Writer. Scientist. Thoroughly Disappointing Flesh Muppet.
I mentioned Luna moths in my previous post. But that wasn’t right! I thought perhaps it wasn’t quite right, but I couldn’t remember the correct name. Luckily for me, Google knew what I meant when I asked it about “moths that look like hummingbirds.”
What I’ve seen around New Mexico—in my yard, and in the flower gardens at the Santa Fe Opera— is one of these. They’re called hummingbird moths because they really, really look like hummingbirds at first glance.
There are some cool videos online.
So this is slightly odd. Not Tim Powers weird, but unusual nevertheless.
Everybody I know locally has been inundated with moths over the past week or so. It’s like The Swarm, but with moths instead of bees. (Which is good. I’m not so keen on the stinging.)
Huh. I thought this was coming out in early May.
But, according to several online retailers, the mmpb edition of Bitter Seeds is now available!
This is the US paperback edition, from Tor. It includes the first chapter of The Coldest War, as well as the short story, “What Doctor Gottlieb Saw.” This edition is wrapped in fantastic artwork by Chris McGrath, a piece of artwork I like to call, “Do Not Make Eye Contact With the Sociopathic Clairvoyant Woman.” (I doubt that’s what Chris calls it.)
This is distinct from the Orbit UK edition, which will come out on July 12. (The full schedule, as best as I know it at the moment, is available here.) That edition will also contain extra material, including an interview.
I’m giving away 3 copies. For free! More details below the cut.
This probably won’t make much sense to people who haven’t read the Tim Powers novels The Stress of Her Regard and its fantastic brand-new sequel, Hide Me Among the Graves. Especially the latter.
But.
Remember that time when I almost got caught in a ghost trap straight out of a Powers novel, and I started to wonder if maybe I wasn’t a real person but instead a character in a book?
And remember that time when somebody found a pair of handcuffs buried along the foundation of my house?
Yeah, well, it’s happening again.
I finished the first draft of SOMETHING MORE THAN NIGHT this evening. Hooray!
It’s very exciting, typing up the final pages of a manuscript. Granted, this is only the fourth time I’ve done it. But it’s still a happy thrill. I hope it never loses its appeal.
There’s still so much work left to do on this thing…like make it coherent, and readable, and perhaps even find a way to make it not suck. But that’s rewriting. Rewriting is almost always less taxing than writing. At least now I have something to hammer on, rather than a blank page. But that’s a task to tackle another day.