My friends list is going to fill up with this in about five minutes, but I have to say something anyway. Author Iain Banks has just announced he has terminal cancer. God damn it. I *like* Iain Banks. I was very much looking forward to seeing him again at WorldCon in London. Dammit, dammit, dammit. I met Iain at MeCon in Belfast not long after moving to Ireland, but long enough that I was a guest at the convention. Dinner with Iain, his partner Adele, and several others was the…
We’re back from EasterCon, which was an excellent mix of meeting up with old friends and making new ones. My most excellent writer friends Kari Sperring and Juliet E. McKenna were instrumental in this year’s EasterCon, so I’m particularly happy that it was this year I finally got to *go*. All the other committee members I met were also wonderful people, and they did an absolutely fantastic job putting together a magnificently diverse and interesting program. The past few years EasterCon’s had a commitment to gender parity on the panels,…
I haven’t read this in decades. It still works. :) I was a little surprised at the fairy tale qualities that I didn’t remember from childhood, but even so, they were less Fairy-Tale-Weird than most, er, non-invented? fairy tales. I mean, fairy tales make no sense at all in terms of “Oh hey, a glass mountain, oh look, a magic flying saddle appears to help me climb it!” Right, but, er, why did the magic flying saddle appear at all? Where did it come from? This makes slightly more sense…
I ran across this title while poking around the web for self-sufficiency zombie apocalypse sorts of things, and found it highly recommended, so I thought what the hell, and bought it. I’m not even a gardener (though I have ambitions), and even so, this book was really just completely fascinating to read. I have no idea if everybody would find it so interesting, but wow, I’d think if you have any impulse toward (food) gardening at all, you want to read this one. I mean, they’re selling a product, to…
Author Kait Nolan wrote a blog about Kickstarters and platforms (featuring me!), which caused me to go have a look at the most successful fiction Kickstarters. NO DOMINION’s still in the top 15, which surprised and delighted me. DINOPOCALYPSE NOW, which I’ll be writing a book for next month, is still in the top 5. (And Tim Pratt’s latest Marla Mason novel is also in the top 20! Yay!) The whole thing made me kinda want to run another Kickstarter. Kinda. :) I’m not going to (despite somebody asking for…