[links] Link salad flies to Oz today
arcaedia reminds us that today is the release date of my collection The Sky That Wraps — For some value of “today”, as I write this post on the other side of the International Date Line.
Steampunk Wallpaper — (jimvanpelt via lt260.)
Lady Clankington’s Cabinet of Carnal Curiosities — And via danjite, further steampunk curiosities. NSFW.
Is that my son wearing a dress? — I’m a progressive, supportive dad. Why was I so troubled by the sight of my little boy dressed as Snow White? (Thanks to willyumtx.)
How to Remake Life — Venter Institute researchers have made the first viable cell with a synthetic genome. Cool stuff. I’m waiting for someone to do this ab initio.
Metrocontextual science map — This is seriously cool as well.
It’s Witch-Hunt Season — ‘Tis autumn and a conservative’s fancy turns lightly to thoughts of impeachment and political harassment.
Beck, Christianity and Social Justice — Yeah, well…
?otD: Have you ever wrapped the sky?
9/1/2010
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (NZ tourism)
Body movement: airport walking to come
Hours slept: 9.0 (fitful, plus 90 minute nap as well)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: Deliverer by C.J. Cherryh
Tags: Books, Culture, Funny, Links, Personal, Politics, Religion, Science, Sky, steampunk, stories
Posted: 1:17 pm Tue August 31 2010 | Comments(0) |
[links] Link salad gets didactic
A glowing review for my new collection The Sky That Wraps
A profoundly negative review of my tor.com story, “The Speed of Time” — I continue to be baffled that people seem to think this is political fiction. Unless the absence of white male characters makes it “political”?
Educational Chemistry Crayons complete set of 48 crayons with labels — (Thanks to .)
The power of anecdotes — Bad Science on research, reporting and anecdotal evidence.
The right-wing, blinded by its own hysteria — Yet right-wing commentators and politicians have twisted themselves in knots to portray the Park51 project as a grievous assault — and “the American people” as victims. Victims of what? Rauf’s sinister plot to despoil the city with a fitness center, a swimming pool and — shudder — a space for the performing arts? Hahaha.
?otD: How political is your fiction?
8/29/2010
Writing time yesterday: 0.0 hours (convention time)
Body movement: urban walking to come
Hours slept: 8.5 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: Deliverer by C.J. Cherryh
Tags: Books, Culture, Fiction, Funny, Links, Personal, Politics, Religion, reviews, Science, Sky, stories
Posted: 12:59 pm Sat August 28 2010 | Comments(1) |
[links] Link salad hangs out in Kiwi country
My tor.com story draws a lot of flak in comments — Apparently I write with tired, politically correct tropes. Good thing I always believe the story belongs to the reader.
SMBC on ending sentences with a preposition
Wombats, pangolins and platypuses in a Victorian mansion… in Wales — Huh.
A Battle of Britain anniversary poster — Some very nice design here.
Tags: Art, Cool, Culture, Fiction, Funny, gay, Language, Links, Personal, Politics, Religion, stories
Posted: 2:01 pm Fri August 27 2010 | Comments(3) |
[links] Link salad has one foot on the platform, the other on the train
My semiautobiographical novelette, “Dream of the Arrow”, is up at Subterranean — A difficult story about my high school experiences, somewhat fictionalized. One of my regular readers here on LJ is a friend from those days, and is actually a character in this.
Editorial Evaluations, Moms and Pedatic Purple Prose — shadowhelm on critique. (Via lt260.)
Molybdomancy — Art haruspication guru James Gurney with a new one on me.
A Search Service that Can Peer into the Future — A Yahoo Research tool mines news archives for meaning–illuminating past, present, and even future events.
Space is the final frontier for evolution, study claims — Charles Darwin may have been wrong when he argued that competition was the major driving force of evolution. Oooh! Oooh! Somebody call the Discovery Institute!
Dattoos: Body Art Melds DNA, Computing — Very, very strange. (Via e_bourne.)
How Fox Betrayed Petraeus — A detailed take on GOP shenanigans in the faked-up Park51 controversy, a/k/a “Ground Zero Mosque”. (Via shsilver.)
?otD: Was your mother a tailor? Did she sew your new blue jeans?
8/25/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hours (Kalimpura outline)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 6.5 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 244.2
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: Pretender by C.J. Cherryh
Tags: Cool, Fiction, Language, Links, Personal, Politics, Process, Religion, Science, stories, Tech, Writing
Posted: 4:56 am Wed August 25 2010 | Comments(1) |
[links] Link salad gets marked down from 22,000 days
I plan to close the steampunk caption contest voting poll tomorrow and declare a winner — Vote now if you haven’t!
A reader reacts to Mainspring — They liked it.
A reader reacts to “In the Forests of the Night” — They really hated it.
Mad Men: 1955 — Mmm. The chromocritic.
Male and female ability differences down to socialisation, not genetics — Behavioural differences between the sexes are not hard-wired at birth but are the result of society’s expectations, say scientists. (Via The Edge of the American West.)
Dear Rev. Graham: Obama was not born a Muslim and neither is anyone else — Those Americans who insist on seeing Obama as a Muslim are othering him, and probably are using religion as a proxy for race. Since the Civil Rights movement, it has been unacceptable in the United States for a public figure to engage openly in racist discourse, as shock jocks Dr. Laura and Don Imus discovered. But apparently it is still all right to be a religious bigot, so Islam is being scapegoated by the Republican Party, as its ability openly to play on racial fears is being increasingly constrained.
?otD: What would you do if this were the last day of your life?
8/22/2010
Writing time yesterday: 3.5 hours (revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute suburban walk to come
Hours slept: 8.25 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: n/a
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 4/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: Destroyer by C.J. Cherryh
Tags: Books, Contests, Culture, Links, Mainspring, Personal, Photos, Politics, Polls, Religion, reviews, stories
Posted: 6:35 am Sun August 22 2010 | Comments(1) |
[links] Link salad heads into the daylight, blinking
Don’t forget the steampunk caption contest voting poll
A reader reacts to Green — Definitely did not like it.
Cthulhu’s Reign reviewed — Including my story “Such Bright and Risen Madness in Our Names”.
Judge a Book by Its Cover — The proverbial blog… A Softer World weighs in.
The Art of the Exhale — Cancer, coping and horses. (Via joycemocha.)
The Power Trip — Power corrupts. Absolute power is pretty nest. A piece on why nice people become sociopaths once they reach the top. (Via Scrivener’s Error.)
Vintage lunch boxes — There was a Kill Bill lunch box? Really?
Shenango of Fairport: 1909 — Look at that prop…
1978 Cryptosystem Resists Quantum Attack — Duuuude.
Disgust As a Guide to Morality — Interesting. I don’t agree with it all, and am especially troubled by this line: Though Haidt is a secular liberal, he cautions that you can’t just say that moral judgments made by drawing on the other three areas — Purity, Authority, and Loyalty — are illegitimate, unless you’re willing to privilege the point of view of secular Western liberals, and write off most of the human race.. Still, interesting.
Kilpatrickism — On the racist strain in American conservatism.
?otD: Where did you go? What did you do when you got there?
8/18/2010
Writing time yesterday: 2.5 hours (revisions, WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 4.25 (sleep fail!)
This morning’s weigh-in: 242.2
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Tags: Art, Books, Cancer, Cool, Culture, Funny, Green, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, reviews, stories, Tech
Posted: 5:48 am Wed August 18 2010 | Comments(1) |
[links] Link salad climbs inside
The Devil Made Me Read This Anthology! — Paul Goat Allen at bn.com on Sympathy For the Devil, with some good words for my story, “The Goat Cutter”.
Lois Tilton at Locus Online reviews Is Anybody Out There? — She says good things about my story “Permanent Fatal Errors”, from the Sunspin continuity.
A reader reacts to Dark Faith — Definitely does not like my story.
iPhone Users Have More Sex — :: checks iPhone :: Deponent sayeth diddly squat.
Vintage sewing patterns: a bunch of clowns — Can’t sleep, the clown pattern of English will chomp me.
Were Philly’s Irish Immigrants Murdered? — Ah, history. Back when the Irish weren’t white, either.
The Future of Mobile: Invisible, connected devices with infinite screens — Technology Review responds.
Thoughts on Brown Dwarfs, Disks and Planets — Centauri Dreams with more coolness.
Judge Walker’s Court Posts Video and Documentary Evidence Presented During Federal Prop 8 Trial — With ‘experts’ like this, no wonder the Prop 8 proponents failed the basic reality test. I continue to be boggled at the ‘retaliation’ argument, too.
?otD: Do you want to take me for a ride?
8/17/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hour (revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.5 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 242.2
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 2/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: Explorer by C.J. Cherryh
Tags: Culture, Funny, gay, Links, Personal, Politics, reviews, Science, sex, stories
Posted: 5:09 am Tue August 17 2010 | Comments(1) |
[writing] Endurance, and what comes after
The cancer journey has been so overwhelming lately that I’ve hardly posted at all about my writing progress. Some quick updatery here on that topic.
I’ve been working through Endurance revisions, with notes from casacorona, arcaedia, mcurry and others. Also, my friend K— has kindly made me a map of Copper Downs based on reading Green, Endurance and the various bits of short fiction and collating all the named streets and location. This has been a great help. Likewise, my profound thanks to for actually tracking the weapons all the way through the book — there is much losing and gaining of knives.
My process at this point is what I’ve previously compared to lacquering. That is to say, going back through the manuscript over and over in multiple careful passes dealing with specific issues on each pass. Other than two significant inserted scenes, this revision has mostly been about errors of characterization, voice and continuity, so this incrementalist approach seems to me to be working well.
I suspect I’ll be done with the draft this weekend, if not, early next week. That means it has at least a chance of squeaking through one or two more readers before being turned back in.
Pending surgery, chemo and the maybe-trip to NZ/AUS, I have several other projects that must be done. I owe a short story almost immediately to an audio market — it is in draft, but needs a bit of revision. I have a tiny bit more to do on the recent Sekrit Projekt (which will be announced Real Soon Now, btw), though the core effort on the novella is all complete. I have another Sekrit Projekt due by October, a novelette in this case. I need to finalize the draft outline of Kalimpura, and then get cracking on the first draft of the book so I can have that in place before the next round of chemotherapy melts my brain too much. I’ll be revising Kalimpura next spring when I come off this chemotherapy. Also if time permits, I’d like to revise the lost colony steampunk religious novella, “The Stars Do Not Lie”, and get it out to market. Not to mention the collaborative novels with calendula_witch and with my Dad, which have languished in the face of my medical issues and my narrowed focus. And of course, a possible trip to the South Seas, another round of cancer surgery, and the six months of the aforementioned chemotherapy.
Originally, I had planned to be working on Sunspin this fall, having written Kaiimpura this summer. Cancer is cutting my productivity down by more than half. Yes, the above list is me running way underspeed and behind schedule. I refuse to surrender my expectations of myself in this regard, even when I have to seriously compromise them in the face of disease.
I am a writer, therefore I write. Fuck cancer.
Tags: Books, Cancer, Endurance, Green, health, Kalimpura, Process, stories, Sunspin, Writing
Posted: 4:58 am Fri August 13 2010 | Comments(3) |
[links] Link salad has a devil set aside for you
Art for my forthcoming Realms of Fantasy story, “The Fall of the Moon”
Random House chief sees bright but worrisome future for e-books — Excuse me, I gotta wear shades.
“Bohemian Rhapsody”: Bismillah or… Mitch Miller? — Lady Mondegreen strikes again.
The Sarcastic Fringehead — This appears to be the real name of a real fish, though I still suspect an Internet prank. (Thanks to willyumtx.)
Imaging Giants and Dwarfs — More on brown dwarfs from Centauri Dreams.
The Planet and the Radio Dish — APOD with a very curious image, indeed.
Reason To Workout WIN — Hahahah.
The GOP’s New Tax Cut Hypocrisy — Five years ago, Republicans backed tax cuts—but said deficits didn’t matter. Today, they say deficits are all that matters, but still like tax cuts.
?otD: Will you be back this time tomorrow?
8/3/2010
Writing time yesterday: 1.0 hour (revisions)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 7.0 (interrupted)
This morning’s weigh-in: 242.8 (yikes!)
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy, emotional distress)
Currently (re)reading: Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh
Tags: Art, ebooks, Funny, Language, Links, music, Personal, Politics, Publishing, Science, stories
Posted: 5:07 am Tue August 03 2010 | Comments(1) |
[links] Link salad rubs sand from its eyes, resolves not to sleep on beaches
A reader reacts to METAtropolis
msagara on why it’s okay you haven’t read her books — Yeah. What she said. (Via matociquala and others.)
The Most Revealing #Wookieleaks — Hahahah.
Monogamy unnatural for our sexy species — Interesting bit of pop-sci. (Via Year of the Word.)
Coin shrinkers — A hobby I’d never heard of. One that comes with fatality disclaimers.
Clear CT Scans with Less Radiation — Researchers are devising new ways to get the same results with fewer x-rays. Among other things, this article explains how CT scans work.
A design feature — Certainly not all Republicans are racists, but the Republican Party deliberately exploited and exacerbated racial tensions for political gain for decades. Those Republicans now being shoved to the party’s new margins have no standing to complain. Where were they when they and their party were benefiting from the extremism that now is taking control of their party? Where was their sense of civic duty and basic morality?
Take that, Dennis Miller; Climate Change is Real and Dangerous — [G]lobal warming is not a partisan political issue, however much some people want to make it one. It is science. … Reality doesn’t have a political party. Actually, according to the GOP it does. Those of us in the “reality-based community” so sneeringly dismissed by the GOP are quite happy not to be Republicans.
?otD: Whilom or wherefor?
8/2/2010
Writing time yesterday: 3.25 hours (revisions, WRPA)
Body movement: 30 minute stationary bike ride
Hours slept: 8.25 (solid)
This morning’s weigh-in: 239.1 (yikes!)
Yesterday’s chemo stress index: 3/10 (fatigue, peripheral neuropathy)
Currently (re)reading: Foreigner by C.J. Cherryh
Tags: Books, Funny, healthcare, Links, Personal, Politics, Publishing, race, reviews, Science, sex, stories, Tech
Posted: 5:09 am Mon August 02 2010 | Comments(0) |
« Older Posts |