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.
May 7, 2009 · 858 words
Street Scenes
This is a street scene, sort of. It’s a view from the breakfast room of the Hotel Spectra, looking across the old Roman hippodrome to the Mosque of Sultanahmet, better known over here as the Blue Mosque. Beyond is the Sea of Marmara. I highly recommend the Spectra. It’s a small hotel with nice rooms, […]
Read entry →May 7, 2009 · 1,092 words
Bodrum
On the tenth of April we came down from the Anatolian highlands to Bodrum, where we met the Aegean for the first time— we had seen blue water here and there, but we were never on the shore, and always en route to one place or another. Bodrum was the place where we ended up […]
Read entry →May 3, 2009 · 366 words
Little Caps
Because I was in the mood to do something tasty and elaborate, last night I cooked a meal for our friends, Peggy and Kevin. For primi I made capelletti, “little caps,” in this case pasta stuffed with chicken, parmesan, parsley, a little nutmeg, and some cream to hold it together. You start with a 2×2-inch [&hellip
Read entry →April 30, 2009 · 313 words
Miletos Tristesse
The saddest sights we saw in Turkey were the ruins of Miletos. We saw a lot of lost and abandoned cities. Ephesus, Priene, and Kaunos were all once-thriving port cities stranded inland when their harbors silted up. That’s also what happened to Miletos, which is now 10km from the sea. But somehow those other cities [&he
Read entry →April 29, 2009 · 755 words
Elegy for Angels and Dogs
I just signed contracts with a French publisher for my novelet “Elegy for Angels and Dogs.” This will be printed in an edition of Roger Zelazny’s stories. Which is not as strange as it might seem, because the story is a direct sequel to Roger’s “The Graveyard Heart.” The two were originally paired in a […]
Read entry →April 29, 2009 · 125 words
Weird Factoid of the Day
I just found out that while working for Eyre and Spottiswoode— surely my favourite British publisher, just for the name alone— Graham Greene edited the first novel of a man better known as a fantasy illustrator:“Greene scrupulously hammers Mervyn Peake for the facetiousness, prolixity, and overwriting in th
Read entry →April 28, 2009 · 293 words
The News
Notes from the world:The Army has a problem, in that its soldiers keep getting old and unable to function properly— just like the rest of us. Unlike the rest of us, the Army has a plan. They’re going to use Science to keep their soldiers young for, maybe, ever. A soldier rendered forever young – […]
Read entry →April 27, 2009 · 70 words
Moogaloop
A musical jam from New Orleans to Congo to Moscow. A melodic tribute to the power of the internet.I’m not sure how they cope with the time delay as signals are bounced to HEO and back, but they seem to do it well.There are jam sites, or so I’m told. My Inner Rock Star is […]
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