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Sunday, I stopped by the Wake County Library booksale, mainly out of reflex. Every year I go, usually in the company of Melinda and/or friends, and every year I buy books. Usually, I circle it on the calendar; there are excited emails between me and various book-loving friends, and then once the sale arrives, the frenzy begins.
This year...not so ( Read more... )

So last year, I started tallying my reading a little more formally, mainly so I could keep track when it came time to nominate stuff for awards and whatnot. It's not exactly well-organized record keeping, and it's not scientific, and as a data mining setup it's roughly akin to one of those roadside pan-for-gems joints you find in western NC. But it ( Read more... )

So when I got to World Horror Convention, I told myself I wasn't going to buy books. Not that I didn't want to buy books, mind you, but Melinda and I have a lot of books. We've got books in the bedroom. We've got books on top of the DVD rack. We've got books on a windowsill in the dining room. We have a bookshelf full in my office closet. We have, ( Read more... )

Friday I'm going to be speaking at the Wake County Public Library staff development day as part of a panel with four other writers. This makes me happy, not because I am particularly ecstatic over doing panels, but rather because I love libraries. In high school, I spent a couple of years as the volunteer gofer at our synagogue library; when other ( Read more... )

Ages ago, I did an interview with Michal Thornton Wyman about game writing, for a book he was writing on game development. It was, as noted, a while ago - which, to be fair, means "more than a week ago" to my caffeine-addled brain - which meant that I'd looked at the questions, I'd fired the answers off, and I'd largely forgotten about the whole ( Read more... )

I discovered tonight, quite by accident, that my copy of the 1954 hardback edition of Tar Heel Ghosts, by James Harden, is in fact signed by the author.

I find this oddly cool, not least because I picked up the book after a wild goose chase into the hinterlands of suburban Wilmington with Badger, Merrie and Melinda after my signing at Two Sisters ( Read more... )

They kept us on the runway for an hour or so, waiting for the squall line to the northwest to break up or pass by so we could make our way to Toronto. The heading is called Gail, or perhaps that's the flightline - the gentleman from the fight crew was cheerful and chatty and a bit random in the tidbits he shared with us. Every so often we'd get an ( Read more... )

I read. I read a lot. Part of this is due to the extensive amounts of time I spent in airports, on planes, in hotels, or otherwise away from the charms of my wife, my XBox, and my desperately needy yet fiercely independent cat. Part of it is that I'm currently reviewing books for two fine publications. And part of it is just that I read fast.

That ( Read more... )