Sense of Adventure

Happy Dia de los Muertos, everybody! Hope you enjoyed Halloween. I did. Went and watched movies with friends.

I’m sitting here wasting time online to start the day - need to cut back on that - and have the German Bomber Channel, in this case The History Channel, on as sort of electronic wallpaper. And on comes a commercial for “the new novel by George RR Martin - the American Tolkien - A Feast for Crows, now in paperback!”

How cool is that?

Of course it also speaks to the malaise afflicting Big House publishing: that authors whom everybody knows and whose books are most eagerly awaited get massive promotion spending, whereas unknowns get … dregs. Meaning these expert marketing departments are really good (actually, their track record calls even this into question) in selling something everybody already wants. As to developing new properties - new producers - well …

But that’s a rant for another time. It’s more fun right now to look at all the cool things going on for science fiction writers in New Mexico - SF Capital of the Known Universe! We got Steve Gould’s Jumper coming out in February, starring Samuel by God Jackson (and Hayden Christensen, so this could be a wash, granted.) At Pat Rogers’s and Scott Denning’s Halloween party Saturday night - the social event of the Millennium to date! - Steve “S. M.” Stirling told me he’d just got a big advance for his new Dies the Fire book.

Closer to home the new Wild Cards volume, Inside Straight appears January 22, 2008. I’m not in this one but I am in the next. And my longtime pal Melinda Snodgrass’s (overly) long-delayed The Edge of Reason should arrive May 13, 2008.

And the above are just things from my friends. Apologies to the NM SF authors I may have slighted through ignorance.

So some big things are moving out here in the high desert. Given all that and Scott Phillips’s recent triumph - alluded to in the previous post - I need to get whippin’ to do my part to add to the tectonics here quite soon …

Important Safety Tip: as has become customary here on Sense of Adventure, if you hover over(most) of the above links you should see a product mini-description from Amazon. If you feel moved to buy any of the books or movies so listed, and do so clicking through these links, you’ll be supporting me, this site, and of course, Emma Dog. (Had to get her in here somehow.)