Apparently, Japanese beetles love the smell of citronella candles. They love it so much that they’ll come and land on the candles just to be close to the smell. Whereupon the candle, made all squooshy by the 90+ degree temperatures we’ve been having, sucks them into the wax. Where they die, all citronella-fied. And then I come over and take a picture to show Teh Intarweebs. ‘Tis the circle of life, it is.

Update: 12:03pm: All the copies are claimed! Told you that you had to be quick.

Look! Subterranean Press publisher Bill Schafer is back with another book to give away! Let’s all lean in close and hear what he has to say:

Here’s another giveaway we’re sponsoring—this time for Charles Stross’s beyond excellent short story collection, Wireless. We think it, along with Alastair Reynolds’s Zima Blue, are probably the two strongest sf collections of the past five years or so.

The rules? Simple as always.

– You must be a US resident to enter.

– Send an email to subpress@gmail.com with the word “Wireless” in the subject line, and your name and address as the only text in the body of the email. (If your company automatically adds text to outgoing emails, don’t worry; it won’t disqualify you.)

– If you win a copy of Wireless, you agree to read it within three weeks of receipt and post a review on Amazon.com.

– We will not be sending emails to winners or losers. The only notification you’ll get is if you find a copy of the book in your mail in a week or so.

Now, for the downside. For the past few titles we’ve given away, we haven’t noticed an uptick in Amazon reviews. If the lack of participation by winners of the free books continues, we’ll discontinue sharing books we love with readers in this way. Capiche?

You heard the man: Get a free book, leave a review on Amazon. It’s a fair trade, is it not? Now, send in your e-mails. Last time it took about four minutes for all the books to get given out, so you need to be quick. Quick! Like a bunny!

No, not ours. It’s our neighbor’s puppy, come for a visit. Which made Krissy happy.