The journal

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 […]

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.

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

July 7, 2014 · 0 words

Caption Contest! Go!

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

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 […]

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

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 [&

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.” […]

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

June 26, 2014 · 227 words

New Star on the Horizon

My novelette “Video Star” is now available at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, Amazon, and Baen. Smashwords has probably already distributed it to iBooks and various other sites. It’s a mere $0.99! Which is practically nothing these days! You can get this story for practically nothing! “Video Star” is set in the same

June 25, 2014 · 981 words

Arrow

You thought from the title that this was going to be about the TV show, didn’t you? Nope, I’m here to introduce you to an invertebrate. This is an arrow crab (Stenorhynchus seticornis). You can see the pale stripe across the carapace that gives it its name. It’s maybe six inches across if you […]