New Zealand | jlake.com

[links] Link salad is like a very small hurricane

Cancer Discrimination in the Hospital — cathshaffer on her mother’s cancer course. Sigh.

Fish known as wrasses are found to use tools — Cool.

Fermi Bubbles Are Burps From A Star-Eating Black Hole… — That wins my award for headline of the day.

Lost in Time and Lost in Space — Centauri Dreams with an analysis of the Fermi paradox.

Church insurer stops cover for acts of God — Très amusant. (Thanks to danjite.)

Jurors in faith-healing trial say evidence overpowered a weak defense — This makes me proud of Oregon, though the whole story is very sad.

Rights for me, but not for thee — Slacktivist Fred Clark on the AFA’s Bryan Fischer and conservative views of freedom of religion, for the right kind of Christian but no one else. Personally, I’ve long believed freedom of religion includes freedom from religion.

Mass. terror suspect was asked to leave mosque — This can’t be true! And any Real American™ about Muslims. Most Republicans can’t find Mecca on a map, but they know all about the alleged creeping horror of Islam. Now if they only understood the real life creeping horror of Christianism.

GOP activists walking — not running — to Romney

Why conservatives hate Warren Buffett — Many of the same people who think the rich should be free to spend unlimited sums influencing our politics without having to disclose anything are now asking Buffett to make his tax returns public. I guess if you’re indifferent to consistency, you have a lot of freedom of action. That’s the conservative movement in a nutshell.

?otD: Are you the dreamer or the dream?

9/30/2011
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (took the day off)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.75 hours (solid)
Weight: 224.4
Currently reading: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

Tags: Cancer, Christianism, Cool, healthcare, Links, nature, New Zealand, Oregon, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science

Posted: 5:50 am Fri September 30 2011 | Comments(0) |

[books|publishing] Tales for Canterbury

Tales for Canterbury

New Zealand’s Christchurch experienced a debilitating earthquake on February 22, 2011. Since then, editors Cassie Hart and Anna Caro have done an amazing job of pulling together Tales for Canterbury, a fundraising anthology to benefit the victims of the earthquake, with all proceeds going to the New Zealand Red Cross Earthquake Appeal.

The line up contains a variety of authors and a fantastic blend of stories, all of which focus primarily on the themes of survival and hope. Authors include Brenda Cooper, Neil Gaiman, Gwyneth Jones, Jeff Vandermeer, Sean Williams, and me, among others. Here’s the full list of contributors.

Tales for Canterbury is now available for pre-order as an ebook (in pdf, mobi, and epub format) and as a paperback. It should be published in April, so you won’t have long to wait for it. For more information, see the anthology’s blog.

Tags: Books, New Zealand, Publishing, stories

Posted: 5:32 am Thu March 24 2011 | Comments(2) |

[personal] Postcards from the subconscious

Complex dreams last night, most of which are lost to me now in the manner of such things. I know the first part involved making soft-core skin flicks in a garage with several Prominent Figures In Our Field serving as producer, camera crew and so forth. There was a fire, and most of our assets were lost, including a valuable collection of SF first editions that had been used as a backdrop on the movie set. calendula_witch was by my side at that point in the dream.

After that, I set out alone on a quest to find resources to redeem our losses. This somehow involved me creating public art. I wound up on in-line skates on a one-lane country road in New Zealand’s Wairoa Valley. The sun was high, but I was also casting low shadows to the east, as if there were a second light source near the western horizon — think blast shadows, Hiroshima style. Except instead of destruction, everywhere my shadows touched brass ran and set as if cast to mold made from those shadows. I kept doing flips and jetés to leave graceful, bright scrollwork man-high on the sides of houses, fences, retaining walls and embankments. A trail of strange glory stretched behind me. An empty road ran before me.

Often in my dreams there is a musical score. Usually it’s original compositions, rather than recycled from the listening of my waking hours. This dream was no exception. A rich, mellow cello played a slow and mournful melody while a soprano choir sang wordless vocal harmony. Or perhaps the voices were singing in a language I did not comprehend.

Waking saddened me.

Tags: Calendula, dreams, music, New Zealand, Personal

Posted: 8:09 am Sun January 02 2011 | Comments(2) |

[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] New Zealand: Miscellaneous Vehicles, Ducks and Flowers

One last tranche of photos from New Zealand before I push off to the Australia photos.

A house-hauler. Literally a tow truck for houses. Not mobile homes. Used house lots are a fixture of New Zealand life, due to the island economy.

An old survivor on the house lot.

A very well-preserved Borgward at a garage in Otaki, NZ. I’d never seen one of these before.

The previously-shown classic Holden ute. One of my regrets was never getting a shot of the Holden ute police cars.

Another view of the funky old truck in Ngawi, NZ.

The State Limo, official ride of Our Gracious Hosts.

The bald eagle duck.

And some bonus flowers.

As usual, more at the Flickr sets here, here and here.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: cars, flowers, nature, New Zealand, Photos, Travel

Posted: 5:38 am Thu September 30 2010 | Comments(5) |

[contests] The Sky That Wraps caption contest

Author copies of The Sky That Wraps have arrived. This is of course my gorgeous new short fiction collection from the delightful Subterranean Press. You can order it here, should you be so inclined.

The Sky That Wraps by Jay Lake

But we all know what author copies mean — a giveaway via caption contest! So I hereby declare another one of those suckers, based on a photo from the recent New Zealand trip. Your challenge is to write a caption that answers the question “Why is this man laughing so hard?”

First prize will be a personalized, signed copy of the book, additional prizes to be awarded at my discretion. Usual rules apply. I’ll collect captions in comments here (at both jlake.com and jaylake.livejournal.com) until I get bored with it, then build a voting poll. Please try to limit the length of your entries or they may become truncated in the poll code.

This work by Shannon Page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Books, Calendula, Contests, Funny, New Zealand, Photos, Sky

Posted: 5:53 am Wed September 29 2010 | Comments(17) |

[photos] New Zealand: Wellington

I didn’t do as much tourism photography as I might have around Wellington. Many of our trips were incidental, not photosafaris, so I missed a lot of things I might have caught. It’s a terribly charming place, putting me somewhat in mind of a smaller, cleaner, less urban version of San Francisco. I was struck by the beauty of the area, and by how pleasant so many of the people were.

Looking out at the city from the street just above the home of Our Gracious Hosts.

A neighboring property.

The home of Our Gracious Hosts. The State Limo can be seen lurking in back. The shared driveway connects through to another property.

Folk art on a restaurant out by one of the bays.

A bayside intersection.

TowVespa.

The Poseidon oven at Heaven Pizza.

A house built from shipping containers.

A strange little car in downtown Wellington.

Some flowers and plants:

Us and Our Gracious Hosts:

As usual, more at the Flickr set.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. and Shannon Page is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Calendula, cars, flowers, friends, New Zealand, Photos

Posted: 5:11 am Wed September 29 2010 | Comments(0) |

[photos] New Zealand: Cape Palliser

Past Ngawi and the seal colony lies Cape Palliser itself. This is the southernmost tip of the North Island, and definitely qualifies as one of the world’s ass-end-of-nowhere places. (I’ve visited a lot of them, from Point Barrow to the south Gobi Desert, and elsewhere.) Like most a-e-o-n places, Cape Palliser has a stark and compelling beauty of its own.

Cape Palliser Road exiting Ngawi.

Looking back at Ngawi.

The ocean wrapped in misty rain, as seen from the car.

A rather fine upthrusted ridge.

Handy and informative signage.

The coast gets a bit wilder.

Passing by the seal colony.

The lighthouse at the tip of the cape (seen from the west).

A closer view of same.

The lighthouse from the east side, where the road ends. Note the 200 or so rain-slicked wooden steps leading up. Given my general state of post-chemo exhaustion, I declined the climb.

Heading back from Ngawi, we pass a washout.

They’re not kidding. Look closely at the edge of the road in this photo.

As usual, more at the Flickr set.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: nature, New Zealand, Photos, Travel

Posted: 5:07 am Wed September 15 2010 | Comments(0) |

[photos] New Zealand: Seal colony at Cape Palliser

Just a mile or two past Ngawi, we came upon the seal colony that lives on and around Cape Palliser. This are fur seals, much larger than the harbor seals I’m used to seeing — the bulls were nearly the size of sea lions, or so it seemed.

The day was still cloudy and wet, which meant they were up on the grass by the road. (Understand at this point the road is a rutted track meandering close to the rocky shore.) Apparently sometimes cattle graze down by the ocean, and the seals and cows can be seen together. Sadly, we were not treated to this vision of bucolic utopia. I will observe that the dozing seals were supremely indifferent to our presence, to the point of being virtually comatose. This even though I could have reached out and touched them.

The general look of the shoreline.

I think this is seal for “Are you food? No? Never mind, then.”

I’m going to open my eyes, but you’re not worth any more effort than that.

Ok, halfway open.

This one appeared to be doing yoga. Or stretching out a kink in his back. One of the few moments where I wished I’d brought a video camera.

A more lively fellow.

More of Mr. (or Ms., I didn’t inquire) Lively.

Playing in the ocean, because not everyone can nap all day long.

Watching the waves go by.

As usual, more at the Flickr set.

This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: nature, New Zealand, Photos, Travel

Posted: 5:40 am Tue September 14 2010 | Comments(0) |

[photos] New Zealand: Ngawi, with Bulldozers

After passing through the Wairarapa Valley, Cape Palliser Road eventually deposited us along the southernmost coast of New Zealand’s North Island. There it became windy and coastal, reminscent of parts of the Pacific Northwest, leading to, and through, the fishing village of Ngawi with its herd of bulldozers.

As I said before, Ngawi is a fishing village without a harbor, just a beach. When the boats come it, they’re set on handbuilt trailers and hauled up the beach by bulldozers. This is lieu of a launch ramp, or a jetty and moorage. Several dozen bulldozers line the road, each hooked to a largish fishing boat. Some of them are seriously antique, others quite modern. It’s a very curious sight, and an interesting solution to the obvious problem of protecting the boats from the chronically rough seas there.

The weather grew increasing wet and windy as we reached the coast, so some of the photos came out blurry.

The speed limit sign at the town’s edge includes a set of stocks. Not sure if that’s a promise or a threat.