ogre_san

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Anyone know of a good bookplate template? Doesn't have to be Avery.

http://www.chrisroberson.net/2008/07/fortune-cookie-monster.html

jaylake

Beach is cold and foggy. So am I. It was a rather difficult night, and that’s enough said about that.

There appears to be some extremely cool Escapement [ Amazon ] news forthcoming. Once it comes forth in a confirmable fashion, I will share.

Working today, then hanging with the family and writing. Omaha has been having some spectacularly bad weather. Next week’s travel may be interesting. In the mean time, I shall do what I always do and enjoy myself right where I am.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/325752993/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/07/03/implied-spaces-free-download/

John Joseph Adams just let me know that Walter Jon William’s latest book, which I’ve been pimping as one of my favorite reads of this year so far, has a nice, large excerpt up on the Night Shade downloads page. It’s a scene where space zombies attack the main character.

Seriously.

Walter and I share geeky fascinations. I need to make sure I send him a copy of Sly Mongoose, which also features hard SF rationalized space zombies.

diosa_en_disfra

• 20:20 wow, what's with all the suckage tonight on SYTYCD? #
• 20:49 Katee and Joshua are amazing. My favourite dancers maybe ever. #
• 00:28 Moving sucks, you know why? Because you lose things. Things that you really really need. Things you need RIGHT NOW. jesus christ. #

catsparx

[	Tags	|	fiji	]
[	Current Location	|	Tamavua	]
[	Current Mood	|	chipper	]

Today is Kaaron's birthday & what better way to mark the occasion than a visit to the fabulous Waterfall bar at the Suva Motor Inn? The bar sits on the far side of a precariously angled water slide. Kids were hurtling off the end of it & somehow managing to land bang smack in the water rather than overshooting the mark to skid across wet concrete.

The Suva Motor Inn is famous for one thing: its wall of shame. Four panels of sunbleached polaroids pinned to the boards with rusty thumb tacks. Names and descriptions scrawled below in faded biro include:

Sinbad - Track record 3 days,

Badge - 26 Hours awesome,

Strawb - Paid First Drank Later,

Bitch no 2 - The name says it all,

Slopes - Crazy Kiwi,

Sam - Son of Sam - That’s a worry,

& the fabulous...

[Cap'n Naked had been awarded a double tour, triple crown plaque. Not only that, but he'd written a long poem entitled The World Beer Tour Wall of Shame which was framed and mounted proudly on a post, dated 6/4/98]

There's also Butter Boy - Full Kiwi Cream, G-Man - Always gets the girl, Big Mac - No French Fries, Gator Warren (no relation, Kaaron claims) Triple Crown - Double tour. And many more.

The bar itself features several engraved brass plaques screwed permanently into the wood, such as:

There's a laminated A4 sheet of paper explaining the world beer tour rules:

Go around the world and be eligible to join the extremely exclusive "WALL OF SHAME CLUB"

Complete one half, north or south, and receive a Suva motor inn golf cap. A full circumnavigation will be rewarded with your own engrave tankard and a permanent place on the infamous wall.

The plaque where I sat read:

In recognition of 4 world beer tours

This seat at the bar is

Awarded to

"FAT MAN"

Derrick Rooney

I only had one beer so I wasn't a contender.

Well, thats all the blogging I'm going to be doing from Fiji. Returning home tomorrow, unfortunately.

jaylake

the_child and I left Portland amid 90 degree weather, arriving at the beach three hours later in 60 degree weather. My parents served us a fine homemade dinner, after which I collapsed on the couch.

Some Day Jobbe work tomorrow, then family time plus working on “Forests of the Night”, through Saturday. I was going to make a more ambitious blog post about the emotional penalties of cancer, but I’m too damned tired and the bandwidth is very narrow here.

Y’all play nice. I’ll be back around in the morning.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/forbeckcom/~3/325419985/

http://www.forbeck.com/?p=1231

The time, date, and place for the next IGDA Madison meeting have been set—7 PM on July 15 in Green Bay! Details are at the chapter’s website (for which I humbly serve as webmaster these days).

Sadly, I don’t think I’ll be able to make the six-hour round trip to the event. However, if you’re in Madison, you’re much closer, and if you’re in Green Bay, you lucky dog, you’re already there.

ShareThis

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/325182875/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/07/02/romantic-times-on-sly-mongoose/

Zombies. Interplanetary battles. Alien races. A hero that can destroy a city in a single bounce. What’s not to love? This is an edgy, engaging science fiction novel with a unique take on exactly which civilizations will represent humanity in our travels to distant planets. Light enough for a beach read, smart enough for bedside, this novel can be enjoyed on multiple levels.

So says the Victoria Frerichs of the Romantic Times Book Reviews on Sly Mongooose…

I like that last line. Kind of represents something I reach for.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/325176782/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/07/02/audio-project/

As noted on The Whatever, by John Scalzi, I’m involved in an interesting project that I’m just now putting some finishing touches on at night (while by day I write the Halo book). It’s going to an audio project coming out from Audible. Each author will be writing a novella revolving around a central concept that will all be gathered together.

Right now the project has the working title of Metatropolis, although that’s likely to change before it makes its official debut. In this audio anthology, we look to a future in which cities have become something more than just cities — and what that means for the people who live inside them, and outside of them. The cities are not utopias or dystopias (that’s too easy), and they definitely won’t be the “future cities” imagined in the illustration accompanying this. What they will be is a different way of looking at the world.

Karl Schroeder, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, me, and of course John Scalzi will all be contributing stories to this, and it is anticipated it will come out in the Fall.

Yes, it is turning into an interesting Fall quarter for me.

-Tides From the New Worlds (short story collection) will be out
-Novella in this Audible anthology
-Sly Mongoose, my third novel
-Halo: The Cole Protocol, my fourth novel, November 25
-Short story out in Fast Forward 2

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TobiasBuckell/~3/325167108/

http://www.tobiasbuckell.com/2008/07/02/crucial-taunt-review-of-crystal-rain/

Another review popped up last night, this very positive review of Crystal Rain on the website Crucial Taunt by John Markley:

From this set-up, creates one of the best adventure stories science fiction has seen in recent years. Buckell takes the reader across the world he has created, from a desperate midair struggle with an Azteca airship, to grim siege warfare at the walls of Capitol City, to the freezing North and the lost realm of the old-fathers. Starting with only the fragmentary understanding of the Nanagadans themselves, the reader gradually learns more about the awesome technology of the old-fathers, and about how the planet’s humans, Loa, and Tetol came to be where they are.

Nanagada itself is a fascinating creation, an array of peoples, cultures, and religions, drawn primarily from the people of the Caribbean, where Buckell himself grew up. Technology out of Earth’s late 19th century exists alongside remnants of a past that has become incomprehensible- the mammoth structures of Capitol City, alien creatures that are worshipped as gods, vast expanses of lifeless land that make those who visit sicken and die for reasons unclear to a society that no longer understands concepts like radioactivity and nuclear weapons. The disparities between technologies of past and present create a fascinating contrast of situations- grinding trench warfare fought with bolt-action rifles and steam-powered rail cars in one chapter, a struggle between a monstrous bioengineered alien and a cybernetically enhanced superhuman the next- that fit together naturally in the same story and setting. Buckell also provides tantalizing hints of what the wider universe is like as the story goes on, without going on at length about back-story.

tobias_buckell

Zombies. Interplanetary battles. Alien races. A hero that can destroy a city in a single bounce. What’s not to love? This is an edgy, engaging science fiction novel with a unique take on exactly which civilizations will represent humanity in our travels to distant planets. Light enough for a beach read, smart enough for bedside, this novel can be enjoyed on multiple levels.

So says the Victoria Frerichs of the Romantic Times Book Reviews on Sly Mongooose…

I like that last line. Kind of represents something I reach for.

Originally published at Tobias Buckell Online. You can comment here or there.

tobias_buckell

Another review popped up last night, this very positive review of Crystal Rain on the website Crucial Taunt by John Markley:

From this set-up, creates one of the best adventure stories science fiction has seen in recent years. Buckell takes the reader across the world he has created, from a desperate midair struggle with an Azteca airship, to grim siege warfare at the walls of Capitol City, to the freezing North and the lost realm of the old-fathers. Starting with only the fragmentary understanding of the Nanagadans themselves, the reader gradually learns more about the awesome technology of the old-fathers, and about how the planet’s humans, Loa, and Tetol came to be where they are.

Nanagada itself is a fascinating creation, an array of peoples, cultures, and religions, drawn primarily from the people of the Caribbean, where Buckell himself grew up. Technology out of Earth’s late 19th century exists alongside remnants of a past that has become incomprehensible- the mammoth structures of Capitol City, alien creatures that are worshipped as gods, vast expanses of lifeless land that make those who visit sicken and die for reasons unclear to a society that no longer understands concepts like radioactivity and nuclear weapons. The disparities between technologies of past and present create a fascinating contrast of situations- grinding trench warfare fought with bolt-action rifles and steam-powered rail cars in one chapter, a struggle between a monstrous bioengineered alien and a cybernetically enhanced superhuman the next- that fit together naturally in the same story and setting. Buckell also provides tantalizing hints of what the wider universe is like as the story goes on, without going on at length about back-story.

Originally published at Tobias Buckell Online. You can comment here or there.

ogre_san

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For about the third time I've turned up on the mailing list of a writer I've never heard of who's writing things I'm not particularly interested in. Now, yes, I understand that self-promotion for authors is not merely a good idea but pretty much obligatory, but there's a right way and a wrong way (and if I ever go over the line here, someone smack me. I'll behave). If someone on my friends' list or that I chat with elsewhere wants to start a newsletter/mailing list and wants to include me, that's different. I'm actually pleased. OTOH, if someone I don't know picks my name from a list of people they don't know and signs me up for a mailing list I'm not interested in and didn't ask to be included in, just so they can try to sell me stuff? Has the opposite effect of the one they're looking for. Not effective. Not cool.

And definitely not classy. That is all.

ogre_san

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confused

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There's an ongoing discussion of gender imbalance in sf/f, partly (or maybe mostly) triggered this time by the ToC of ECLIPSE 2. Since I have a dog in that fight I'm staying out of it, but anyone who wants to follow the discussion or comment can go here.