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[personal|photos] The Shiny, it sparkles

davidlevine came by Nuevo Rancho Lake yesterday bearing gifts. He brought a card from elisem which had also been signed by a ton of folks at WFC, causing me to tear up. Additionally elisem her own self had sent along a couple of gifts.

One is a cupcake bead. It’s horribly cute, and is a reference to a dream I had about her a while back: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ].

The other is an opal in one of Elise’s lovely silver settings, and is a reference to the visit she and I and several other folks made to Lightning Ridge Opals in Melbourne last year: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]. It’s a piece I rather liked in the raw, and she has set it up so very nicely.

I want to thank elisem, and any other little elves I suspect may have been involved in this. ETA: And I’m told there were many elves, everyone on the card in fact and perhaps more. Thank you all.

I feel honored and loved and beautified.

Tags: Australia, dreams, Personal, Photos

Posted: 6:05 am Wed November 16 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad looks over the horizon

Don’t forget the new Endurance ARC contest: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Footprints and flags on the moon won’t last forever — Footprints, anyone?

A drink a day linked to healthy aging — Good news for all you budding lushes out there.

A fall from grace — Roger Ebert on his health, and frailty. I know whereof he speaks.

A 7-ton Satellite to Fall on Earth This Month

Climate Scientists’ Pole-to-Pole Greenhouse Gas Survey Near Completion

Wildfire Smoke Plumes over Texas — This is a terrible problem. I have friends and relatives whose property (and potentially lives) are threatened. Still, I think Pharyngula comment on the Texas drought perfectly applies to this as well. To my conservative friends who claim to believe that natural disasters are a form of divine commentary: Why is God punishing Texas?

Banning All Religion — An interesting squib from Australia.

Channeling FDR: The Moral Case Against Unemployment — Unfortunately, our politics has become downright punitively Calvinistic about the unemployed. Even more unfortunately, nearly half the electorate seems to be fine with this.

The Myth of Conservative Purity — A conservative view of the Right’s no-compromise tendencies.

Dick Cheney praises Hillary Clinton — Also, this just in: monkeys have flown out of my butt to deliver hockey sticks to Hell.

Asymmetrical War — Ta-Nehisi Coates on Republican obstructionism. As he says of Obama’s view of Boehner and McConnell, And we wonder what portion of “Government is the problem” he failed to understand.

Pass, Fail and Politics — Call me crazy, but I actually want someone smarter than I am in the Oval Office. Unfortunately, millions of my fellow Americans demonstrably would rather have someone they’re comfortable having a beer with. A valedictorian president or a frat boy president? Is that really our political divide?

?otD: Where would you go if you could?

9/8/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.0 hours (fitful)
Weight: 226.0
Currently reading: Antiphon by Ken Scholes

Tags: Australia, Books, Contests, Endurance, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Religion, Science, Texas

Posted: 5:05 am Thu September 08 2011 | Comments(1) |

[links] Link salad on Labor Day

Don’t forget the new Endurance ARC contest: [ jlake.com | LiveJournal ]

Slacktivist on the religious progressive view of labor

Ancient menagerie uncovered in Australia’s Nullarbor — (Thanks to danjite.)

FEMA Uses the Waffle House Index to Determine Hurricane Threat

Scenes From a Multiverse takes on right wing denialism — Hahaha. (Thanks to goulo.)

Michael Moore, Triumphant? — In a new memoir, the controversial filmmaker opens up about his life. He talks about the vitriol he faced after 9/11, and why he thinks the last decade has proved him right.

Why Do Conservatives Get a Pass? — Perry’s views are getting denounced by all the usual lefty suspects but not much by anyone else. And the reason for this is something very odd: In modern America, conservatives are largely given a pass for saying crazy things. They’re just not taken seriously, in a boys-will-be-boys kind of way.

Goodbye to All That: Reflections of a GOP Operative Who Left the Cult — I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country’s future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them. Long, but definitely worth the read. Especially if you’re a conservative. (Thanks to goulo.)

?otD: What are you doing with your Monday off? Or do you even have this Monday off?

9/5/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (2,500 words on Sunspin, including some editorial work)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.25 hours (solid)
Weight: 223.4
Currently reading: Endurance by Alfred Lansing

Tags: Australia, Books, Contests, Endurance, Funny, Links, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, weird

Posted: 6:36 am Mon September 05 2011 | Comments(0) |

[links] Link salad cries more, more, more

If all stories were written like science fiction stories — Hahaha. Very bad science fiction stories, admittedly. (Via David Goldman.)

First Measurement of ‘Wordquakes’ Shaking the Blogosphere — Certain words disrupt the blogosphere in the same way that earthquakes shake the planet. And that makes them ripe for an earthquake-like magnitude rating.

A Year in the Slow Lane in a ’30 Ford — That be some dedication.

Back to the Future — An amazing photo re-creation project. (Thanks to willyumtx.)

Shipping cupcakes down the thermal exhaust port — A video of the unboxing of an entry in the cupcake shipping challenge. Color me impressed. (Via scarlettina.)

Australians hit by Cyclone Yasi warned to stay away from deadly giant birds — Now that is a headline. (Thanks to danjite.)

Up telescope! Search begins for giant new planet — Tyche may be bigger than Jupiter and orbit at the outer edge of the solar system. (\Bad Astronomy responds.

Evidence of a Spurious Origin — Ta-Nehisi Coates on nineteenth century scientific racism. Both interesting and depressing.

The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters — Glenn Greenwald on Wikileaks and his own targeting in response. No matter what your politics, this will likely strike you as appalling.

Selection Bias? PolitiFact Rates Republican Statements as False at 3 Times the Rate of Democrats — Or possibly just the Palin effect.

House GOPer against big government health care enjoys taxpayer-funded state government insurance — Further evidence that the core tenet of contemporary conservatism is ‘right for me but not for thee.’ See the only moral abortion is my abortion for a much larger, more devastating example of this.

Be Nice To Bigots: Republican leaders tiptoe around the smear campaign against Obama’s faith and citizenship. — That’s four straight interviews in which the country’s three top Republicans—the speaker of the House and the GOP leaders in each chamber—have refused to condemn the spreading of lies about Obama’s faith and citizenship. [...] Why can’t Boehner, Cantor, or McConnell speak that bluntly? Why won’t they call a lie a lie? If they want to be leaders, it’s time to lead. Your Republican party: proudly standing up for what’s right and true in America. (Except when it pisses off their base, of course.)

?otD: What happened in the midnight hour?

2/15/2011
Writing time yesterday: 1.5 hours (copy edits on Endurance)
Body movement: 30 minutes on stationary bike
Hours slept: 5.75 hours (solid)
Weight: 252.0
Currently reading: Between books

Tags: Australia, Cool, Culture, Food, Funny, Language, Links, media, Personal, Photos, Politics, Process, race, Science, Videos, weird, words

Posted: 6:01 am Tue February 15 2011 | Comments(1) |

[personal|writing] My 2010 Year in Review

2010 has been a very difficult year for me, but it’s also been a very accomplished year. The ironies of this are not lost upon me. And frankly, the leading indicators for 2011 are not much improved. We shall see.

Books

Pinion from Tor Books
The Specific Gravity of Grief from Fairwood Press
The Baby Killers from PS Publishing
The Sky That Wraps from Subterranean Press

Short Fiction

In short fiction, I had about twenty-five appearances, one jointly authored with Ken Scholes, several more with Shannon Page.

Other Activities

I was nominated for an Airship Award for the Mainspring cycle, sold French and German rights to various of my books, and edited METAtropolis: Cascadia, Audible.com’s followup to the highly successful METAtropolis audiobook.

I attended Rainforest Writers’ Village, Cascade Writers, New Zealand’s National Convention, Worldcon in Australia, Orycon and Steamcon.

Submissions and Sales

43 new fiction submissions in total
22 sales, several with Shannon Page
12 rejections

19 reprint submissions in total
11 reprint sales
18 reprint rejections

Writing Statistics

226,200 words of first draft (Kalimpura, twelve short stories, outlines to Kalimpura and Sunspin, several nonfiction items)

Revisions to Endurance

Approximately 1,000 blog posts

Personal Life

All of this while recovering from lung surgery, undergoing six months of chemotherapy, experiencing and recovering from liver surgery, holding down a full-time job, parenting, and spending the last three months of the year watching my primary relationship erode and vanish. So while the writing held up remarkably well (I accomplished more in 2010 than in 2009), the rest of the year sucked rocks and is totally fired.

Also, don’t ever talk to me about not finding the time to write.

Tags: Australia, Awards, Baby Killers, Books, Calendula, Conventions, Endurance, Grief, Kalipura, Mainspring, New Zealand, Personal, Pinion, Sky, Sunspin, Travel, Writing

Posted: 2:22 pm Fri December 31 2010 | Comments(5) |

[photos] Australia: Interesting Food

This last set of the Melbourne series features a few interesting food photos. The world is filled with interesting food, I suppose, but this is what we saw.

Nothing says yum like a white tomato.