I was going to write up something about the SFWA's removal of Amazon links from their Web site due to the current IPG/Amazon throwdown, but then I realized that a lot of people have had a lot more intelligent things to say about the whole situation, including the SFWA itself. UK publishers are also getting into the mix, and my favorite article, by ( Read more... )

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Earlier today I commented on sartorias's recent post about keeping old books. I'm not particularly sentimental about my books (though the ones that are signed--whether by my children's librarian growing up from books I won during summer reading or by the authors--are certainly special). When a book gets old, I replace it. Nearly five years of working at ( Read more... )

Just a few new releases to note:

* The Fox, which I mentioned yesterday, by Sherwood Smith (sartorias), came out on August 7th. I only just recently got a hold of it (last week), hence my delay in mentioning it. It is thus far brilliant; I expect to have it finished over the weekend. If you haven't yet read Inda (the book to which The Fox is a sequel), and ( Read more... )

Owen Barfield is my favorite philosopher of all time (though my views on mythology, while influenced by him, are more solidly related to Tolkien's essay "On Fairy Stories").

Order of the Stick is one of my very favorite Web comics.

Put them together and you get this, which is much funnier when taken in context of both ( Read more... )

Thanks to Rich Burlew for expanding my knowledge of the science fiction and fantasy genre by using a reference I didn't get in the most recent Order of the Stick comic. For those of you also pondering the relationship between Jack Vance and Dungeons and Dragons jokes, I highly recommend this Wikipedia article, which explains the relevance in the " ( Read more... )

First, allow me to give praise to Shanna Swendson (shanna_s), Neil Gaiman, and other authors who can both blog and work at the same time. I've just gotten over a two weeks stint of working, relatively non-stop, on the second novel, Departure. (I even worked on it while waiting for Rich Burlew and the Giant in the Playground staff to navigate the Boston ( Read more... )

Sorry for the delay in getting all of this posted. I've been struggling against the flu, which I believe I caught somewhere among all the hand shaking. This is comforting, as it means that some of the illness that I thought I was giving myself for being nervous was actually a physical ailment. I'm going to take comfort in that!

( Full GenCon Report )

Ah, Origins. Game convention of adventure and excitement. This was my third year as an Origins attendee, and again, it was a productive experience.

For some background:

At Origins of 2004, I met James Lowder, who presented at a panel on shared world fiction. (The panel also featured Michael A. Stackpole of Star Wars novels fame.) Mr. Lowder was ( Read more... )