garden in disguise, still pursued by killers. Finished the scene and the chapter, and now have 21,688 words completed. Tomorrow, I’ll pick up Ki’s point of view, and the invasion of his lair by his unwelcome, trouble-plagued guest. I had great fun with this scene. If I didn’t [...]
DTD—289 words forward, and a small clue

Holly Lisle

1 Jul 2009 | 7:30 pm

Aleksa gets the first hint that what she thinks happened to her assistant is not what happened at all. Small segment tonight—I haven’t slept more than a couple of hours a night since last Friday, and I’m determined to get a full night’s sleep tonight. So, with 21,184 words completed, I’m going to turn in. The [...]
THE WRITING CRAFT Update: Which kind of writer are you?

Holly Lisle

1 Jul 2009 | 10:37 am

Based on heavy votes on THE WRITING CRAFT’s “I need this planned module first” poll, I’m now at work on the Motivation module. Following that, I’ll do the Pacing and Plot module. The votes were surprising. HOWEVER… the comments were far more telling—I got bunches on all three polls, and discovered that what I was [...]
DTD—286 words, and digging into the mystery

Holly Lisle

30 Jun 2009 | 8:19 pm

My heroine, convinced that her apparent allies are in fact allied with her enemies, questions her captor. Fun session tonight. Got to explore one of my important secondary characters on my way to the bigger surprise I have planned between hero and heroine. If you’re playing the “write a book with me” game, post your own [...]

Jason Erik Lundberg
the day the saucers came

29 Jun 2009 | 4:44 pm

This week is IT Home Learning at my school; because of the threats of the H1N1 influenza strain in Singapore (the numbers of infected keep rising every day), Hwa Chong's administrators have decided that this week, in order to avoid the hassle and disruption of quarantine, the kids will stay home and do online lessons. Yesterday was Day 1, and it was a bit rocky; all of my lessons are located on Facebook groups, and as of 8 a.m., not all my students had even signed up for an account yet. Then some of the guys weren't reading the instructions carefully enough and asked lots of questions that…
what did we do today, brain?

29 Jun 2009 | 2:01 pm

10:07 Finished with Distances: A Novella by Vandana Singh. Elegant far-future SF where maths mix with art. Dense and fulfilling prose. # 15:24 I've been working solidly for 8 hours at my laptop, just a 10 min lunch break. I thought home learning was supposed to make things easier! # 15:43 For my Raleigh peeps: RT @whedonesque: Can't Stop the Serentiy in Raleigh NC, Sunday, Monday. tinyurl.com/n4vhwb # 16:42 Finally finished reading Facebook notes and thread entries. Now checking student blogs. # 20:44 Finished with Bone, Volume 3: Eyes of the Storm by Jeff Smith # 21:00 @rsdevin My gag reflex…
what did we do today, brain?

28 Jun 2009 | 2:01 pm

09:28 On page 98 of 154 of Distances: A Novella by Vandana Singh # 09:34 RT @sfwa RT @JohnPicacio: Congrats to @paolobacigalupi, winner of two Locus Awards (Best Collection and Best Novelette)! Way to go, man! # 09:44 Yay Neil! RT @CherylMorgan: Congrats to @neilhimself for yet another Graveyard Book win at the Locus Awards. Coraline graphic novel won too. # 09:44 Locus

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