Jun 30
As I write this, I’m sitting out front of the hotel, listening to conversations on either side of me. At LibertyCon, this is hardly unusual. Now, that I’m doing this at half-past seven on Saturday morning… this con doesn’t sleep. Seems like when we came back to the room at midnight, there were still a lot of people actually on panels and chatting and playing games, and… Read more
And for your Reading Pleasure . . .
From Peter Grant:
https://www.amazon.com/Stones-Silence…/dp/B07D1S38RJ/
And new from Dorothy Grant:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DXHSWLD
And a FREE BOOK!!! from Cedar Sanderson:
https://www.amazon.com/Jade-Star-Tanager…/dp/B01JD1PGB4
And also Free, a Space Opera from Pam Uphoff:
https://www.amazon.com/Rift-Pam-Uphoff-ebook/dp/B07D3K6G41/
After doing the usual minuet to get An Annoyance of Grackles live on Kindle and almost-there on Createspace, I’ve taken a couple of days off to be shamelessly frivolous. I indulged in Dorothy Grant’s new book, Shattered after Midnight – there’s a review here – and watched a DVD I’ve been hoarding of the operetta Countess Maritza all the way through, sung in German with English subtitles. I was sort of familiar with the operetta — a CD of highlights is among the music I like to listen to while writing the Applied Topology series, light and frothy — but I’ve never been able to follow the plot summaries in English.
Now I know why. The thing is as close as you can get to being entirely plot-free. It was like being served something covered with whipped cream for dessert, plunging your fork into the whipped cream and diving down to reach… more whipped cream. I got the feeling that the librettists couldn’t bear to let their characters suffer; no sooner would a problem be revealed than a new deus ex machina would come onstage to fix it.
And the most annoying non-plot bit concerned Baron Kálmán Zsupán. Read more
When someone is dying, they will often have a last burst of rather feverish energy before the end: a short time when they feel a bit better and do a bit more than perhaps they should before succumbing to the inevitable. I’ve wondered sometimes if this not-quite-death-throes is the last attempt to fight for life before accepting that the fight has already been lost.
Funnily enough, dying ideologies and nations have been known to do the same thing, albeit causing immensely more damage along the way. To misappropriate a cliché, the whole “darkest before dawn” thing seems to be involved somewhere – although the matter of for whom things are darkest and who gets to experience the dawn could be argued. A lot.
Jun 27
So, I finished a short story last week and put it up on Amazon yesterday. Should be a cause for celebration, right? Well, yes, but not the way you might think. You see, this short is one of four completed-but-not-edited manuscripts that I’ve been sitting on for an unconscionably long time.
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Tomorrow morning we leave for Liberty Con at dark O’six, and I’m going through my usual oscillation: happy to go and see my friends, looking forward to meeting my fans again, dreading the travel and terrified of having to be with that many people for days — DAYS I tell you! — and away from my familiar office and books and routine. Read more
I have a confession to make: I don’t know what’s going on in the world. Not just the world of publishing (not many actually do, to be honest), but the wider world. Mrs. Dave returned to us this past weekend, so life has been jumbled. She’ll be home for a (measly) couple weeks, and then depart again. Uncle Sam says go, and she does.
What that means, however, is routines are borked. Habits are skittering around. Sleep is … elusive. Not because I’m sharing a bed, again – pervs – but because Mrs. Dave has to be awake well before I’ve been getting up while she was on the other side of the globe. And she’s still adjusting to the many-time-zones of difference between There and Here. So I’m a little foggy. And it’s been affecting my lifting, which also makes me grouchy.
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accordingtohoyt
TXRed
Amanda
Brad R. Torgersen
davefreer
elliewferguson
Dorothy Grant
Jonathan LaForce
Kate Paulk
kilteDave
Margaret Ball
Pam Uphoff
Blake Smith
Peter Grant
Cedar Sanderson
