Category: Uncategorized

Busy week.  Today I’m participating in a full day of meetings to discuss experiments at the world’s largest laser facility. 

What does one do with the world’s most powerful laser complex?  Well, I don’t want to give away too much right now.  Early days, and all that.  Let’s just say that when—not if—my plan comes to fruition, we won’t be calling it the “moon” any longer…

[Hi there.  If you’re stopping by to read my infamous blog post regarding the publishing history of my trilogy, it’s here.]

Blog posts will be a bit shorter than usual this week because I’m traveling a lot for the next few days.

This reminder just in from Ur-Bar co-editors (and Wonder Twins) Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray:  there are still a few days left to enter the Tales from the Ur-Bar contest!  They’re taking entries until the end of March, which means you can still toss your name in the hat to win a big pile o’books– something from each contributor to the anthology.  Plus chocolate.

My own contribution to the giveaway is a copy of Bitter Seeds.  Thank you to Josh and Patricia for obtaining a copy for the contest.

Contest details can be found at the link.  No purchase necessary, etc.

About a year before I went to Australia, I read Expiration Date by Tim Powers.  The plot of this book revolves around the concept of sniffing or ingesting ghosts—absorbing their life essence to prolong one’s mortal existence.   Among a certain set of connoisseurs, the demand for new ghosts has given rise to an entire market.  Which, in turn, means that people have developed methods for attracting and trapping ghosts.   

The depiction of revenant spirits in this book is haunting and lyrical; I’ll never be able to see a homeless person without thinking of this book.  And, as in all Powers novels, the magic system is depicted in a way that makes everything sound entirely plausible.   Everything sounds obvious, like common sense, when Powers explains it.  Because of course magic works that way.  And of course you’d trap a ghost like that…

I’m lucky I read it before arriving in Adelaide.  (Which is a lovely city and I’m sure many of the people there are NOT ghosts.)

Over on Goodreads, a reviewer named Paul wrote what could be the single most ingenious review of Winnie-the-Pooh ever penned. 

You really don’t see many Nabokov mashups.  I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or bad thing.  But once this got me thinking about mashups it compelled me to something not nearly as clever as Paul’s review [or Steve Halter’s Kinks and Moody Blues mashups, or Scott Denning’s Simon & Garfunkel and Chuck Barry mashups, in the comments below] but certainly inevitable:

[Hi there. If you’ve stopped by to read my infamous blog post regarding the bizarro publishing history of my trilogy, it’s here. If you’ve come for the book giveaway, the details are here. If you’re looking for free stories, they’re here.]

Yesterday, I learned of the passing of a teacher and educator who was extremely influential to me. Jeanie Davis Pullen was a very special person; I can’t imagine anybody who knew her not sharing my opinion. She touched and brightened the lives of many, many people.

I’m very saddened by the news of her passing. I’d been thinking about her recently, and had been meaning to contact her, which I suppose is what motivated me to google her name and thus find her obituary. How is it possible she’s been gone from the world for more than two years? It isn’t. It just isn’t.

Jeanie had, I have no doubt, a string of eulogists who sang her praises and remembered her with an eloquence I can’t hope to approach. She brought that kind of goodness out of people. A proper remembrance would include a long litany of the lives she touched. Anything I say will fall short of properly honoring her. But she’s on my mind today, so I’d like to tell you about Jeanie Pullen.