Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,174 entries, all of them here in full.
July 17, 2014 · 467 words
Virtual Tee
We’re down to the last 24 hours of Toolbox, and Nancy’s been busy on her collection of Great Moments of Critique. Which I am now going to steal. Some of these, maybe, depend heavily on context. “You need to get more involved with the characters who are dead.” “I didn’t know we were in Hell–I […]
Read entry →July 15, 2014 · 126 words
Fantasy Casting
Since I’m still up the mountain at Toolbox, I keep trying ways to make you do my blogging work for me. So here’s the latest! If you were making a movie out of my Dagmar books, who would you cast? Bear in mind that I didn’t describe many of the central characters. Dagmar is in […]
Read entry →July 14, 2014 · 47 words
Prismatics
Double rainbow over Taos Ski Valley, as seen at dusk last night. At moments it became a triple rainbow, but the third was so faint that it never registered on my camera. An ephemeral loveliness that caused the whole world to stop, take a breath, and admire.
Read entry →July 14, 2014 · 355 words
That’s Entertainment!
I’ll be on the mountain for another six nights or so, doing my Taos Toolbox thing, so you might as well look somewhere else for entertainment. I’d like to suggest reading the new novel by my buddy Jimmy Corey, Cib0la Burn. The latest in Jimmy’s Expanse series, it’s a corking good extraplanetary adventure, and I think i
Read entry →July 7, 2014 · 66 words
Drone + Spectacle
I’m up the mountain for Taos Toolbox, so I probably won’t be posting any long, thoughtful essays for the next few weeks. So while I’m sitting here amid a pile of manuscripts, please enjoy this slightly belated Independence Day fireworks celebration, in which a quadcopter drone equipped with a GoPro camera flies through
Read entry →July 4, 2014 · 58 words
Jaguars Worshipped Here
This is the Jaguar Temple at Lamanai. There’s a big jaguar face sculpture in the center of the photo, and another on the right side of the temple, out of frame. In front, also out of frame, is a big circular stone Mayan calendar. Which, oddly enough, failed to correctly predict the end of the […]
Read entry →July 3, 2014 · 427 words
Wretchedness, Worldwide
I thought I’d take note of some recent news items. First, the Rector of the Islamic University of Rotterdam, Ahmet Akgündüz, has praised Turkey’s ruling AK Party for only stealing 20% of the nation’s income, as opposed to the 80% taken by previous parties. He said that, unlike the AK Party, previous governments did not
Read entry →July 2, 2014 · 71 words
Flamingo Tongue
This is something called a “flamingo tongue.” Click the picture for a life-sized image. It’s a kind of sea slug, maybe three inches long, and crawls about on corals eating, I suspect, everything. I think it looks more like an uncircumcised penis, possibly with a horrific disease, but then I don’t know what an actual [&
Read entry →July 1, 2014 · 1,242 words
Lamanai
After my week of diving was over, I set out on a field trip to the Mayan city of Lamanai. It’s one of the few Mayan cities where we know its actual name, as the Mayans were still in residence when the Spanish arrived, and the Spanish missionaries recorded the name, which means “submerged crocodile.” […]
Read entry →June 27, 2014 · 381 words
Fly, Little Nook! Fly!
Barnes & Noble has decided to split off its Nook division, which includes its profitable B&N College bookstores in universities around the country. Apparently the Nook is losing market share to Kindle and iPad. (My own ebook sales through the Nook store are roughly 10% of my total, FWIW.) The division is also losing mo
Read entry →