Sense of Adventure

Yep, the senses-shattering next volume of the illustrious Wild Cards saga has wrapped and is about to be delivered to Tor. It’s called Busted Flush. And unlike the soon-to-be-released Inside Straight, I most definitely am in this one.

Busted Flush is by way of being another mosaic novel - all the stories are intertwined. It’s a boatload of work for George, the editor, and Melinda, the co-editor (who also wrote the interstitial material tying it all together.) But it can produce a very nice effect.

My contribution marks the return of an old friend. But things are maybe not as they appear…

Reviews are coming in for the next Wild Cards volume, Inside Straight. Publishers Weekly, the big enchilada, gives us a good notice (scroll down. And down.) Jeremy at FantasyBookSpot rates it an 11 out of 10 (shades of Spinal Tap!), and Harriet Klausner’s Genre Go Round Reviews likes it too.

Meanwhile Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist out of Québec offers you a chance to win one of two autographed advance reading copies of Inside Straight, signed by George R. R. Martin, Daniel Abraham, Melinda M. Snodgrass, Carrie Vaughn, Michael Cassutt, Caroline Spector, John Joseph Miller, Ian Tregillis, and S. L. Farrell. Which is, well, everybody.

That’s right. I’m not in it. I chose to sit this one out. Don’t let that dissuade you from checking it out. You’ll enjoy Busted Flush a whole lot better if you read this first!

Anyway, congrats to the kids in the first book, and hooray for the triumphant return of Wild Cards! Look for it January 22, 2008.

Just got back an hour or two ago from a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner most kindly hosted by my good friends John and Gail Miller. I didn’t stay late; I’m really sleepy for some reason. Not that getting to sleep fairly early tonight will do me much harm…

Anyway, Emma was crying to be let in from being put out a few minutes ago. I went to fetch her, and darned if the backyard wasn’t dusted with snow!

Been a long time since we’ve gotten snow this early, to the best of my remembering. Don’t know that I’ve ever seen it on Thanksgiving.

Anyway, hope you all had a good one.

What it says, to one and all.

I’m thankful for my health; for my wonderful friends and extended family, human and animal; and for being able to make my living in a pretty cool way.

In particular I thank you. My friends, readers, fans. You keep me going. In more than the obvious ways.

Health, happiness, freedom, and prosperity to all in the coming year. Despite the odds.

The last few days, just to make life interesting, my notebook computer’s been acting up. Either there’s something funky inside the box or the multi-tip Kensington power supply Circuitous City sold me last month when my existing power supply went Tango Uniform, doesn’t quite fit the socket.

What’s been happening is, the power keeps flickering. It’s obvious from the way the screen dims when the machine goes on battery power, as well as the fact that the power-input indicator light goes black. It’s annoying. Fiddling with the plug where it goes in the back of the computer sometimes brings it back. Usually, if sometimes after many attempts.

So after a day or two of it behaving itself mostly, I started having trouble again today. The battery got a bit low, so I got it where it was telling me it was getting power and left it to recharge.I ate dinner and came back to get some writing done. And the computer was black. No lights on; nobody home. Wouldn’t turn on.

Ulp. Uncomfortable feeling. Everything’s backed up - sort of. But it’s been a while since I backed up to the removable hard drive that my desktop PC will actually read.

I tried diddling the plug around in the socket. Nothing. I began to fear the power fluctuations had fried my motherboard. Which would be a Bad Thing.

I sat for a bit contemplating my options. Okay, mainly I was stunned. It did occur to me I could run my thumb drive to some friends’ house and get ‘em to cut me a CD I could slap in my desktop to transfer recently added/edited files. Be a pain, but it’d get me back writing again.

After a while it occurred to me to drag out the package the new power supply came with, which I’d stashed with the old power supply, and see if a different tip might work out. The answer to that was, “no.”

But it came to me to try the old adapter. Sort of on the “it can’t actually hurt” principle. And damned if it didn’t work.

I have no idea.

Also, no idea how to proceed. Obviously I’ve no idea how long the old adapter will continue to work. I’m not altogether sure the problem isn’t inside the box, although we had different symptoms with the two different power supplies.

Gah. Everything’s been breaking lately.

I shall persevere. At least the ‘puter’s working now.

At Emma’s request I just put her out in the backyard - sorry, that’s her whole contribution to this post. Please try to enjoy it anyway.

When I stepped out to set down her water dish my heart shot straight into my throat. Climbing up the western night sky was a gaggle of small glowing spheroids, intertwining and jostling each other.

Twice before in my life I’ve seen something close by in the sky that made me think, Well, that question’s answered: aliens exist, they’re here, and the little buggers have got me.

(Full disclosure: my first thought, especially in the first instance, was actually, Oh, shit. But I thought the other thing really soon thereafter. Really.)

This was the third time. It was also the one I most quickly realized had a conventional explanation.

First I thought they were flares. Then I realized climbing was not a flare-like activity.

But pretty quick I recognized them as a string of balloons - just regular party-type balloons, obviously filled with helium. Probably they escaped or were released from the used car lot over across Fourth Street. The city lights below were bright enough to make them seem self-luminous.

They got up into a wind current and blew east overhead. They streamed out into a more linear formation. They were actually quite pretty.

I’ve seen some striking aerial phenomena, from meteors and the Northern Lights to high-altitude balloons to the F-117 and the YF-12A (interceptor version of the SR-71 Blackbird.) I’ve seen a couple of things which I could identify but not readily account for. And, yes, I’ve several times seen something for which I can find no conventional explanation.

… And it’s all good.

First, we got a review of the new Wild Cards book, Inside Straight, and it’s glowing. Thanks, FantasyBookSpot!

In other news, my pal Melinda has jpegs of her new cover for The Edge of Reason up at her blog. Complete with a nifty blurb from that dang American Tolkien dude. He’s everywhere these days!

Check it out. It does have a rather … best-sellerish … look to it, methinks.

Fingers crossed.

Also Steve (S.M.) Stirling’s got two books in the top five sellers for both Borders/Walden and Barnes & Noble/Dalton, one in hardcover, one soft.

And Los Alamos Boy Scientist Ian Tregillis (who looks like a very young Errol Flynn) (Okay, 14. But, I mean, Errol Flynn!) just sold the splendidly-named Milkweed Triptych to Tor. As the name indicates it’s a trilogy.

So things continue to shake, rattle, and roll here in the Science Fiction Capital of the Known Universe. Woo-hoo!

Today I had to try gluing my rearview mirror back to the windshield again. Because I was engaged in preliminary indoor work, scraping and cleaning the little steel plate which is what actually gets affixed (allegedly) to the glass, Emma prudently withdrew to her pen in my office, on the chance I might gouge myself or drop something hard on my foot. At such times Daddy’s special words are liable to come out. At a very special volume (i.e., high.)

Having wrapped that up - fingers crossed it’ll actually hold this time, ha, ha - I decided it was time we went for a walk. Following a clever practice taught me by my good friend Karly in St. Louis, I keep water bottles in the freezer so I’ll be assured of cold water on walks. Since it’s not as warm as it might be, although fairly warm out today, I decided to go ahead and get one out to start thawing while I changed clothes and whatnot.

It was just a matter of taking the bottle out of the freezer and slipping it into the pocket of my kidney-belt water carrier. Made little noise to speak of that I could hear. Yet here comes Emma trotting out of the far side of the house, perky at the anticipation of going for a walk.

She knew. Not only did she hear the little tiny noises I made, she correctly identified those nondescript sounds as Daddy Preparing to Walk.

Amazing.

It’s a deathmatch!

OK, not really. Grackles can fly. Emma Dog can’t. Those big birds better be glad.

I cleverly spilled about half a cup of Emma Emma Chow on the back porch when I brought her in. I left the interior door open because it’s warm. A minute ago I saw my big orange TJ Cat (the Pack Alpha) sitting by the back screen peering intently out. And then I noticed half a dozen or so big old grackles congregated on the red-brick back porch, obviously scarfing the spilled dog food.

TJ desperately wants to go outside. Much as I hate to thwart his heart’s desire, he doesn’t get to. One of these days when I got to PetsMart for more Emma chow I’ll have to remember to get him a kitty-sized X-harness so we can try walking. But beyond that, no.

As I frequently tell him, “Everything that lives outside would kick your ass.” Which on one level he heeds, because (despite what his Uncle Joe confessed yesterday was the way he liked to think about his boon pal Teej) TJ is not valorous. He’s incredibly smart, perceptive, loving, and perpetually solicitous of his annoying sister, Squeak, whom he raised from a mere four-week old black scrap. But valorous he ain’t.

And in truth the grackles are some big sumbitches. I wouldn’t fancy his chances if they decided not to fly away from his charge.

But as I say, TJ is not permitted to charge creatures outside, no matter how tempting they are. Or impudent.

But Emma, in charge of security for the premises as well as the pack and my person, is a different story. Although lying on her fleece on the couch she noticed impertinent birds invading her domain. So with a guttural buff she materialized at the back door, ready to go.

So I let her go. Unfortunately at her apparition the grackles went. But it gave her the chance to race around the yard and bark and in general show the world she’s a Black Sharpie who means business. So that’s all good.

Even if the grackles just sit in the trees and mock. That’s how they are.

Halloween night some of the folks from my local extended family, the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society, kindly had some of us over for pizza and scary movies while our host and hostess handed out candy to kiddos. Of whom there weren’t all that many, probably owing to the fact it was windy as hell. Provided Hell’s windy, I suppose; you’d probably have some, uh, demon convection going on.

Anyway, the reason I was so pleased (other than the fact I live alone except for the critters and tend to get a little company-starved) is that whereas some years I eagerly anticipate the joys of handing out candy to the little goblins, other years I’d rather spend the evening shooting myself in the thigh with a staple gun.

This was a staple-gun year.