In previous years, we would all be at a park a few blocks from here to watch fireworks.  It was far from the action, but we could see it all and who needs to fight the crowds?

This year?  Well, as we just discovered barely more than an hour ago, those fireworks have been cancelled this year.  There’s still another display, but it’s across town, and being carless, we could never get there in time–not even the buses can run quickly enough.

Fireworks on TV this year (which is fine by me, since I’m not that enthusiastic about them).  My wife and son are terrible disappointed.

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Can a healthy spider survive being flushed down a toilet?

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From a former book publicist: What should air on C-SPAN’s “Book TV” this weekend. Well, I thought it was funny.

Twenty Best Cthulhu Tales–I’ve only read a fraction of the stories on this list, but I’m copying it here so I can reference it later. Mythos! I love it.

Man writes book that will take a thousand years to read. Embarrassingly, after 750 years, readers will discover that he used “it’s” when he should have written “its.”

This next one is off the (accidental) book theme of this post, but I do hope you’ll all read it: Urban Farmer finds success. So cool.

As for items of a non-linking variety: Tomorrow I get one of my birthday gifts–reading time. Just like Father’s Day, I’m going to spend a significant amount of time sacked out in bed with a book. I still have Spirit Gate by Kate Elliott on deck, and I hope to make a sizable dent in it.

Also, I’m told that Child of Fire will have the opening chapter of book 2 at the very back. Now, this is cool news, but I should come right out and say that I never read preview excerpts in books.  Invariably, I buy the excerpted book, put it on my shelf for a couple months (or years) and when I finally start it, I get a disturbing reader’s deja vu.  “Have I read this already?”  Since I’m terrible with titles, I can never be sure. 

Eventually, I just swore off the practice. 

And book 2, Everyone Loves Blue Dog, will soon have a new title.  There’s a current front runner, but I don’t want to talk about it until things are settled.  The happiest part for me is that I like this title and it doesn’t turn up in a Google search. 

With that, I’ll sign off to enjoy the holiday.

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While folks are on the subject, I, too, love electronic submissions. However, I have *two* printers--a B&W laser jobbie for everyday and a color inkjet for pictures and such.

And my agent wants me to send my next novel to her on paper. She's not much for computers, I guess, and doesn't want to print them all herself.

I have no problem with it.

Since Independence Day falls on a Saturday this year, an awful lot of places are closed or on holiday time today (the buses were running on a Sunday schedule, for example). Here at my day job at the clinic, though, that ain't the case. The clinics are all open, seeing patients, writing scripts, whatever, and we're all sitting at the call center to answer the phone.

But no one told the IT communication dept. They have today off, and so they assumed we would, too. They turned off our phones, and there's no one in the IT office to turn them back on again.

So we're sitting here, hanging out at work, playing on the web.

If they don't get this fixed, I'm going to get a lot of reading done today.

Update: Damn, I shouldn't have said anything. Now they're working.

Because I am boring and can not spare the attention it takes to express a coherent opinion, here are some links:

1) “I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make.”

2) “Call me an ignorant Swede, but the last thing I thought possible in the U.S. was that you banned books.”

3) The NY Times on my favorite food. I’m almost afraid to read it.

4) This makes me want to hide under my desk, and it’s just a couple of pictures on a website. NB: that link is not for people who have issues with high places.

5) Gay sex decriminalized in New Delhi. Change may be slow, but it’s coming (so to speak).

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Today was my not-birthday. As I mentioned earlier, my wife and I have the same birthday, and that sucks–somebody ends up doing the dishes on their special day. So I moved my day back a month.

I don’t much like cake, so I had my traditional (melon-free) fruit salad. My son bought me a new baster and my wife gave me the same gift I got for Christmas–permission to buy a rilly rilly nice computer when the G4 Mac Mini on my desk gives up the ghost.

At this point, I’m starting to hate my old computer. I glare at it when iPhoto lags or I can’t upload video from my camera–someday it will be dead, and with Apple Care expired I will get new very very soon.

I hope.

I also had market fresh nectarines for my snack breaks at work, and a beautiful steak with sauteed mushrooms for dinner. Nice. All I need to do to make this a perfect day would be to get to bed early.

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Laptop seems fine. The book is ruined, though.

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Shit. I went to the Starbucks across the street from day job, sat down with my laptop and coffee, and promptly spilled the whole thing over the table. Spirit Gate by Kate Elliott is soaked through and my computer kept flashing to a white screen.

I say again: Shit.

Now I’m sitting at my desk at the day job, with computer and book resting on the air conditioning vent beside me, drying out. ::fingers crossed:: Instead, I guess I’ll work on some of the publicity stuff I’m supposed to whip up by the end of the month, and thinkerate on the characters and plot.

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Filmmakers are given a prop, a line of dialog, and whatever else and have to write, shoot and edit a film in 48 hours.

Here’s one written by a funny writer I know:

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I was idly reading through Jim Butcher’s message boards when I came across a statement I hadn’t heard before. He said that epic fantasy, as a genre, has very good legs. That is, compared to other genres, it continues to sell fairly well long after publication date.

True? Not? What do you think?

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I’m uncomfortable asking for favors, and when I’m uncomfortable, I preamble.

I don’t have an RSS feed. Every blog I follow is on my LiveJournal friends list. A couple years back, I had an author on there with a strong, interesting voice and outspoken opinions. We probably wouldn’t have gotten along in real life, but I enjoyed her LJ.

Then she made a post that (paraphrasing) suggested she expected people who were reading her LiveJournal (”for free”) should also buy her novels. I dropped her from my list immediately. See, I’d already read one or two of her books, and I didn’t care for them, but I was very interested in the way she talked about current events.

Anyway, I would never ask anyone reading this to buy my book. If it seems like the kind of thing you’d be interested in and you have the eight bucks, then cool. *I* certainly think it’s worth it, in my completely and thoroughly unbiased opinion, but what else would you expect me to say?

However, I would like to ask a favor (he said, 170-some words later): Today, June 29th, is exactly three months before the publish date of the Child of Fire. I just went over to my public library web site, clicked on the “Purchase Suggestion” link at the bottom of the page and asked them to order the book.

Would you please do the same at your local library?

Many of them have a way for you to do it online, and if you need to find the ISBN or other information, you can get it off Amazon.com at this link.

Every library in the country is scaling back their acquisition budgets, I know, but money is tight for readers, too. I’d love for my book to be available to them. And, of course, I’m a big fan of libraries in general.

Anyway, if you can take a few minutes to put in this request, I’d be grateful. Thanks.

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So… this is weird.

Many times over the years I’ve seen authors publish their convention schedules. Well, here’s mine for the San Diego Comic-Con:

I’ll be on a panel on Thursday morning, 7/23, ten am, in Room 10. The title of the panel is “Escapist Fantasy” and I have a list of other authors who’ll be there, but I’m not sure if it’s 100% up to date.

Panelists: Juliet Blackwell (SECOND HAND SPIRITS); Marjorie Liu (DARKNESS CALLS); Jackie Kessler & Caitlin Kittredge (BLACK & WHITE); Diana Rowland (MARK OF THE DEMON); Sina Grace (CEDRIC HOLLOWS IN DIAL M for MAGIC); and Harry Connolly (CHILD OF FIRE).

Moderator: Maryelizabeth Hart, Mysterious Galaxy

That’s not all! I’ll also be signing ARCs of Child of Fire at the Del Rey/Spectra booth on Saturday, 7/25 from 11am to 11:30.

I promise nothing but nervous stammers and flop sweat! But if you want your book truly personalized, after I sign it, I’ll be happy to bite it hard enough to leave my one-of-a-kind tooth marks on the cover. How can you miss a chance like that?

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She has work today, but she left muy early for a doctor's appointment. On Saturday night, her eye started to hurt, and yesterday it was swollen. When the doctor's office phones opened this morning, I was already up (because I didn't duck out of the apartment to do my writing) and I made an earliest appointment for her.

It looks like a mild infection, but not like pink eye. There's no discharge, anyway. I don't expect it to be anything serious.

Now to do today's pages before my son wakes up.

Later, I'll type up this weekend's excitement. A severe lack of internet service prevented me from doing it yesterday.

Update: Appointment is over. Diagnosis: a sty on the inside of her eye. Treatment plan: hot compresses and antibiotic gel to put in her eye before she goes to bed.

Phew!

I just did slightly more than three thousand words on Man Bites World. I know some writers do that every day, but I have never written so many words of prose in one day. That’s huge for me.

Book, you are annoying. Like golf. Like jigsaw puzzles. You are frustrating and impossible for days and days, and then suddenly you give a short term accomplishment. This is great! I think. And fun, too! I need to do this all the time!

But I know your sneaky ways. Tomorrow, you’re just as likely to be impossible again.

::shakes fist at laptop::

(They were good pages, too. I’m happy with them.)

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Do not press the big red button.

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by Lawrence Block.

I grabbed this one off the shelf almost at random. I was looking to try one of Block’s novels, and despite the terrible title, I grabbed it.

The protagonist, Matt Scudder, is a former cop getting by as an unlicensed P.I. He’s also soon to be divorced and drinking a ton. He’s hired by a crooked cop who’s been framed for extortion and murder to look into the case and find out who really did it.

It’s good, as this type of book goes. It’s a terrific example of this specific genre–It was written in the mid-seventies, just about the end of the time you could realistically show an alcoholic wandering around without every person in his life gently pushing him toward AA. The cynical world view is there, and the text has that telltale lack of affect that signals the protagonist’s inner demons (with traces of real emotions popping up in unexpected places).

But here’s what I wanted to say about that: people often talk about urban fantasy as though it’s very noir–I often hear this about the Dresden Files, for example–but the major diff between UF and real noirish mystery is that UF is full of combat. The protagonist gets attacked in parking lots, at crime scenes, while trying to crash Mr. Big’s party, whatever. Violence. Lots of it.

Most of the noir mystery I read is not like that at all. There is, maybe, one scene of violence right at the end, and maybe one, possibly two, somewhere in the middle. Actually, there are rarely as many as two in the middle. Most of the book is just two people talking.

That’s where UF falls down in it’s attempts to be “noir”. You can be as cynical as you want, but if you’re doing the violence as much as setting it right, you’re in a different genre.

And no, I’m not sure how Mike Hammer fits into all this.

Anyway, I don’t know if anyone ever say the movie 8 Million Ways To Die, but Jeff Bridges played Matt Scudder in that one. It’s from a later book in the series, when the protag is in AA, and it was Hal Ashby’s last film. It’s also a goddam mess. Bridges is a good actor, but he was seriously miscast, and I’d heard that much of the film was improvised. It looks like it was improvised, too, since the scenes have no shape to them. It was an enormous flop at the box office, even for a P.I. mystery.

But I didn’t read Eight Million…, I read In the Midst of Death. It’s an interesting book, and very short. If you’ve wanted to dip your toe in this genre, you should try this one.

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In case you haven’t noticed, the President has been appearing in a lot of comic books lately. You don’t need me to link them–or maybe you do–but considering the appearances he’s made so far, I guess I should have realized that this was inevitable:

Yes, it’s “Barack the Barbarian” a retelling of the 2008 presidential election in the form of a Conan comic from the ’70’s. It’s full of bloody murder, girls in leather bikinis, and a barechested Barack high-fiving the Amazon warrior “Hilaria.”

America: A country so fucking crazy, even Johnny Depp had to leave.

The best part is that it’s actually funny.

( Read the rest of this entry » )

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I know. You’re disappointed to be reading this one, aren’t you?

Let me salve your pain with links:

Want to go to a lawless state and murder desperately poor people? Now you can! For only 3,500 pounds sterling a day (plus weapon rental), you can cruise slowly along the coast of Somalia in a luxury yacht. If your luck holds, pirates will attack, and you can kill them.

(eta: I’m told this news report is a fake. I hope so.)

If killing Somalis in the real world is too spendy/morally bankrupt for you, you could always fight monsters on Hidlyda as a young Miracle Witch. It’s a free game, very Legend of Zelda old school, where you travel about fighting monsters, collecting loot and unlocking secret entrances until you finally come face to face with King Yeah Walusa. It’s pretty fun, even if I did have to reference the comment thread at Jay Is Games to find everything. And I scored a D. Huh. Save often!

But, if what you want is something beautiful and complex (complex for the internet, I mean), then look at this: Time Wastes Too Fast.

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I’ll be raising a glass of Jesus Juice tonight. L.A. Times is reporting that Michael Jackson is dead at the ago of 50.

He had charisma. In the early part of his career, he made compelling, exciting pop music. Then he turned into a complete wreck.

I’m not sorry he’s gone. Honestly, I’m a little glad. It’s an ugly thing to say, but there it is.

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