ANNOUNCEMENT 1: I will be GUEST OF HONO(U)R at Octocon in Cork, Ireland, along with the inestimable Adrian Tchaikovsky, over October 3-4, 2026! This is an excellent excuse to visit Ireland, right? :D (Seriously, it is: Octocon is an intimate, cozy little convention where you really get to spend time with everybody, and I’d LOVE to see people there!) ANNOUNCEMENT 2: Speaking of cozy! I have just signed the contract for A PINT OF MURDER, a new cozy mystery set in Ireland! I’ll be writing under the name Cate Malone…
Recent Reads: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands
Recent Reads: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, Sarah Brooks – someone recommended this to me, IDEK who, but I’m grateful to them for it: it’s surreal and fantastic and a thrumming good read. The premise is roughly that the moral equivalent of the East India Company has built a railroad connecting Moscow to Bejing, through the walled-off wasteland of Siberia, which has long-since become a surreal expanse of inexplicable and encroaching magical change that threatens everything normal beyond the Walls. The Train is the only thing that can…
Picoreview: Countdown
Picoreview: Countdown – this was clearly not ever going to be very good, but having Jensen Ackles in it doesn’t manage to bring it up as much as I hoped. Countdown is an Amazon Prime vehicle for Ackles, and I can remember for about five nanoseconds at a time that it’s called Countdown: I keep calling it Crossroads, for obvious reasons (those reasons being “Jensen Ackles is in it”). It’s about a Very Handsome Man Who Is Tired Of Shaving and who is Kind Of An Asshole But Has Reasons…
art project: whoa-aaaah, we’re halfway there
Against all odds (as far as I’m concerned), I’ve hit the 50 hour mark in the 100 hours project. I genuinely figured I’d crap out in the first twenty hours or so & have been baffled by peoples’ supportive conviction that I would, although my friend Kate pointed out people are REALLY ACCUSTOMED to seeing me finish creative projects, which, true! But those are BOOKS! I start & fail OTHER creative projects in public all the time! I tell you what, though, I like this so much more than knitting.…
cycling: stupid bike
Yesterday the chain fell off my bike again (it does this all the time) and today it’s clonking and chonking and clicking as I cycle. I know it’s a cheap bike, for Christ’s sake, but how hard is it for a cheap bike to do its damn job. I guess I’m bringing it back to the shop to see if they can figure it out, but this is really frustrating What’s even more frustrating is that most of the time the place behind a gate and under a roof isn’t…