Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 181 entries, all of them here in full.
August 5, 2013 · 91 words
The Ursoid Cometh
I’m pleased to report a visit from the mascot of Taos Toolbox, who appeared on the cliff above the lodge and gave us the once-over. I’m pleased because every year we’ve had an ursoid visitor, the classes have been harmonious and were followed by an unusual number of sales. One of which happened just yesterday. [&hellip
Read entry →August 3, 2013 · 120 words
Angel Sale!
I’m pleased to announce that for the next week or so, the ebook of my novel Angel Station is on sale for a mere $0.99. (Or, if you live outside North America, for whatever $0.99 is worth in your currency, probably 00,99.) You may find Angel Station at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, and other places like Bake
Read entry →July 31, 2013 · 58 words
Field Exercises
Let it not be said that we at Taos Toolbox leave any educational stone unturned! Today’s literary exercise took us into the field, to green, fragrant Yerba Canyon, in order to visit the Taos Toolbox Sacrifice Stone and re-enact The Hunger Games. Here’s Toolbox student Jessica May Lin‘s take on the exercise, featuring f
Read entry →July 29, 2013 · 64 words
Crossing the Threshold
Today was the first day of Taos Toolbox, the master class for science fiction run by Nancy Kress and my ownself. We’re up the Ski Valley with fourteen talented, hard-working students, and we spend a lot of time talking about writing. To get an idea of what we talk about, check out this masterful exposition […]
Read entry →July 26, 2013 · 104 words
Rejoicing Over the Water
Awright, my friends, Implied Spaces is finally available in electronic form outside North America! Because Nook and Smashwords aren’t very good about separating North American rights from others, the book is available only on Kobo and Amazon. (Here’s Amazon.co.uk. It’s also available on all the other Amazons outside No
Read entry →July 26, 2013 · 179 words
Minutes I’ll Never See Again
I finally went to see one of the summer blockbusters (World War Z), only to find that it was preceded by forty minutes of previews and ads. Forty minutes from the time when the movie was supposed to start. Forty minutes I’ll never see again. Some of the ads were shown more than once! What […]
Read entry →July 24, 2013 · 343 words
Pretend Reading
Bookriot has published a list, complete with a handy Venn diagram, of books people lie about having read, along with books they wish they’ve read. (Both they, and I, were a little surprised that Pride & Prejudice topped both lists. It’s not as if comprehending the adventures of Miss Elizabeth Bennett require knowledge
Read entry →July 22, 2013 · 608 words
Tea Time
British author Guy Walters recently had what (for me) would be an incredibly successful signing, in which he spoke to 800 people and sold no less than sixty hardback books! And then he added up his expenses (driving 250 miles and spending two nights away from home), considered his compensation (a few gift bottles of [&
Read entry →July 22, 2013 · 624 words
Commodities
So Goldman Sachs, Wall Street’s House of All That’s Evil, has figured out a way to magically lift money from all our pockets. It turns out that while Congress was busy passing all 875 bewildering pages of the Dodd-Frank Act to better regulate our financial titans, they also loosened some regulations, and big banks are
Read entry →July 16, 2013 · 78 words
Rejoice If You Live Across the Water!
Right now, my novel Implied Spaces hasn’t been available, in English, in most English-speaking countries. That’s because Night Shade bought the rights only for North America, and the rest of you were left out in the cold. Until . . . real soon now. Very shortly, I will be making an Implied Spaces ebook available outsid
Read entry →July 15, 2013 · 662 words
Ado
All these big summer blockbusters on offer, and the only pictures I’ve seen in the last few months were small-to-middlin’. Last year I wondered what Joss Whedon’s post-Avengers project would be, now that he’s the most important man in Tinseltown. Little did I know that he’d already shot the movie while he was doing pos
Read entry →July 12, 2013 · 625 words
Let’s All Be Spies!
Sadly, it appears that Barack Obama is intent on spending the considerable political capital he won in the 2012 election on maintaing the total information state. Oh well. Personally I’d hoped for something better. With so much attention being paid to Snowden’s revelations of NSA spying on, well, everybody— revel
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