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.
August 9, 2011 · 722 words
My Horrible August
Lots of wonderful things are going to happen to me in August. The problem is that they’re all going to happen in August. This coming weekend, August 12-14, I will be at When Words Collide in Calgary, a brand-new literary SF convention, where I will be sharing Guest of Honor privileges with Jack Whyte, […]
Read entry →August 9, 2011 · 116 words
Downgraded
So now S&P has downgraded US government bonds from AAA to AA+. The result is that people are stampeding to buy them. Perhaps they remember that it was the ratings agencies who gave AAA ratings to sub-prime loans, and S&P who rated Ireland’s debt AAA until April Fool’s Day, 2009, and Spain as AAA […]
Read entry →August 6, 2011 · 77 words
Meanwhile, On the Western Horizon . . .
I spent eight hours today at the karate school, during which time I learned many things that do not necessarily translate to this medium. Most notably I brushed up on my Iron Palm work— and, in one case, my Iron Elbow. The end result is that I’m too tired to do much of anything but […]
Read entry →August 5, 2011 · 1,701 words
Days of Atonement, Newly Duplicated Along the t Axis
I’m pleased to report than Days of Atonement is now available as an ebook. For Kindle, for Nook, and on Smashwords— which has it available in a multiplicity of formats, and whence it will eventually migrate to other platforms such as the Sony Reader and iBooks. The price is a modest $4.99. Surely a […]
Read entry →August 4, 2011 · 613 words
Keeping it Real
A few days ago I saw Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen’s new movie. All the reviews told me how wonderful and magical it was, and the last movie the Woodmeister made in Paris, Everyone Says I Love You, actually was wonderful and magical, so I went to see it. I was reasonably charmed by Midnight […]
Read entry →July 31, 2011 · 595 words
Spam and its Discontents
Remember back in April when people were happy that the world volume of spam had decreased by a third or more? Some of the more notorious botnets, like Rostock and Mega-D, were being dismantled, presumably with the aid of the governments of the former-SSRs that had been hosting them all this time. My spam […]
Read entry →July 29, 2011 · 215 words
The News This Week is Mighty Fine, Thanks for Asking
This week’s news has to do with Turkey. Firstly, I’ve sold This Is Not a Game and Deep State to Pegasus Publishing in lovely, lovely Istanbul. (I can hardly wait for my signing tour.) Nextly, Paul Witcover wrote a long, wonderful review of Deep State for the current Locus. Unfortunately it’s not available on […]
Read entry →July 26, 2011 · 367 words
The Wit of the Toolbox
The French have a term, l’esprit d’escalier, “wit of the staircase,” for those incredibly pithy and clever remarks that you never actually deliver, because by the time you think of them, the party’s over and you’re heading down the stair on your way home. Taos Toolbox has a similar sort of wit. Not because it’s [&helli
Read entry →July 26, 2011 · 224 words
Taos Toolbox Retrospective
Ever since Taos Toolbox ended on Saturday I’ve been curled up in my cave like an exhausted bear, catching up on everything that’s happened in my world since I went up the mountain on the 10th. At least our political world is consistent: those losers in Washington are still arguing about the same stuff they […]
Read entry →