Monthly Archives: October 2010

Give Her the Candy and No One Gets Hurt

Athena on “Beggar’s night,” which is a couple of days before Halloween so that kids aren’t running around on the streets on the same night adults are going to Halloween parties and then driving about stupidly. Or so they tell me; personally I prefer my Halloween on Halloween. Either way, the procurement of candy was […]

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The Big Idea: James A. Owen

Writing is often considered a solitary pursuit — and yet there are examples of writers and other creative sorts banding together, bound by a common place, philosophy or type of output. For those groups, very often the commonality and camaraderie can inspire greater work than isolation. It’s this idea that James A. Owen is thinking […]

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New Monitor is Here

Just in time for me to leave for World Fantasy. Life is like that sometimes. For those of you into geekation about these things, the monitor is one of these. It’s my second Dell monitor, the first being the one that recently explodinated on me. But then it outlived its warranty and was excellent right […]

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Just Arrived, 10/27/10

What’s come over the transom this week: * Cryoburn, Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen): Hey, remember that time when you said to yourself, “Man, I wish I had a new Miles Vorkosigan novel right now?” Turns out Lois McMaster Bujold was listening. As if she had a bug right in your brain. Which I’m sure she […]

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The Big Idea: Aliette de Bodard

On occasion I’ve had someone say to me that writing speculative fiction must be easier than writing straight fiction, because you don’t have to worry about being accurate about facts and settings. Well, that’s of course not true at all — and the amount of research that fantasy and science fiction writers do is often […]

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Why, Yes, I Have a New Short Story Coming

A few sharp-eyed folks caught the a notice over at the Subterranean Press site, announcing that SubPress had bought a story from me. Is it true? Yes, it’s true. What’s it about? I won’t tell you. You’ll have to wait until it’s out. When will it be out? As the SubPress announcement notes, “sooner than […]

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The Damage

One of coincidentally-named Bradford Pears just got its branches handed to it by the windstorm. This was the same tree previously ravaged by the remains of Hurricane Ike when it blew through a couple of years ago, so this is not an entirely surprising turn of events. Even so, a little sad (and annoying, as […]

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The Yard FAQ

Pretty much any time I post a picture of my yard, I get the same several questions in the comment thread from folks who are apparently new around here. After most of a decade, I’m now officially bored with answering the same questions (sorry guys, it’s not you, it’s me), so I’m creating The Yard […]

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The Big Idea: Kathe Koja

“All the world’s a stage” — and in fiction, this saying is more true than elsewhere, with the author as director, moving her actors in and out of the floodlights, as the story demands. Kathe Koja, however, adds yet another dimension to the saying in her new novel Under the Poppy, in which the stage […]

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