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.
November 25, 2015 · 50 words
Through the Holiday
Just to let you all know, I’m continuing the 99-cent sale on Days of Atonement through the Thanksgiving holiday. Just ’cause I’m a nice guy. You may find it via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, Google, and iBooks. Have a great harvest festival!
Read entry →November 24, 2015 · 119 words
Water View
Once again, we have created a calendar, this one for 2016. It features views of some lovely places one or another of us has been in the last year, including Hawaii, Lake Superior, and the Black Hills. I do this to share my life with my friends, so I don’t make any money on […]
Read entry →November 23, 2015 · 393 words
That Darn Postillion
Years ago, I heard of a phrase book used by travelers to the Russian Empire which included the useful phrase, “Alas! Our postillion has been struck by lightning!” What I didn’t realize until today was that the unfortunate lightning-struck postillion had become a kind of folk meme transmitted down nearly a century, and
Read entry →November 17, 2015 · 94 words
Taos Toolbox, Rousing from its Hibernation
Yes, there will be a Taos Toolbox next year! I’ve had to delay the announcement due to our losing our lodging, and to the fact that there will be massive construction in the Ski Valley next year. The master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy will be held July 10-23, 2016, at Angel […]
Read entry →November 14, 2015 · 466 words
Holm/Rousey
I’m just back from seeing Penn and Teller at the Route 66 Casino, west of Albuquerque and owned, I believe, by the Laguna tribe. (Indian casinos seem to own most of the new concert venues.) The concert was great fun, though I was a bit disappointed that I’d recently seen almost all the tricks on […]
Read entry →November 13, 2015 · 163 words
Atonement Bargain
My novel Days of Atonement, which I have described as “the world’s only gothic Western science fiction police procedural,” is on sale for a mere 99 cents. You may find it via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, Google, and iBooks. It’s one of the books which, as the years go by, I find pleases me […]
Read entry →November 12, 2015 · 556 words
Reviews in the Nick of Time: Ken and the Muppets
I don’t watch a lot of sitcoms. It’s not that I don’t like to laugh, I just don’t have a lot of time for TV, and I choose to spend most of my limited TV time with dramas, possibly because dramas are pretty much what I write for a living, and that’s what interests me. […]
Read entry →November 11, 2015 · 432 words
Grand Tour
This grim-faced, big-eared fellow is I believe the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Amenemhat III (my notes are a little unclear). Just before leaving New York, we caught a special exhibit at the Met featuring goodies from the Middle Kingdom, which was a period of economic growth, massive building, and foreign trade, sandwiched
Read entry →November 2, 2015 · 682 words
Big City
I’m off on a trip to an Undisclosed Location. And as I have in the past, I’ve inserted a clue as to my present location in the above photograph. The clever among you may be able to work out where I am. As you can see from this second photograph, business is booming here in […]
Read entry →November 1, 2015 · 487 words
Contents
Tonight was Patricia Rogers’ legendary biannual Halloween Party, complete with Victorian coffins, mummies, body parts, bubbling flasks, sinister laboratory instruments, brains in bell jars, a tilting, electronically charged autopsy table, and a whole lot of science fiction and fantasy writers and fans dressed up as mon
Read entry →