Your “I’m Traveling, So Fill My Site With Content” Thread (i.e., Promote Yourself and/or Others)

Posted on January 20, 2012    Posted by      95 Comments

I’m off to the Epic Confusion convention this weekend to hang out with friends, sign lots and lots of books and cause the sort of mischief that I will need for an interesting autobiography a quarter of a century from now. So I won’t be around here much. But! My absence is your opportunity! Because while I am traveling and hanging about with friends and plotting horrible things to do to Pat Rothfuss when he’s not looking, I am leaving this thread for you to tell other people who visit the site about cool stuff you’ve found elsewhere online, including, if you’re so inclined, your own stuff. So then they can link through, be amused, and then everyone is happy and an angel gets its wings. Those poor wingless angels, just hoping for wings!

All you have to do is go to the comment thread, leave a brief description of the thing you’re pointing people at, and then leave a link (typing in the URL should do just fine). I suggest one cool thing per post, because too many links will punt your comment into my moderation thread. I’ll be checking in on the comment thread to release these comments, so don’t panic, I’ll get your comment out of moderation if it gets in there. But the easiest way to avoid this: One link per comment. Which means, yes, you can post more than one comment. Remember, though: Quality is better than quantity.

My own link for you:

Walter Jon Williams, Nancy Kress and special guest lecturer Daniel Abraham are the faculty of this “graduate-level” two-week science fiction and fantasy workshop. As the site says, “If you’ve sold a few stories and then stalled out, or if you’ve been to Clarion or Odyssey and want to re-connect with the workshop community, this is the workshop for you!” They’re accepting applications now for their 2012 session, which takes place this year June 10 through 23. Check it out.

There’s mine. What’s yours?

Category: Uncategorized    

95 Comments on “Your “I’m Traveling, So Fill My Site With Content” Thread (i.e., Promote Yourself and/or Others)”

  2. My project over the last two weeks has been helping to Program Boskone. So, if you can’t go to Confusion this weekend, John will be a headliner at Boskone in Boston next month. http://www.boskone.org Come on over – John might even share his Coke Zero with you!

  6. So… in my real life I design video games for a living. Neat, hnh?

    I work with a small, independent game company called SRRN Games that I helped found. Up until now, our biggest game was a retro-style RPG called Ash which was very well-received, critically. Yesterday, we released our sequel: Ash II: Shadows. We published the game with Konami (you may have heard of them) and that’s a pretty exciting step for us!

    Ash / Ash II are for currently for iOS only, but both will be coming to Android in the near future. The gameplay is sort of similar to older games like the Final Fantasy games from SNES and we’ve got great writing and an awesome soundtrack to really make for (we hope) a powerful narrative experience.

    So, if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad and you like role-playing games, you should check ours out!

    iTunes Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ash-ii-shadows-gold-edition/id486422983?mt=8
    page on our site: http://www.srrngames.com/games/ash2 (with screenshots and a trailer)
    official announcement: http://www.srrngames.com/announcing-ash-ii-shadows

  8. So… in my real life I design video games for a living. Neat, hnh?

    I work with a small, independent game company called SRRN Games that I helped found. Up until now, our biggest game was a retro-style RPG called Ash which was very well-received, critically. Yesterday, we released our sequel: Ash II: Shadows. We published the game with Konami (you may have heard of them) and that’s a pretty exciting step for us!

    Ash / Ash II are for currently for iOS only, but both will be coming to Android in the near future. The gameplay is sort of similar to older games like the Final Fantasy games from SNES and we’ve got great writing and an awesome soundtrack to really make for (we hope) a powerful narrative experience.

    So, if you have an iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad and you like role-playing games, you should check ours out!

    iTunes Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ash-ii-shadows-gold-edition/id486422983?mt=8

    PS – This is my second post. Please don’t hate me if the first one actually gets through moderation and it looks like I’m trying to spam the comments. I promise I’m not! But since John is traveling today I was afraid aforementioned prior post would linger in limbo forever, so I wrote this post with only 1 link instead of 3.

  11. I keep reading laments about the (supposed) decline in income mobility, and it’s odd.
    It had always seemed likely to me that mobility would likely decrease after several generations of merit-based advancement, because the pool of people who met the (new) definition of merit but were unfairly held back because they didn’t meet the (old) definition would have been emptied. We’re several generations past the G.I. bill so what would you expect?

    But I didn’t have any numbers to back up that hypothesis, and now someone has run them: Henry Harpending, an anthropologist, at
    http://westhunt.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/class-caste-and-genes/#comments

    The idea is: Pick a definition of “merit,” divide the population in half according to that criterion, assume people marry within their half, and in three-four generations, the halves have distinct, and nearly non-overlapping, bell curves relative to whatever the definition is. It’s a little slower if assortative mating is only partial, but still strong.

    >>>
    The process continues for several generations. By analogy with IQ the additive heritability of merit is set to 0.6 so there are substantial random environmental effects. The second figure shows the evolution of class differences over four generations or about 100 years in human terms.
    . . .
    Class mobility after the first generation is 30% while after four generations it has declined to 10% and continues to decline after that. The average merit in the two classes is about -1SD in the lower and +1SD in the upper on the original scale, corresponding to IQs of 85 and 115.
    >>>

  12. Our babysitter handcrafts wands and sells them on Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/Harters

    I’m not much of a wand owner myself, but these look pretty spiffy and if you opt to let her choose your wand for you (a la Olivander) it’s usually one of my daughters doing the picking. They think that’s fun.

  13. I’ve been doing a lot of blogging recently, including a review of John’s book “You’re Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop” at http://wp.me/p1kgN9-8E. Stop on by, tell me what you think. I add new blog entries and book reviews every other day or so.

  14. Nathaniel — Just wanted to make a comment on one of your posts.

    Alas, eternal shame and humiliation are mine.

    Your eternal shame etc. provided me with a brief but fulfilling flash of amusement and laughter. So please can the eternal shame and humiliation. That should be reserved for accidently going into the wrong rest room. As I have done. To my eternal shame and humiliation.

  16. In the past, I’ve done “Big Idea” posts for my first two Twenty Palaces novels, but when the third came out I didn’t write one; I didn’t see it as having a single big idea worthy of an essay.

    But the book came out anyway. You can read the opening of the third novel, Circle of Enemies, here:

    http://www.harryjconnolly.com/blog/?p=5215

    I also have a fourth book out. It’s a prequel to the other three.

    Have fun, John.

  17. Have fun and thanks, Scalzi!

    In the past, I’ve plugged my shops on http://www.ArtFire.com in these threads. But for those who are looking to sell their creative work and want more of a standalone boutique model than a cooperative selling venue model, you might check out a new site called SupaDupa. The company is two years old now and offers a set of really nice shop templates and features, designed for those who don’t want to hire a web designer or can’t afford to do so. Although I haven’t yet had cause to verify this, I have heard many stories of fantastic customer service. If you currently own a domain, they show you how to redirect it to a SupaDupa shop.

    Anyway, they just sent me an email saying they are offering 50% off any one of their plans for a year. The offer runs until February 10, 2012. You enter the coupon code THANKYOU at sign up to get the deal. There are free accounts also available, but they are pretty limited. The site is at http://www.supadupa.me.

    I get nothing from promoting this deal. I just think they’ve got a good product. Those who already sell on ArtFire and Etsy might want to check out opening an additional shop to add to their mix.

  18. I’m going to “promote others” – although the promotion in mind may not be necessary among your readers. I just finished “The Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins, and it was easily one of the best science fiction books I have read in quite a while. I have you to thank for it as well, since it wasn’t on my radar until you mentioned it here!

    I would also like to point our Iain M. Banks and … Well, pretty much everything he has written, both science fiction and … um … ‘plain fiction’? … Anyways – if you haven’t read anything of his yet, go do so!

  20. I’m going to plug my new ebook releases blog. I’ve recently restarted it, and my goal is to go thorugh Amazon and make it so that you can see what new books have been released on Kindle (in specific genres) without having to click onhundreds of pages. I just display a single page of text for a specific genre and a table of authors, titles, & prices.

    I have found that there are dozens of authors putting out their backlist and other titles of interest, and I’ve never found them on Amazon. The way Amazon shows books is weighted towards best sellers.

    my blog can be found at http://www.newebookreleases.com

  21. A quick plug for my blog: Some Thoughts. It’s a log of whatever happens to have my attention at the time, usually featuring things like Chick Tracts, philosophy, cool photos and cartoons, science, music, poetry, books, creationism, and all kinds of other fun and weird stuff.

  22. And a plug for my Scribd page. I’m scanning old, out of print books and other ephemera. Ya’ll might find some of it interesting. Includes: Golden Guides (remember the little science handbooks), old cookbooks, Chick Tracts, Shell Answer Books, and other goodies. My scan of the Golden Guide to Hallucinogenic Plants hit Boing Boing, and that book has been viewed over 32,000 times. Who knew there were so many stoners out there. :)

  23. The online magazine Edge does a wonderful annual question is poses to some of the big thinkers of today. This year the question is: What is Your Favorite Deep, Elegant or Beautiful Explanation?

    Lots of responses from scientists and sciencey people; in other words, serious brain food.

    http://www.edge.org/contributors/what-is-your-favorite-deep-elegant-or-beautiful-explanation

    Some of the answers are wonderfully deep. I don’t know that I can digest more than three a day. Already the psychologist Mahzarin Banaji has completely changed the way I look at politics and political decision making.

  24. John, have a great time!

    Here’s my project: The Amazing Stories Project.

    I’m working on bringing Amazing Stories back as an e-zine (and then some).

    http://www.amazingstoriesmag.com

    Registering on the site will help the effort – and it will make sure you receive the first of the monthly progress reports, starting tomorrow.

    Thanks for the space John!

  26. I’ll just plug my own blog, Mock Ramblings, which carries an odd mix of Mad Science, writing projects, parenting, and anything else that happens to come into my head. I update it regularly during the week, and it exists mainly to amuse me and – I hope – anyone else who happens by.

  27. You all should check out The Sagan Series on damewse’s channel on youtube. It’s a 8 or 9 part series from various audio books of Carl Sagan edited to clips of science documentaries.

    He also has the Feynman Seires.

    It’s good inspirational stuff…and you can waste time at work on a Friday afternoon having you mind blown.

  28. Hi, I’m Jeff Zugale! You may remember me from such Internet classics as the Unicorn Pegasus Kitten Painting, the Scalzi Penny-Arcade guest strip, and the early cover painting for Fuzzy Nation.

    Today I’m here to tell you that as of this pase Monday Jan 16, I’m now the artist on the webcomic “Not Invented Here”! It’s the story of the hilarious people who work in software development. I think Scalzi fans will find it funny and endearing (whether software developers or not, tho I imagine the crossover is pretty large). Hey, I’m a Scalzi fan and It cracks me up while I’m drawing it!

    I hope you’ll check out “Not Invented Here.” The work done by my predecessor Paul Southworth is most worthy of going back to the beginning and getting to know the characters. NIH updates 4 times a week, Monday through Thursday, every week from now until the heat death of the universe!

  31. Well, I have a comic book out, which is doing really well. USA Today called me the best new writer in comics for 2011.

    It’s called The Strange Talent of Luther Strode and it’s about…well, let me grab something from the pitch:

    On a whim, average geek Luther Strode sends for an exercise course he saw in the back of an old comic book. The course promises to turn him into the kind of man that can kick sand right back in the bully’s face, but all Luther expects is, at best, a corny old book.

    What he gets is the instruction manual and prime recruiting tool of a murder cult as old as mankind, and it does everything that it promised and much, much more. You can have everything you want, as long as you’re willing to pay the price, and Luther is about to find out just how high a price that can be.

    It’s available at comic shops, on Amazon (although it’s pretty expensive there) and, if you want it right now, digitally: https://comics.imagecomics.com/#/issue/14909/The-Strange-Talent-of-Luther-Strode-1-of-6-

  35. What a neat idea! I’m currently working on my MFA in Creative Writing at Southern New Hampshire University. It’s a fantastic program! Check it out. My thesis is a historical fiction novel set in late 1800s about a girl whose father dies and then her mother marries a young farmer in Texas after answering an advertisement. The girl eventually falls in love with her step father which causes a few problems, to say the lest. I have just started my own blog at rebelsowell.wordpress.com. Thanks for the opportunity to promote myself!

  36. I’m serializing my newest urban fantasy novel, Grim Tides, for free online. (I did a Kickstarter fundraiser to write the book last fall, so it’s paid for, and I’m happy to give it away now.)

    Four chapters are up so far, with new chapters every Monday, continuing through June.

    http://marlamason.net/grimtides/

  37. We’re a band of supervillains turned musicians, doing rage-driven acoustic elfmetal. I also play out myself as a solo act. We stream everything we do off the “Music” and “Videos” tabs of our website, here:

    http://crimeandtheforcesofevil.com

    Dick Tracy Must Die is the studio release of original music, Espionage: Live from Mars is a four-song live EP I put up… basically for a podcaster who wanted something to link before we had live video, and Cracksman Betty is the live-in-studio/riot-and-piracy mostly-traditional album, tho’ there’s some original work on that, too.

    Thanks for doing this – we appreciate it!

  41. “A Monster Calls” by Patrick Ness is without a question the best book that I read in 2011. It is sad, thought-provoking, and unflinchingly honest. It also reinforced my belief that some of the best things being written these days are being written for the YA market. If this isn’t at least short-listed for the Newberry then there is no justice in the world. FYI, I’m not affiliated with Mr. Ness or Ms. Dowd, the publisher, or anyone else. I just really love this book.

    You can probably get it from your local library (like I did, but loved it so much that I ran out and bought it) but here’s the Amazon link for an overview: http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Calls-Inspired-idea-Siobhan/dp/0763655597/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1327081317&sr=8-1

  45. We’re pleased as punch to announce that Nothing in Reserve by Jack Lewis is a Reviewer’s Choice in the Small Press category at the Midwest Book Review for January!

    “Hero is an empty term. “Nothing in Reserve” is a true-life memoir from weary veteran Jack Lewis who writes of his experiences as a twenty first century soldier. He writes his stories, affirming they aren’t war stories, but stories of a life that happens to be at war, with himself, and with everything around him. Insightful and from the heart, “Nothing in Reserve” is a driven and much recommended look into the mind and conflict of the next generation of war veterans.” – MWBR

    http://litsam.com/bookstore/memoir/nothing-in-reserve-true-stories-not-war-stories/

    AND It’s the author’s birthday today. Come pick up a copy!

  47. Blog on the history of fantasy and SF, with posts on more recent works to come as well. Mixture of humor, history, literature, reviews, and “big idea” posts on all sorts of things, from books to games.

    http://wondrouswindows.wordpress.com/

    (I know there aren’t many entries, I started it with the new year. I have other posts in the can already, so don’t worry about it evaporating in a month or two. I’m also an academic, so this sort of stuff is what I’m doing anyway.)

  48. Check out the Cascade Writers Retreat. (I help run it) we’re a fun, laid back little group. This year we’re featuring Tor editor Beth Meacham, her authors Ken Scholes and Jay Lake, as well as authors Mark Teppo, Barb & JC Hendee, and agent Michael Carr.

  52. One of my favourite writers also happens to be a friend of mine. He’s got a couple of stories up on Kindle; I think for the people here Do Unto Others might be a happy discovery.

  53. Marcon SF con, Columbus OH, moves to a new date. Easter weekend, April 6-8, 2012 is the Galactic Beach Party. Tamora Pierce, Erica Neely, Sarah Clemens, Paula Guran, Julian Glover, Kyle Gass, Dr. Bradley Lepper. Hope to see you there!

    http://marcon.org/wordpress/

  54. This year is the hundredth anniversary of the Titanic sinking. If you’ve thought it would be cool to go back in time and do something about it, so have I. Then I wrote about it. The Time Travel Journals: Shipbuilder is about Thomas Andrews, one of the designers of the ship. It’s SF, romance, and by necessity, historical. It takes place in the early twentieth, after all. Consider it an alternative to the Titanic disaster. Publishers Weekly did.

    Because I try to mind what Scalzi says, I’ve given just one link – to my blog page, which has links to all the places where you can get the book Now I’m off to check what everyone else is offering!

    http://marlenedotterer.wordpress.com/books/

  55. My newest e-book, GALLOWS POLE, is available for Kindle, Nook, and other e-readers.

    Some reviews: “…a thought-provoking approach to the complicated mess the world has become, especially in post September 11, 2001 America, one that acknowledges choices aren’t always crystal clear, black and white. Rather, they are quite fuzzy, and are to be found somewhere amongst a thousand shades of grey. It takes a skilled hand to bring issues of such a serious nature into a work of fiction and not come across as preachy, simplistic, or to show your hand ideologically one way or the other, but Rhoades does so with aplomb.

    Indeed, Gallows Pole is a book that will both entertain and challenge you.”

    “Rhoades takes the protagonists — and the reader — into a moral quagmire where past sins are alive and kicking, and the bad choices of years past are still capable of drawing blood. This one will stay with you.”

    Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0067CH9SQ

    Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/gallows-pole-jd-rhoades/1107379304?ean=2940013558793

    Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/104839

  56. Whoops, too many links.

    My newest e-book, GALLOWS POLE, is available for Kindle, Nook, and other e-readers.

    Some reviews: “…a thought-provoking approach to the complicated mess the world has become, especially in post September 11, 2001 America, one that acknowledges choices aren’t always crystal clear, black and white. Rather, they are quite fuzzy, and are to be found somewhere amongst a thousand shades of grey. It takes a skilled hand to bring issues of such a serious nature into a work of fiction and not come across as preachy, simplistic, or to show your hand ideologically one way or the other, but Rhoades does so with aplomb.

    Indeed, Gallows Pole is a book that will both entertain and challenge you.”

    “Rhoades takes the protagonists — and the reader — into a moral quagmire where past sins are alive and kicking, and the bad choices of years past are still capable of drawing blood. This one will stay with you.”

    Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0067CH9SQ

  57. If you like comedy zombies and radio-drama (and if you don’t, you probably do unspeakable thing to baby alpacas in the dark of night), might I direct your attention to WZMB Zombie Radio Show?

    http://zombieradioshow.wordpress.com/

    Each 5-7 min episode follows Jimmy Rudolph, a jazz DJ in New York City after the zombie apocalypse (full disclosure: I am the voice of Jimmy’s violently competent, havoc-loving producer, J-Bo. Gee, I wonder where that characterization came from?). We’ve posted 40+ episodes to date, and while I think you should start from the beginning for maximum free laughs, the New Year’s Eve episode (Ep. 40) is a great place to jump in!

    New episodes go live, not undead, every Zombie Monday, so add us to your RSS feed, like us on the Facebook, or follow us on that Twitter contraption. When the brain-eaters come for you and your alpacas, you’ll be glad you did.

  59. Check out Christine Fonseca: http://christinefonseca.blogspot.com/ her debut YA Gothic Series, THE REQUIEM SERIES begins February 1, with “Dies Irae.”

    Mikayel lives by one rule—obey the orders of the angelic Council at all costs. That is, until he and his friends, Azza and Demi, are sent to Earth. Assigned as Watchers while they await their decision of which angelic order to serve, the three assume the bodies of teenagers and experience life as human.

    The sensations are overwhelming as the angels experience a host of human emotions—rage, terror, love—and come ever closer to breaking one of the unbreakable rules—never fall in love.

    But being human isn’t the only problem facing the three angels. Unbeknownst to the Council, demonic activity is on the rise, threatening to break a tenuous peace that has existed for a millennia; a peace Azza seems bent on destroying.

    Caught in a struggle for power with unseen demonic forces and Azza, and fighting against his rising emotional attachment to Demi, Mikayel must now decide how much he is willing to sacrifice for his new found love—a decision that could reignite an ancient war and will threaten the only thing that matters to the angels, the survival of humanity.

  61. I have a writing/reading blog, which I’ve been updating regularly since November. (In October, Life Happened, and I couldn’t update often.) I don’t get paid for blog hits, or anything, but I still like it when people read my stuff, and I wish more people would comment.

    So feel free to stop by: http://alicethewriter.blogspot.com

    Here’s a recent post I was most pleased with, for reasons that are not entirely apparent: http://alicethewriter.blogspot.com/2012/01/antici.html.

  62. Well, I suppose I’ve got two things (one of mine and one not). I’ll do the “not mine” first:

    Folks might be interested in this thing from National Geographic about Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910-12 expedition to the South Pole: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/pictures/120117-scott-south-pole-anniversary-hundred-years-science

    The pictures are amazing, and surprisingly clean considering where they came from. It’s fascinating, I think, to see the kinds of things they took with them when they went to the South Pole. A piano? Yup!

    It’s just awesome.

  63. Now for that “me” thing:

    James L. Sutter just came onto The Skiffy and Fanty Show to talk about his new novel, Death’s Heretic. It’s our first interview for the year and I think folks might find it interesting: http://skiffyandfanty.wordpress.com/2012/01/17/episode-83-an-interview-w-james-l-sutter-a-k-a-the-soul-man/

    And tied into that is a giveaway for Bleedover by Curtis Hox (and an Amazon gift card), which you can find out more about by going to the link in the sidebar (under Contests).

    Thanks for the opportunity, Mr. Scalzi. I hope folks find the National Geographic thing interesting (ditto for the interview).

  64. Second thing of the day. A while back, I wrote about one of Wodehouse’s more forgotten characters, Psmith. “He’s cheeky and dignified; selfish and generous; incorrigible trickster who’s one half Jeeves in his powers of manipulation and coolness, and one half Fred in his sending up of society and comical insouciance.” Ah, my fictional exquisite troller, how I wish the Leave It to Psmith books weren’t region-locked to the UK! (Don’t worry, I got a real book version, but it’s not the same.)

  65. Oh, a second thing!

    Anyone remember Meg Davis? _A Dream of Light Horses_, _Captain Jack and the Mermaid_, _The Elf Glade_? If not, she was a musician starting to get career traction in the early 80s before disappearing suddenly due to health issues that turned out to be a combination of MS and early-onset arthritis.

    She’s still around, and technology has reached the point where she wants to try to return to music part-time despite her handicaps. I wrote up a TL;DR about it here if you want details and/or to help:

    http://crimeandtheforcesofevil.com/blog/2012/01/not-so-long-ago-and-not-so-far-away/

    (I am not related to Meg and I have no financial interest here; I never got to see her perform live and found her music later. “Elf Glade” was the first thing I learned to play on flute.)

  67. Allow me to back John up on the Taos Toolbox recommendation. It did wonders for me.

    Joe Clifford, noir writer and organizer of the Lip Service West series of readings, is working on getting his memoir published. He’s been writing killer stories for the last while, so give him a look. http://joecliffordcandyandcigarettes.blogspot.com/2012/01/and-heres-how-you-can-help-pt-ii.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2FKrJiA+%28Candy+and+Cigarettes%29

    And if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, Stoker Award-winning editor and writer Nick Mamatas has an upcoming class in writing popular fiction. Like Viable Paradise and Taos Toolbox, it was a crucial part of my education. http://www.writingsalons.com/uncategorized/the-storytellers-toolbox-fiction-workshop/

  69. “Don’t Eat the Piano Player” is now available in the latest issue of Stupefying Stories… along with a slew of other really good stuff. (Yes, I’m one of the associate editors. No, that didn’t give me a pass! My stuff still had to go through the slush pile, and I didn’t get to vote on it.)

    Barnes & Noble (ePub): http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stupefying-stories-bruce-bethke/1106464110?ean=2940013748996

    Apple (ePub): http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/stupefying-stories/id495697804?mt=11

    Amazon (MOBI): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006Y04BBY

  70. Ok, please look at Closed Circle at:

    http://www.closed-circle.net/WhereItsAt/

    and think about buying some books.

    The books are written by ‘multiple Hugo award winner, C.J. Cherryh, best-selling co-creator of Thieves’ World, Lynn Abbey, and critically acclaimed Jane Fancher’, and my only criticism is that Jane is taking altogether too long to write the sequel to Blood Red Moon. There is a galaxy wide shortfall of books about a vampire with a cat, so she really needs to get on with it.

    And no, the cat does not have bacon attached to it, but you can’t have everything…

  73. Thanks John!

    My partner is an artist and just put some new works online: http://hannatai.com/

    She makes work about how things like cosmological forces play out at the humble scale of daily life. The image on the front page is her version of a ‘Light Cone’, which (according to Wikipedia) is “the path that a flash of light, emanating from a single event (localized to a single point in space and a single moment in time) and traveling in all directions, would take through spacetime.”

  74. What a great idea, and so many cool things have been shared here so far! Definitely have to check out some of those ebooks… which brings me to my own self-promotion (at least I don’t have to add a disclaimer about it being a shameless one)
    I’ve been writing supernatural fiction (you know, those vampires and shapeshifters and spellcasters and so on) for years and years, but unfortunately I never got around to publishing… until earlier this month. Long story short, I was a game tester seeking game design work and was suddenly laid off last November along with the entire studio. So, I decided to put my efforts fully into my writing, which is what I’ve always preferred doing, anyway.
    My first novel is NIGHT FALLS and it is the first in a series of 4 (and a half as I’m still going) called THE DARK AWAKENING. It’s available on both Kindle and Nook. If you liked vampires before Twilight or even if you didn’t, you should check out the preview. I sat down to start this novel with the intent of making a vampire who was NOT perfect or idolized, but instead someone with all kinds of problems. The narrator is a girl turned by the vampire into his servant – brainwashed – but the problem is, the brainwashing doesn’t stick. As she realizes that there are all kinds of monsters hiding in the world she also has to accept that she isn’t human herself, either.
    Kindle link – http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006S7VWOW/
    Nook link will be posted in a separate comment. Thanks so much for the chance to be noticed!

  76. Together with some of my statistical colleagues, we have a blog where we say unkind and occasionally amusing things about statistics and general numeracy in the mainstream media. Mostly the New Zealand mainstream media, but it generalizes pretty well.

  78. If any college students are reading this, I’d like to humbly direct you to my Kindle e-book, “Go to college without going broke.” Learn how to score free textbooks, get a great spring break on $20 or less, find out why video games could be the best investment you’ll ever make, and more! :) No Kindle? No worries: you can read it in Amazon’s cloud reader or on the Kindle app. Here’s the link: http://www.amazon.com/college-without-going-broke-ebook/dp/B0053RIWEG

  79. I’m in the process of setting up a kind of small-press ebook publisher. Or, actually, ‘republisher’ might be the better word. I realised a few weeks back I knew a bunch of pro authors with work that’s been out of print or otherwise unavailable for years, or has never been available in electronic format, and who weren’t likely to figure out on their own how to turn their work into ebooks. Since I live in Scotland, at the moment pretty much all of those authors are Scottish, or else live there.

    The result is Brain In A Jar Books (braininajarbooks.blogspot.com). Let me just say that this is still a work in progress, and BIAJ’s first release – Mike Cobley’s short fiction collection, Iron Mosaic – isn’t going to be out for several days, perhaps longer, but I couldn’t really pass up this opportunity to talk it up. I haven’t even had a chance to write about it at my own blog (www.whitescreenofdespair.blogspot.com) yet, and I haven’t quite finished up the BIAJ website, but it’s still viewable.

    People whose work I’m going to be putting up on Amazon: Mike Cobley is the author of the Shadowkings fantasy trilogy and the Humanity’s Fire space opera series, currently out from Orbit and soon due to be published in the US. His short story collection was previously published by Immanion Press in hardcopy format, and that’ll be up soon…but only available, I’m afraid, in the UK for the moment (contractual reasons).

    There’s also Duncan Lunan, who’s written a truckload of science articles for Analog. He’s got a series of linked novellas that first appeared there and in Asimov’s over the past couple of decades, and they’ll be coming out at some point in the next couple of months under the title With Time Comes Concorde and other stories.

    Out soon is The Cyber Puppets, by Angus McAllister, a Glasgow-based sf author who previously wrote The Krugg Syndrome and The Canongate Strangler, both of which I’m hoping to bring out in ebook format, depending on negotiations. Cyber Puppets was originally slated to be published by Big Engine in the mid-2000s, until Big Engine went out of business two weeks before the release date.

    Also coming under the BIAJ banner is Judgement, by Fergus Bannon, which has already been out for a while and doing well on Amazon, and a forthcoming of short fiction by Fergus is coming soon, including stories that first appeared in Interzone and elsewhere. And there’s more to come, by other writers, that I can’t talk about yet. Thanks, John, for opening this thread up.

    (And while I’m at it, let me also pimp another small-press ebook publisher – Infinity Plus Ebooks, run by author Keith Brooke. They’ve got some really excellent stuff [http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/books/]. Go check it out.)

  82. As always, thank you John. I am going to plug the fact that we’re currently having a huge sale on books from Philip Jose Farmer’s estate. You can easily save 20% to 50% off everything:

    Let’s start with everything being 20% off.
    Then add another 10% off if you like the pjfarmer.com facebook page.
    Then add another 10% off if you buy (or already own) a copy of The Worlds of Philip Jose Farmer 1.
    Then add another 10% off if you buy (or already own) a copy of The Worlds of Philip Jose Farmer 2.

    And just like that you can save 50% off every book listed for sale here: http://www.pjfarmer.com/estate.htm

    Be sure to check out the books signed by other authors, many of them association copies. We’re talking about books signed by: Joe R. Lansdale, Victor Koman, Charles Williford, Harlan Ellison, Ed Gorman, Henry Miller, Charles Bukowski, James Crumley, Fritz Leiber, James P. Blaylock and many, many more.

  88. I’m a writer with a blog called FARMLET about life on our teeny tiny farm (2.5 acres) near Seattle, WA. My husband, the Bearded One, draws the stick man cartoons. I post every Thursday, and have been for just about a year. We have chickens and goats now! Please stop by. http://www.farmlet.wordpress.com
    Thanks.

  91. And now for something completely different. The Bay Area Orienteering Club is hosting the first round of World Cup competition in Ski-Orienteering at Lake Tahoe next month. In ski orienteering, cross-country skiers have a map with checkpoints that they must locate in order, choosing their own routes to each point. There’s not as much technical navigation as in “foot” orienteering, but the route choices are critical. This is the first time that the USA has hosted an event like this. There are about 60 athletes from 14 countries in the competition.
    Regular people are welcome, too. Orienteering is one of the few sports where non-elites can participate on the same location as the elite athletes.
    http://baoc.org/wiki/Schedule/2012/Ski-O_Tour

  92. Bit late to the game, but nonetheless….

    I write Will Bike for Change (or Pie!), a blog covering bicycling, social justice, sustainable food, and other idealistic pursuits. Despite the heavy-sounding topic areas, I do try to keep it fun, with entries on bicycle rides to eat dessert, underground food markets, and people who drive me a little bonkers on the bike trail.

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Athena Scalzi, editor – AMS
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