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Sick and tired...

… of being sick and tired.

In a way it’s kind of reassuring, though, realizing I’ve picked up some kind of bug. It explains why I’ve been so extremely tired even days after I finished my Great Rewriting Siege, why in spite of that I’ve been having trouble sleeping, and, oh, yeah, why I’ve had an upset stomach the last couple days.

It still sucks, of course.

I’m not terribly sick. What’s worst is it’s just enough to make it hard to focus mentally. Which is making it hard to do the other urgent rewriting I need to do. Bitch.

So right directly I’m going to just go and try to get to sleep, see if I can make it a decent sleep. And get a running start on the morrow.

Oh – you may have recently seen something about recent claims that, not only are birds not descended from dinosaurs, but dinosaurs might be descended from birds. Here’s an interesting and persuasive smackdown to that idea, delivered courtesy of Smithsonianmag.com’s Dinosaur Tracking blog.

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Signing KINGS, plus Kitty

Another year, another Wild Cards signing!

This time out Melinda Snodgrass, Daniel Abraham, John J. Miller, Caroline Spector, Ian Tregillis, and of course, Victor Milán (dot’s I’m!) will be signing the concluding volume of our current Committee triad, Suicide Kings. Also. Wild Carder Carrie Vaughn will be there; she doesn’t have a piece in Suicide Kings, but she will be signing the most recent novel in her best-selling Kitty Norville series, Kitty’s House of Horrors.

Sadly, it doesn’t appear George RR Martin himself will attend, despite what he says in his Not A Blog blog. Blog.

The coolness is going down Saturday, February 20, at 1:30 PM, at the  Barnes & Noble, in Coronado Mall, 6600 Menaul Blvd NE, Albuquerque, New Mexico. For more info click over to the helpful B&N event information page.

This is our first WC mass signing at Barnes & Noble. The store treated me quite well when I did a solo signing there a few years back, so I expect them to do us proud.

If you’re a fan of Wild Cards (and of course you are, even if you don’t know it yet) this is definitely the place to be this Saturday afternoon. Even if you’re not into Wild Cards, we’re all really, really entertaining. Plus some of the many other books the various participants have written will surely be available for purchase. And we’ll even sign ‘em, even if they aren’t WC.

And it’s a rare assemblage of talent, here: Caroline and Carrie are traveling from out of state to grace us with their presence. Plus Melinda and Ian are coming down from Santa Fe. That has to count for something.

It’ll be fun. If you don’t show, you won’t have any of it.

So be there. Aloha.


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Slammed in the head with a cast-iron skillet

That’s how I feel today. You?

It’s a happy kind of head-slammedness, anyway. It results from my having finished the rewrite for my Deathlands novel, Blood Oasis, and shipping it off to Gold Eagle.

As rewrites go, this one went more smoothly than any I can remember. However, the intensity with which I rewrote (facilitated, lo, by that very smoothness!)  has completely fried me.

I always get a little nuts when I approach the end of a writing project. Okay, a little more nuts. I haven’t showered in like five days and have barely been out of the house (no doubt fortunate in light of the foregoing.) And getting one out the door, electronically speaking, leaves me spent and shriveled like a cast-off cicada husk.

You’re welcome for that visual. Oh, and the olfactory.

I cannot rest long on my … whatever cicada husks come to rest on; twigs, mostly, I suppose. I have to get back and finish the long-deferred rewrite of my Wild Cards yarn (sorry, George and Melinda!), as well as, yes, the rewrite of Dinosaur Lords.

I’ll actually try to get back on them today. Although I’m not sure how productive I’ll be, given my current state of having a flat head.

Or it might be safer just to play Torchlight and try to finish up watching Hatari! and the first disc of Outlaw Star, Season 2, so I can get ‘em back to Netflix. Still, I will try the Road of Virtuous Productivity first. My feeble efforts could be amusing if nothing else.

Anyway, I muster a feeble, yay!


More soon. Thanks for hanging with me!

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The writer's dilemma

You might as well know it, if you don’t already: there’s tension between the writer’s need to connect with his or her fans – through, say, oh, I don’t know, blogs? – and the writer’s need to make money.

You can clearly see which end of the dilemma I’ve been coming out on lately.

The problem is, blogging uses up pretty much the same sorts of resources as fiction writing does, including time. And I’ve been strapped for those lately, what with deadline pressures. Which I’m not yet out from under, although I can sort of see clear sky now. Sort of.

I really appreciate that you read this blog. Thank you. It’s rather flattering that people are interested enough to keep tabs on me. The last thing I want to dso is discourage that.

The last thing I can afford to do is divert energy and focus from the paid writing.

And I have to be honest: letting everything else go in my life does not automatically equate to getting more real writing done. I wish it did. Writing gratifies me more than pretty much anything else I do in life; yet often I find it hardest to do the things which reward me the most.

If I whine here, feel free to ignore it. The solutions I have to work out for myself – and, harder, actually implement. Since I’m whining (you’re ignoring this now anyway,  right?) I’ll go ahead and vent my frustration that after banging my head against the problem of avoiding pleasure for years, I still don’t seem to be breaking through.

Damn it anyway.

Still, I’ll persevere. One thing I’ll say for myself: that’s what I do.

If you had the perseverance to keep checking back until you find this … thank you. I will make it worth your while, both here and with my fiction.

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Checking in

Been flying a bit low of late. Mainly under the weight of deadlines.

Fast (Asleep) Friends

Fast (Asleep) Friends

Anyway, I am still flying, and that’s good news. Just wanted to check in and let people know.

Just about ten minutes ago I saw the insufferably adorable pose above by TJ Cat and Emma Dog. So I snapped the picture with my cell phone camera. A moment later TJ got up, stretched, and wandered off.

It’s not much of a camera, although some may argue it’s all the more appropriate to my skill level for that. I’m foolish-minded enough to be grateful to have it for capturing moments like this one.

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Crane jail break!

Happy Three Kings Day! Hope you had a good one.

When Emma Dog and I arrived at the Rio Grande Nature Center wildfowl preserve – which is now referred to, it seems, as Candelaria Farms – we found ourselves confronting this:

Crane jailbreak!

Crane jailbreak!

Yes, it was Greater Sandhill Cranes, clearly plotting to bust outta the wire.

The event is chronicled in this series of photographs, originally posted with Twitter and Yfrog: 2, 3, and 4.

In the end they made it out – with a bullet in their … no, actually, with no problems at all.

Clearly, I’m overly influenced by AC/DC’s “Jailbreak.”

Continue reading Crane jail break!

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Oh, we like sheep!

My Christmas Day was made when, driving over to John and Gail Miller’s for Christmas dinner in early afternoon and hearing the last part of Handel’s Messiah on the radio, I discovered the chorus for part of it was, “Oh, we like sheep.”

Pictured: sheep

Pictured: sheep

Oh, you do, do you?

Of course, I know the real lyric was “Oh we, like sheep” – punctuation matters! But I heard it the other way.

I wanted to. It was much funnier that way. And in all fairness, it did sound as if they were singing that they liked sheep.

I had a very good Christmas; hope you did too.

Continue reading Oh, we like sheep!

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Merry Christmas, 2009

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas.

A Christmas of peace and harmony.

A Christmas filled with peace and harmony.

And a happy, healthy, and prosperous new Year.

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Christmas, with Metamorphosis

All you really need to know about the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society is summed up in the fact that we all thought the twistedly brilliant short film Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life to be a perfect holiday movie.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you? Again.

You thought I was kidding, didn't you? Again.

It was brought to our Christmas meeting tonight by the incomparable Patricia Rogers – if you know her, that’s an of course – who had found it in a bargain bin in Target, of all places. Patricia has a great many gifts. An infallible affinity for the weird is definitely among them.

As well as the usual suspects, Melinda Snodgrass fell by for a few minutes at the beginning of the meeting. As always it was fun hanging with her.

Along with showing various short Christmas films (the rest were Rifftrax) tonight’s meeting was the occasion of our Annual Dessert Cook-Off. The “challenge ingredient” this year was coffee.

Continue reading Christmas, with Metamorphosis

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My favorite Christmas movies

What’s my favorite Christmas movie of all time? Not a contest.

Oh the weather outside is balmy/Killing terrorists is all that'll calm me...

Oh, the weather outside is balmy/Killing terrorists is all that'll calm me...

Only the very prototype (and pinnacle) of the modern action film. Yes, Die Hard. What else could it be?

The best of the rest:

2. A Christmas Story – also read the book from which it came, In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash.

3. Lethal Weapon – but any Lethal Weapon movie with a numeral is on my least faves list.

4. The Nightmare Before Christmas – my favorite part is the opening “This Is Halloween” number, to the tune of “Here Comes Santa Claus,” no less.

Seems to me there were more, but I draw blank here. I may add some in updates if I recall.

So – what’re your favorite Christmas movies of all time? Drop a comment and let me know!

PS – remember the mouseovers! There’re always mouseovers.


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