Robot Rage
(this is from an old collection of humor essays of mine called I Slept With Your Imaginary Friend and I thought I’d put it back up here because it makes me laugh) Robot Rage What the shit is up with Transformers and go-Bots? I mean, aside from the usual nonsense. All right, I have three big issues just this second and they apply to both bunches of robots that are, wouldn’t you know it, in some form of shape-shifting disguise. First of all, all these fucking robots fly all the time. Just in their basic robot forms. They all fly. All the time. No propulsion visible, nothing – nope, they just damn well fly. And yet! And fucking yet, a bunch of them transform into jets or helicopters or some shit. Why? Why the hell would you be all “Hey,…
A bit of Culture’s Skeleton
With Culture’s Skeleton (you can buy the book here) coming out, I thought I Would share about a thousand words of it, to, hopefully, help explain the city the novel takes place in: Mur. So here you go: ——————— We were, earlier, talking about Mur. Mur, the original city. Mur, the mighty and timeless. The city itself spun around space and time like a child’s toy kicked by the family dog on a bender. A word not often used to describe Mur: simple. Words often used to describe Mur: annoying, desperate, and “Where the fuck am I and where are my shoes?” That last isn’t, strictly, a word, but allow for a bit of license. If you’re going to understand Mur, you need to know that this is true. Pure truth, uncut by niceness and concern for the established structures…
Publishing news
A few months ago my first novel in quite some time, THIS STARRY DEEP, was published. In the back of the book it had a small teaser for the sequel THE ENDLESS SKY, to come in 2017. Well that date might slip by a few months into 2018 but to make up for it 2017 will see the first ever ebook version of my novella CRAZY LITTLE THING. CLT is one of my all-time fave things I’ve written. So I am super excited to be able to share it with you guys again. It’s a love story. I mean a love story the way I do them, which…look it’s a love story, all right? But that’s not all! Along with those two bits of news I can officially announce that around (roughly) a year after THE ENDLESS SKY another novel…
eBay cruising
There are days I do searches on eBay for book lots. I don’t know why, I never buy them, but I like looking at them. “Ooooh I can get 107 books for 25 bucks right now. All old SF/F paperbacks. Faaaaaancy.” Except it isn’t fancy it’s just sad. Look at the picture – those books generally aren’t the best books around and I might want to read maybe 50 of them and have 50 that are just clutter and then I’d need time to read 50 “new to me” books and well this is suddenly a horrible idea. I like to window shop for book lots. But then there are those book lots full of just one author. All the Anne McCaffrey stuff, or lots of Zelazny and Piers Anthony and so on. Those hit me oddly. Now I do…
The Casual Vacancy and respect
First of all a caveat: I have not read this book yet, though I will as soon as I have it. I have no information except the publisher blurb and don’t want anything more. This is more about how people are being truly ridiculous about the book already. J.K. Rowling doesn’t need your money. She doesn’t need your love, your praise, your hate – she needs nothing. From anyone. Ever again. For a few lifetimes. She wrote a series of books that I grew to enjoy but that millions upon millions of people cherish so dearly they swoon. And that is incredible. What she did is truly an amazing thing and you can not, at the very least, respect her for it. And in return she is now incredibly rich. I mean like seriously, mind-bogglingly, rich. So she wants to…
Old books
I have a thing about old, theoretically useless, books. I adore them. I can’t help it. If you give me a set of 1950’s science texts I will cherish them forever (I have a great one though so gimmie something else). There’s something about old information that gets me. Information that is out of date and since been proven wrong, specifically. Even social info that is sadly racist and sexist and Western biased is interesting to me. Not when it’s done now or modern but when it was an accepted thing to do there’s something to be learned from reading those old texts and seeing how a lot of people thought and passed information along and how they imagined the world to be actually shaped. It’ if nothing else, keeps me on my toes. Everything I know might well be…