The jam is simply fantastic.

Mmmm, plum cookies!

30 day form from Weird Tales.

I officially declare this an open questions thread. Ask me anything. I make no promises about the answers, of course. (Response times may be delayed due to travel and other events.)

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

Well, I’m off again at the crack of doom. Heading back to Seattle for tomorrow’s signing with Brenda Cooper at University Books. (Dinner to precede, meet at 5 pm on the corner by the book store, or call me.) I’ll work from the home of the lovely and talented on Friday, then make my way toward the Clarion West party that night before returning home to Nuevo Rancho Lake on Saturday.

Got editorial feedback on “In the Forests of the Night”. Somewhat to my amazement, the feedback was positive and quite minimal. I’ll be a lot tougher on myself in the rewrite, frankly. All good. Meanwhile, Green continues apace. This is a pretty good book, truth be told.

I’m tired as heck, and the antibiotics make my mouth taste like pennies, but otherwise I feel rather myself tonight. As usual, expect continued light blogging through Sunday.

Originally published at jlake.com. You can comment here or there.

For those of you still looking ahead to the 1970 New York Comic Art Convention rather than the 2008 San Diego Comic-Con International, here's a sample spread from that earlier con's 8-page progress report to help you with your travel plans.

Better make that ... time-travel plans.

(Click on the scan once, and then again, to see the image at its largest size.)

Check out the upcoming panels, as well as some of the pros who attended the 1969 incarnation of the con. That's Gil Kane and Phil Seuling in the photo at the upper right, and Frank Frazetta and Neal Adams below.

And now I really must finish packing for tomorrow morning's flight! (To San Diego, that is.)

Sarah Wise from The Creaking Shelves Bookshop in Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland, was so determined to see Hal Spacejock available in the UK that she ordered in a whole batch of Hal books to sell through the shop.

Due to freight costs they're a little more expensive than locally printed titles, but she's cut the price as low as she can without actually losing money on each book.

You'll find her blog post about the arrivals here, including a link to the shop's website and ordering info.

If you live in the UK and have been hanging out for Hal, this is your best chance to get hold of the books. I know it's a cliche, but stocks really are limited and some of the copies have already been pre-sold.

 and I scaffolded the wormholes with exotic matter, otherwise, they might fall apart. The Weylforges did their job....

Now that I have the wormhole nexuses established, stations built, planets colonized, I can start the novel revision.

If anyone catches me here more than once a day, please feel free to send me back to the revision board. I plan to work on the novel revision for at least three hours a day.

This is official.

Sophy

If anyone wants some bookcases, a coffee table, and some little hutches, let me know. I also have a bed and couch, but doubt anyone would want them.

The game:
Fat Princess for the PlayStation 3.

The game concept (taken directly from the official website):
Frantic and fun, Fat Princess pits two hordes of players against each other in comic medieval battle royale. Your goal is to rescue your beloved princess from the enemy dungeon. There’s a catch though: your adversary has been stuffing her with food to fatten her up and it’s going to take most of your army working together to carry her back across the battlefield.

The resulting drama:
EVERYWHERE. I recommend starting with the Feministe blog post, and don't forget to check out the one over on Shakespeare's Sister.

Here are some well-thought-out, sensitive responses to Melissa's post. Hahaha! Calling someone a cunt is always a good way to win your argument! Oh, how I love ad hominem attacks!

Oh, and this comment, from over here, is my favorite:

Fat women would be better served by getting up and exercising and eating less. They would have more energy, better self image and feel more confident. They might find a boyfriend, even perhaps , love.

Surely he/she speaks...THE TRUTH!!! Why, I had no idea it was that easy to find True Love and Eternal Companionship! Thank you, mysterious stranger, for the free enlightenment!

Of course, I might be being sarcastic. Or something.

Regarding this whole thing, I have one thing to say -- I would play Velcro Princess in a heartbeat, especially if you got to choose whether you would like to rescue a prince or a princess.

Today's brain bleach -- some dinosaur awesome from classics_cat.

While folks (at least a few folks) are waiting for me to say anything of substance about ReaderCon, I'll toss this tidbit out: Saturday morning, I was on a panel with ellen_datlow, Kit Reed, David Hartwell and Christopher Rowe titled "The Rebirth Of The Non-Theme Original Anthology"; not surprisingly, the actual theme of the panel didn't get touched on much — this is The Way of Panels.

At one point, Rowe stated (as I recall) that he would rather have one of his stories appear in a market like Strange Horizons than a newsstand mag like Fantasy & Science Fiction because more of the audience he wanted to reach would see it.

Hartwell reacted by saying that Rowe had just revealed himself not to be a commercial writer — that commercial writers always consider the pay first, above all else; and he added further that, essentially, anyone who believes that Strange Horizons reaches more readers than F&SF is kidding themselves. I believe that Strange Horizons editor-in-chief Susan Marie Groppi was in the audience (though I can't vouch for that 100%, I've yet to formally meet her, so I don't know what she looks like.) Rowe invited her (or somebody associated with SH) to comment on what Hartwell had said, but she did not respond.

The discussion moved on to other things.

I'll be heading off early tomorrow morning (far too early) for this year's San Diego Comic-Con International, which will run through Sunday. I've heard that there will be anywhere from 150,000 to 175,000 people in attendance, a far cry from my first few conventions, at which the membership never even hit four figures.

As far as I know, no pictures exist of me from my first convention, which was the 1970 installment of Phil Seuling's famed July 4th New York Comic Art Convention, back when I was only 15. But since I was tall even then, and always sat front-row center so as not to miss a single word at any panel, multiple shots of me at Phil's 1971 convention ended up being published.

Click here to see the one I already shared with you, which ended up getting published in the con's 1972 program book. But above right is a second image from that same weekend, possibly from the con's opening ceremonies, which was originally published in the February 1972 issue of Fantastic Fanzine Special #2, an early Gary Groth magazine. If you compare this image with that first one I shared, you'll see that I was probably in the same seat for both pictures. I doubt I got up from that chair the entire day. Once you nab the best seat in the house at a con, you don't give it up!

But that's not the only image from that period of time. Here's yet another picture of me with Phil Seuling, this one originally published in the September 1971 issue of Comic Fandom Monthly, edited by Joe Brancatelli. That's Phil in the far left, and I'm dead center. As you can see, I've still got the long hair and headband!

This photo was taken at the Nathan's Famous on Times Square sometime in 1971. The event was basically a small dealer's room tucked away in the back corner of the restaurant 's basement.

If I'm remembering correctly, this was a precursor to the Second Sundays that Phil used to run monthly at the Statler-Hilton Hotel. I wrote and published a con report on the first Second Sunday in my own fanzine, Call It Fate, and if I can ever dig out a copy, I should be able to pin down an exact date. But I seem to recall that Phil was testing the waters with this event, attempting to learn whether those Second Sundays would be economically feasible.

I remember picking up sketches and autographs at Nathan's from Marv Wolfman, Len Wein, Alan Weiss, Gerry Conway, and others. I still have them all. Maybe you'll get to see them someday. (Bizarrely, I would end up working under three of those four people years later at Marvel Comics.)

Both of the photos above show me 37 years ago at the age of 16. Somehow, I don't think that any photo taken at the coming convention over the next four days will carry as much psychic weight when looked back on 37 years from now, when I'm 90.

But you never know—I could be wrong. Make sure to check back with me then!

Yesterday turned out to be happily and excessively social; I did lunch and shared writer angst at Bad Albert’s with Kat Richardson; and then I came home to do some work, but Ellen swung by with wine and cheese.*

Tomorrow I will once again join forces with my neighboring purveyor of goodies, and together we shall visit the Woodland Park Zoo. While we’re there, I intend to take many pictures and create a whole new slew of icons for my livejournal, since I’m sort of bored with my existing assortment.

For now, I’ve a kitchen that needs cleaning, a cat who needs Furminating, and a partial project with which I need to reacquaint myself, stat. Time to log off and be productive. Stay tuned for pictures, safari stories, and the hypothetical possibility of pink flamingos.

---

* To be honest, I wasn’t really feeling the “work” anyway. I was happy to have the company.

[Crossposted to/from my website. If you'd like to comment, you can do so either here or there.]

Greetings all.  Just popping in to say that I've just started writerpedia, a comm for writers to exchange information and ask questions.  Kind of like Yahoo! Answers, but without all the immaturity (hopefully).  I'm especially looking for mods at this point, but regular members are more than welcom.

Michael De Larrabeiti died.

I can't remember whether it was Terri Windling or I who bought paperback rights to The Borribles for Ace - I think it was I, right before I moved to Pocket. I do know that it, and the subsequent 2 Borribles books, were a real influence on our Bordertown shared-world series.

MDL, thanks for sharing your world with us.

[ADDED: Obituary; other obits]

* * *

It's going to be like this, isn't it? First, saying farewell to all the grownups I idolized when I was trying to become one . . . then checking out various friends who "really weren't that old" . . . and then, well - my favorite Vietnamese joint is next to the big Jewish funeral home, and there's usually something happening there around noon. Only yesterday it was the Cadillac station wagon with plenty of room for the pine box, sitting on the sidewalk. "Caddie," I thought. "Hmm. Your last ride in a Caddie . . . " and realized it was, indeed, the last ride you will ever take; the last car you will ever ride in, after a lifetime of transit. Interesting. Well, as they say, there's a first time for everything; so why not a last?

(And of course it's Richard Thompson on the speakers right now. I'll never forget the first time I saw him live, outdoors at the Newport Folk Festival - and a rangy teenage boy down front screaming his request: "DO ONE ABOUT DEAAAATH!!!" Which, considering his repetoire, ain't that hard. Love you, Richard!

(Don't die anytime soon, OK?)

Jim met me at Starbucks on Sunday afternoon and we took a walk on the beach. Very nice. Along the way, we met up with a couple out walking their turtle - excuse me, tortoise - a spur heel fellow with amazing tower like cones on his shell.... The fellow was just ambling along, but then he spotted my toes.

My toes are currently bare in the sandals, and currently painted radioactive green.

That damned creature could book! I had little time between cooing over what a cute dinosaur he was and jumping nimbly away from his questing snout.

"He likes toes," the owner said. "Especially green ones."

Darn thing is a vegetarian. Perhaps he thought my toes were California lettuces?

My editor just sent me a link to a review of CROOKED LITTLE VEIN at Ain’t It Cool News, coinciding with the paperback release.  AICN would be pretty much the last place I’d expect to get reviewed.  I haven’t read it yet, but, still, very nice of them to take the time, I thought…

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

First, a hearty congratulations to F.J. Bergmann (fibitz), whose poem "Eating Light," published in Issue 17 of Mythic Delirium, won the 2008 Rhysling Award for short poem. Cheers and huzzahs! (Not that anyone's counting but me, but Jeannie's poem is the second from our pages to claim speculative poetry's top prize, the first being "Octavia is Lost in the Hall of Masks" by Theodora Goss from Issue 8, winner of the 2004 Rhysling Award for long poem.)

Second, Mythic Delirium will be temporarily closed to submissions starting Aug. 15. This is mostly a matter of housekeeping. The multiple projects I've taken on over the past year have seriously slowed my response times, and when the reading period for Clockwork Phoenix 2 begins later that same month it will likely slow things even more. I am still aiming at an October release for Mythic Delirium 19, and I have some interesting plans underway for Mythic Delirium 20, which, when it comes out next spring, will mark 10 full years of my little zine's life.

(20)

(Automatically crossposted from warrenellis.com. Feel free to comment here or at my internet church at Whitechapel. If anything in this post looks weird, it's because LJ is run on steampipes and rubber bands -- please click through to the main site.)

Originally published at John Joseph Adams. You can comment here or there.

   

   

   

   

  

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