Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 207 entries, all of them here in full.
December 12, 2011 · 308 words
Got 2012?
Once again, by way of sharing our adventures with our friends, we’ve published a calendar. This one, interestingly enough, is for 2012. Why, that’s next year! You’ll probably need a calendar for that. You might as well have this one. Once again, I make no money from this. I just make calendars out of the […]
Read entry →December 8, 2011 · 1,257 words
Reviews in the Nick of Time: Hugo
Martin Scorsese directing a fantasy? A fantasy with a juvenile protagonist? A fantasy with a juvenile protagonist based on a Caldecott Award-winning children’s book in which absolutely no one is stabbed in the jugular with a kitchen knife to spray gallons of blood over the scenery? Say it ain’t so, Marty! Yeah, it’s so
Read entry →December 7, 2011 · 231 words
Galactic Onanation Device
Happy Holidays, everybody! Jesus is returning! As a Borg! On a Cube! Which is disguised as a comet! And you can prove this through scripture! Via io9, the exciting new UFO theory so insanely implausible and dimwitted that of course tens of thousands of people believe in it without question. Conspiracy theorists believe
Read entry →December 6, 2011 · 199 words
Mayan Stylin’
If you’ve been fretting about the end of the world (which, for those of you still waiting for Y2K, has been rescheduled for 2012), you can now rest easy. If, that is, you own an Invisible Mystic Mayan Power Cloak. The Mayan Power Cloak not only guarantees that you will survive the arrival of Bolon […]
Read entry →December 6, 2011 · 75 words
Aboundeth Irony
Word (via Dangerous Minds) that the soundtrack of those “you wouldn’t steal a car” anti-download ads is, in fact, pirated. Somebody owes Dutch composer Melchior Rietveldt a great big bucketful of Euros. Adding injury to insult to injury, the national royalty collection agency Buma/Stemra demanded a hefty bribe before i
Read entry →December 5, 2011 · 141 words
Comin’ Atcha
So here I am, fresh (and reeking) from my three-day black belt test. I am now a fifth-degree black belt in Kenpo Karate. One of six in our organization. Score!!! I am in almost too much pain to type this— let’s just say my physical resources were thoroughly tested, and leave it at that— but […]
Read entry →December 2, 2011 · 403 words
Return Engagement
We’re experiencing the first big winter storm of the season, with what are quite literally hurricane-force winds. My neighbor appears to have lost part of his roof. The 0nly damage we’ve sustained so far is that the cover to the hot tub tore off, flinging aside the heavy water-filled weights that we’d placed on it [&he
Read entry →December 1, 2011 · 59 words
Taos Toolbox
For all you folks interested in writing SF and fantasy: the application period for Taos Toolbox begins December 1 Toolbox is a two-week master class taught by myself, Nancy Kress, and special lecturer Daniel Abraham. It takes place June 10-23, 2012, in the lovely mountain environs of Taos Ski Valley. For more informati
Read entry →December 1, 2011 · 59 words
Technician Fail
So today we had the sixth and seventh Comcast technicians come to restore my broadband Internet. The sixth dug a trench in my side yard. The seventh climbed a pole to install some kind of booster. They really are trying, folks. In neither case did the fix last more than a few minutes. My […]
Read entry →November 30, 2011 · 341 words
Nebula Awards
You know, every writer— and I imagine most everyone else— has an inner Veruca Salt. Not the band, though you could have one of those in your brain too probably, but the girl in the red dress from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and its various film adaptations, the one who begins every sentence with [&hel
Read entry →November 27, 2011 · 120 words
Clotted Cream
(Internet service still spotty. Will try to keep this short.) I was at a friend’s birthday party this afternoon, and noticed there was clotted cream. (The real stuff, too, came from England in a bottle. Not the American kind which is just whipped cream with some kind of emulsifier in it.) “Look!” I told Kathy. [&hellip
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