Sense of Adventure

Today, after much too long an absence, Emma Dog and I went for a walk along the clear ditch by the Rio Grande Nature Center. It was one of those golden-velvet afternoons that make Fall my favorite season of the year.

Coming out of the Center proper, or up the bike path from the south, you cross a bridge to the levee bike path on the west side of the ditch. Perhaps a quarter mile north another footbridge crosses back to the east side, where a tree-shaded dirt trail runs. As you come off that bridge you’re looking off across the wide fields the Nature Center maintains as a wildfowl preserve.

Stopping to look out at them I saw, far off across them, suspicious looking pale-grey shapes. Looking through my indispensable Simmons monocular I confirmed they were, in fact, Sandhill cranes - first of the season that I’ve seen.

Always a treat to see them. I’m looking forward to hearing them, and looking up and seeing them fly south in their vees. If I’m lucky, I might be wakened some morning soon by their distinctive, piercing, bubbling cries. When I first moved into my house on Jupiter the wild geese would announce autumn by flying over, which always thrilled me. Then their flight paths shifted and I was bereft. But a couple years ago the cranes started going over. Which is at least as cool.

As we walked back the Canada geese, who are arriving back in big numbers (unlike cranes they never all leave ABQ), raised a colossal fuss off out of sight in the fields. I’m guessing coyotes were working the field. They do that.

On the way home I stopped off to buy dinner at Lowe’s across Fourth Street. In the produce section I heard a middle-aged guy cheerfully explaining to a lady who works there that he was just buying a pumpkin as a treat for his chickens - and only because they were out of watermelons.

Indeed do many things come to pass.

Next: When Great Sky Demons Attack and its terrifying sequel, Bring Me the Head of Mickey Mouse.

This morning I got an email from a friend who said she couldn’t find my MySpace page. I tried to log on; so success. When I tried the “forgot my password” option, I was told no account existed with my email address.

Indeed.

And the page is gone, with a message saying it’s been deleted.

I sure didn’t delete it. And if I did something that violated their Terms of Use - I received no notice of such - I’d sure like to know what it was, inasmuch as the page was pretty damned innocuous.

I’m not sure I’ll ever find out. In line with modern corporate practice (remember, kiddies: “corporations” are government franchises!) they make it exceedingly difficult to get in touch with them. I especially liked the page for “contacting” them. On the Topic pulldown I selected My Account. The Subtopic pulldown offered no choices. Then the page wouldn’t let me continue because I hadn’t selected a subtopic. Brilliant!

I’m not thrilled about this. I hadn’t posted on my MySpace blog for a while - I’m still sorting out what ought go where, when it comes to my online maunderings. But I had invested a certain amount of time and energy in the site, which has now been wasted for some unknowable reason (I never found a way to back up the page.) That’s not okay.

Ah, well. We’ll see if I ever hear back on the email I managed (how, I’m not entirely sure) to send to their “customer service” department. I’m peeved and even slightly paranoid about this; and unsure if I’ll pour any more of my line down that particular rathole.

What else should I expect from an operation owned by an Australian War Socialist, anyway?

I follow Wally Conger’s blog, which deals with freedom matters as well as SF - in books, movies, and TV - comics, and other things of interest to geeks. Not that I know anybody like that.

Recently I commented on one of his posts about this John Scalzi fellow all the kids like these days (actually, my opinion’s about like a lot of people’s: he’s pretty good.) Wally liked my remarks enough to quote them in a separate post. He even found it in his heart to say kind things about Cybernetic Samurai.

Now that I’ve got a little breathing room, I may have a thing or two to say about Samurai soon, too.

Thanks, Wally! Appreciate it.

You may’ve noticed it’s been a while since I’ve posted here (well, I can hope, can’t I?)

I’ve been deluged by reason of having cleverly gotten behind on two writing projects simultaneously. Clearly, this requires skill. It also helps when you get a low-grade infection that saps your energy and dulls your wits for weeks on end.

Anyway … I finally got ‘em both in. One was my latest Annja Creed yarn, which will be entitled The Golden Elephant. I think. First they were calling it The Plunderers. We’ll see when it gets scheduled.

It’s my 90^th novel. I’m about to start 91, also an Annja novel, called (for the moment) Curse of the Golden Buddha. Yes, we got a lot of gold statues goin’ on in Annjaland.

You know what they say: an idol mind is the Devil’s playground.

The other thing I got behind on was rewriting my contribution to Busted Flush, the second volume of a new Wild Cards trilogy in the works. It’s going to be another mosaic novel. Looking cool so far.

The first volume is Inside Straight, which has a great cover. It’s due out February, 2008. If you want to pre-order it, please consider clicking through the above link: it’ll mean I’ll get a cut, and help to keep me off the streets.

More details on the state of the Wild Cards can be found at my Forum.

Oh, and if you want to keep current on Annja’s doings, my latest, Secret of the Slaves, has been out a month.

By the way, I’m trying a new feature: if you hover your cursor over either of the novel links above for a moment, a product preview will magically appear. Not that I’m trying to get you to give me money or anything. Except I am.