Now we have somewhere for our hundred-year starship initiative to go. One thing we've learned from seventeen years of planet hunting is that if there's one extrasolar planet in a given system, there's likely to be more....

Last night I went to a lovely New Year's Eve party co-hosted by zellandyne. The other hosts had a pond full of koi out back. The sight of the largish fish darting around the shadowy pool got me thinking (always a dangerous situation ( Read more... )

Last night I dreamed that Debby and I lived in beautiful apartment with two huge balconies and, unfortunately, electrical problems. While the building maintenance guys were in the apartment investigating the latter, I went for a walk around the multi-building complex. It was a sunny day, and several people were about, including a young woman ( Read more... )

For those who buy ebooks, tonight is the last night of Hadley Rille Books' sixth anniversary ebook sale, which includes 99-cent Kindle and Nook versions of The Aether Age: Helios, featuring my story "Phobos."

At World Fantasy Con, I co-wrote a very short, rather silly bit of fiction with three other writers on the back of a bar napkin, which was ( Read more... )

For those in the Bay Area, I'll be doing a couple of sitar lecture/demonstrations at branches of the San Jose library this Saturday (9/24) at the King library and next Saturday (10/1) at the Almaden branch ( Read more... )

I have mixed feelings about the demise of Borders, having spent so long mourning the independent bookstores that got squeezed out of the business by Borders and Barnes & Noble. And it was obvious for some time that Borders had its head in the sand with regard to the whole Internet thing, while B&N's been trying its best to position itself in a ( Read more... )

In a recent article on the Inkpunks website, Adam Israel encourages new writers to ponder their writing goals. I've sold a few stories now, so it's a good time for me to list the long-term goals for my own writing. Here they are, in some semblance of order ( Read more... )

This weekend, I'll be a program participant at BayCon, including doing a reading Sunday afternoon in the 4:00-5:30 slot. There's only one other author with me, so you should get a fair amount of my stuff if you go.

My full BayCon schedule is this:

Sunday, May 29 1:00 PM to 2:30 PM Launching a Creative CareerGiven the changes in markets and ( Read more... )

I have read, when awake, that in dreams one cannot read because the part of the brain that decodes written language is inactive. I know from experience that's balderdash. In my more lucid dreams (once also thought impossible by many psychologists, by the way), I've deliberately read out loud, so as to try to grasp the meaning of these dream texts ( Read more... )

Debby and I have spent the last couple of years singing with the San Jose Symphonic Choir. This Sunday at 3 PM, we'll be performing J. S. Bach's Matthäus-Passion in Saratoga. It's a three-hour-long work for soloists, two (large) Baroque choirs, and two (small) Baroque orchestras. It's operatic in scope. It's in German. It's very, very ( Read more... )