Friends

[Recent Entries][Archive][Friends][User Info]

Below are the 25 most recent friends journal entries:

November 16th, 2009
02:01 am jack_yoniga [Link]	Final cover art for Philip Nutman's CITIES OF NIGHT Final Erik Mohr cover art for our last spring 2010 title—Philip Nutman's first short story collection, Cities of Night. These fifteen dark, engaging short stories by Wet Work author Philip Nutman take place in different cities, location always being a silent character. Atlanta, Bath, Blackpool, New York, Los Angeles, Prague, Rome. Each one of them a city of night. Coming May 2010 from ChiZine Publications (Leave a comment)
11:59 pm saraphina_marie [Link]	Making the dogs earn their keep! Mulch those leaves, my pretties, MULCH! Current Location: The House of Golden Leaves Current Mood: amused Tags: dog blog, eowyn, guinevere, javert, the house of golden leaves (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
09:03 pm saraphina_marie [Link]	Tis the Season For Nebula nominations! Those of you who do these sorts of things, I present my 2009 publication list (don't worry, it's short!): NOVELLA: The Convent of the Pure, Apex Book Company, April 2009 SHORT STORY: "Six Seeds," Beneath Ceaseless Skies, October 2009 VOTE EARLY, VOTE OFTEN! ^_^ Current Location: The House of Golden Leaves Current Mood: optimistic Tags: nebula awards, short stories, the convent of the pure, writing (Leave a comment)
12:31 am apexblog [Link]	Author Jeffrey Thomas on PRIME: “thought-provoking” http://www.apexbookcompany.com/blog/2009/11/author-jeffrey-thomas-on-prime-thought-provoking/ http://www.apexbookcompany.com/?p=1269 Author Jeffrey Thomas (BLUE WAR, PUNKTOWN) has posted his review of Nate Kenyon’s novella PRIME! Here’s a clip: “I purchased this book at a signing I did on Halloween at Borders in Shrewsbury, MA, with Nate and some other local horror writers. Nate seems like a calm, confident guy, very pleasant. What initially drew me to this book, the first I’ve read by him, is the striking cover art I show above, by Russian artist Katja Faith. Her work has a wonderful sense of luminosity. Gorgeous stuff. See the link to her gallery, below. The novella is a bit of Future Noir/Cyberpunkery, in which surly “bug hunter” Will Bellow goes in search of a deadly computer virus and in search of his own scrambled past. ” Read the whole review here! (Leave a comment)
07:02 pm saraphina_marie [Link]	"Lemme 'splain...no, is too long. Lemme sum up." ( Have fun storming the castle! ) And I lived happily ever after...at least until tomorrow. ^_^ Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter (Leave a comment)
12:16 am apexblog [Link]	SHROUD MAGAZINE on HARLAN COUNTY HORRORS: “an eclectic collection of chilling tales” http://www.apexbookcompany.com/blog/2009/11/shroud-magazine-on-harlan-county-horrors-an-eclectic-collection-of-chilling-tales/ http://www.apexbookcompany.com/?p=1268 SHROUD MAGAZINE has posted its review of HARLAN COUNTY HORRORS, APEX’s recent collection of dark fiction centered in coal country. Edited by APEX’s own Mari Adkins, this anthology features stories by Alethea Kontis, Debbie Kuhn, Earl Dean, Geoffrey Girard, Jason Sizemore, Jeremy Shipp, Maurice Broaddus, Robby Sparks, Ronald Kelly, Stephanie Lenz, Steven Shrewsbury, and TL Trevaskis. Here’s a clip of SHROUD’s review: ““Harlan County” ends with perhaps its strongest story, “The Witch of Black Mountain”, a dark, enchanting bit of folklore written by New York Times Bestseller Alethea Kontis. Here, a young woman scorned undertakes a dangerous journey in search of death, resolution, revenge – but instead encounters and inherits an ages-old legacy, one which gives her new, dark purpose.” Read the whole review here! (Leave a comment)
03:49 pm vylar_kaftan [Link]	Photos from Afghanistan Originally published at Vylar Kaftan. You can comment here or there. A friend pointed me to this set of photos from the war in Afghanistan. Truly amazing. Many of these are brilliant, but I think the most striking one shows all the soldiers sleeping in their fighting-holes… but it looks like they’re lying in graves. The children playing in terrible conditions–prison, refugee camps, wherever they were–also stayed with me for a long time. For people like me who’ve never seen combat, these pics drove home to me how ugly battle really is and how dangerous the conditions are. I can’t even imagine myself in battle; I just don’t think I could handle it. I’m curious what those of you with military experience think of these pictures. Tags: journal (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
04:04 pm suricattus [Link]	well, that WAS my diet... I have had Al nassma chocolate, and you (probably) have not. Probably, because unless you were a) at NYC's Chocolate Show last month, b) have contacts in the chocolate business or c) were at the AMNH's opening of the Silk Road exhibit Friday night, you can't get hold of it in North America (or the UK, I suspect). Not yet, anyway. Camel's milk chocolate. All sorts of health claims for it, most of which I suspect don't carry over into chocolate anyway, but whatever the gimmick, I give it thumbs up. People, this stuff is good. I didn't like all the flavors (and the "milk chocolate" was actually a bittersweet 70% cocoa) but the texture was smooth, the taste a splendid mixture of sweet and salty, and it was rich enough to leave me satisfied after only a few small pieces at a time (starting Friday night, finishing my last bit this afternoon). Except, of course, that I know I will want more, and I don't have any. sads disclaimer: I am a bit of a chocolate snob -- not because I think Expensive = Better, but because most mass-produced chocolates (yes, including the UK brands) taste more like wax than chocolate. I would rather spend more money to get something with all-natural ingredients that satisfies, than spend less and leave my tastebuds unsatisfied. Your mileage may vary. Current Mood: sated Tags: food (17 comments \| Leave a comment)
08:25 am kaaronwarren [Link]	Lots more excellent interviews of contributors to the Apex Book of World SF up at SF Signal I'm really enjoying this series of Q and A. Today there's Han Song from China. Scroll down for Anil Menon from India, Tunku Halim from Malaysia, and Dean Francis Alfar from the Philipines. We're having a rather busy time. Friday night we had a feast to celebrate a friend's birthday. They boiled a huge pot of water, threw in fresh prawns, a bouqet garni of herbs and spices, baby potatoes and corn. Cooked it a while. They layered paper on a huge outdoor table, layered banana leaves on top, strained the water off the pot and tipped the lot onto the table. We all greedily ate our way through this wondrous pile. Saturday we had a farewell party jointly with our next door neighbours. It was lots of fun and involved dancing and drinking a variety of shots in an attempt to clear the two bars. We made a variation of the Japanese Slipper which the 13 year old dubbed "Suva River" and we filled a water cooler with it. Most impressive! (7 comments \| Leave a comment)
November 15th, 2009
03:19 pm pgtremblay [Link]	New England Crime Bake: I am a Canadian My first crime convention was this weekend. The New England Crime Bake was in Dedham, MA, which is even closer to my house than Readercon. Which is nice. I spent most of Saturday afternoon chatting with Jedediah Berry and Dave Zeltserman, both extremely talented writers that you all should read. We survived the mystery of the box lunches and eventually headed to a panel. F is for Fear, which, to be honest, was a little underwhelming. But it could be that I'm a horror snob and having spent many an hour discussing horror with friends and foes alike, I was left thinking the 'fear' discussed in the panel didn't dig deep enough; felt like a discussion of 'safe' fear. Regardless, I sally forthed and heard a real PI give a spiel about what it is he really does. Very entertaining. Post-paneling it was cocktails and dinner with Jedediah, it occurred to me that Jedediah and I were very much like the Bake's version of Readercon's The Canadians* Dana Cameron, Margery Flax (she essentially runs MWA with a fist of iron! And she was one of the nicest, most friendly people I met this weekend), Toni Kelner and her husband Steve, Peg Patten (owner of Front Street Book Shop), Eileen Foster Keck, and one other person whose name I can't remember (sorry!). We had a lovely time, even as dinner theater was foisted upon us unsuspectingly. We did not figure out the mystery, but were made to sign a song. Me singing in front of people: oh the humanity. Sunday morning featured 'breakfast with the authors'. The panelist authors hosted tables and a few people came by my table to talk The Little Sleep which was very nice. Then at 10Am, was my panel "U is for Unconventional," other panelists included fellow Canadian Jedediah, Francie Lin, and Lynne Griffin, and moderator Pat Remick. The panel was very well attended, and Pat did a great job moderating us unconventional folks. After that was a signing and by that time, the crime was thoroughly baked, as it were. Thanks again to Pat and the con committee for the invite! (Leave a comment)
08:31 am nihilistic_kid [Link]	What's good The Balkan Vulcan DJ shift on Pirate Cat Radio. Current Mood: home-y (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
10:19 am suricattus [Link]	that whoosh you didn't see was me For SFWA members: Dr. Lawrence posts about the new Nebula process. If you don't already know, you might want to take a look. And hey, both BLOOD FROM STONE and FLESH AND FIRE are eligible! M'just sayin... Saturday opened with a brunch gathering of what I refer to as the North City Irregulars -- industry folk who live in the northern tip of NYC (as opposed to all those Downtown/Brooklyn hipsters). I was indulgent and had waffles. With syrup! We met at a local diner, and Gossip was had. Then I went home and clobbered some work (and cleaning) before heading out to the SFSNNJs "Face the Fiction" which had invited Sue Lange, Susan Wright and myself to come talk about Book View Cafe (www.bookviewcafe.com), after which Sue and Susan fled for their respective beds, while I went along with the attendees to their local diner. You can take the girl out of Jersey, you just can't get her out of the diners. Special thanks to Bill W, for getting me back home safe, if not quite sound.... (yeah, I went thud the moment I hit the elevator) Also had the very...interesting experience of Boomerang being introduced to a new person, and having my usually affectionate boycat (referred to as "Mr Gregarious" by someone who knows him well) not only be uneasy when first introduced, but when encouraged to make nice, sniff the stranger's hand and then back up. Not just a backward movement, but five or six distinct steps in the direction of Away. Hrmmm. (Pandora, as usual, was Madame Not Appearing in this Movie) Sunday is laundry, cleaning, cooking, revisions. Productive as hell, but boring to blog about. Current Mood: busy Tags: bvc, dispatches from nyc, felines, links to other people (3 comments \| Leave a comment)
12:44 am saraphina_marie [Link]	Who doesn't love dog videos? Ok, if you don't then move along, nothing to see here. Current Location: The House of Golden Leaves Current Mood: silly Tags: dog blog, eowyn, guinevere, javert, the house of golden leaves (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
November 14th, 2009
08:53 pm buymeaclue [Link]	gratitude: an irregular series A misty night, an open highway, and a perfect change of gear, carve out the turn, leap forward off the gas. (4 comments \| Leave a comment)
08:32 pm ellen_datlow [Link]	Still fishin' Yes; I'm still in Florida with my folks. Not doing much but hanging out, going out to meals and reading for Best Horror #2. Helped my mom get onto facebook, which means I need to be discreet (hi mom!) in case she actually reads it. The dial up is better than previously. I hope that by the time I'm here next they'll have wireless throughout the community. Right now, it's only in the clubhouse. The weather is gorgeous. Sunny, hot, cool in the shade. Eat your hearts out northerners :-). Tags: florida, parents (21 comments \| Leave a comment)
07:02 pm saraphina_marie [Link]	"Lemme 'splain...no, is too long. Lemme sum up." ( Have fun storming the castle! ) And I lived happily ever after...at least until tomorrow. ^_^ Automatically shipped by LoudTwitter (Leave a comment)
06:51 pm ra_log [marshallpayne1] [Link]	last week or so 100 day personal rejection from Atomjack 3 day form rejection from GUD 51 day form rejection from IGMS 69 day personal rejection from Fear and Trembling 14 day personal rejection from Allegory Tags: allegory, atomjack, fear and trembling, gud, igms* (Leave a comment)
01:10 pm samhenderson [Link]	This is just to say... ...that the service at the West Covina Honeybaked Ham really really sucks. Grrr. Bunco dinner tomorrow just got that much more complicated. Current Mood: pissed off (2 comments \| Leave a comment)
02:55 pm safewrite [Link]	fundraiser in the works Today we are working on some fundraising items for the coming year. They ought to be fun for all! More soon. Watch this space for the details. Tags: a&a, fundraisers (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
02:47 pm safewrite [Link]	a year in photos: day 43 They preserved the original one-room schoolhouse of Columbia, SC. Current Location: downtown Columbia, SC Current Mood: historical Tags: photoyear (Leave a comment)
02:38 pm safewrite [Link]	a year in photos: day 42 Guess what we used for the first time this year yesterday? Current Mood: warm Tags: photoyear (Leave a comment)
12:46 pm saraphina_marie [Link]	Naming names- fictional character edition Should have posted this yesterday when people were actually yanno reading LJ and work and stuff. But ah well. So, Phina, my "happy-go-lucky" gypsy. She started out as a bit of an in-joke, a bit of a Mary Sue in-joke. But see the book she's in came out and people are really wanting more Phina stories and I have this online presence, see, and built on my nickname Saraphina and really? Umm, it looks just too contrived. So, I am pondering changing her name (because it is a little late to change mine). She whole name is Delphine Nabokov. Because her immediate family are all named Greek things. (You'll recall Auntie Io from a piece posted earlier here and that you'll fingers crossed be seeing in print sometime soon!) And she's named Delphine because the Delphi shrine was where the seeresses were- Sybil and the like. There is already a Cassandra (Phina's cousin who cameos in Matt's 1001 Insomniac Nights- coming soon [again]!). I suppose I could call her something like Apollonia (although cmpriest 's main character in Fathom is named that) or find another legendary Greek seeress. So, I ask you, is it just too damn silly to have a Phina? The name suits her so perfectly well, but I get really tired of explaining that no, I wasn't really Mary-Sue-ing, I mean not really, it started out as a bit of an in-joke back when 20 people read my LJ and I never thought I'd actually ever publish A Year and a Day. It takes a bit of explaining and sometimes folks really don't believe me and I wonder if it damages my credibility. What do y'all think? And do you have any better name suggestions? For your convenience, I present this here poll: Poll #1485409 The name game Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 22 A Phina by any other name would be just as awesome! View Answers Yes, change it to whatever you want, I wouldn't care. 2 (9.1%) No! ARE YOU NUTS??? 18 (81.8%) You have a point, but you should change it to something specific that I will detail in comments. 2 (9.1%) Current Location: Crema, Nashville, TN Current Mood: curious Tags: a year and a day, writing (22 comments \| Leave a comment)
11:40 am aliettedb [Link]	Saturday brief post Up, about and already late… I’ll leave you with further linkage to Apex Book of World SF contributors, proving just exactly how indefatigable Charles Tan can be: Han Song from China, Anil Menon from India, Tunku Halim from Malaysia, and Dean Francis Alfar from the Philipines. Taking the neo with me to improve wordcount on Harbinger of the Storm (24600 words, two murders, one major antagonist, and counting) Cross-posted from Aliette de Bodard Leave a comment at original post, or comment here. Tags: anil menon, dean francis alfar, han song, harbinger of the storm, interview, interviews, tunku halim, world sf (1 comment \| Leave a comment)
03:54 pm gcrumb [Link]	Geek Heaven Okay, so I’m leaving in a little over a week for South Africa. I’m the only sysadmin at the Institute where I work - more to the point, I’m the only technical person on the entire campus with the chops to oversee their servers. (That’s a comment about the Vanuatu environment and absolutely not myself or any other IT professional. There are some very talented people there who simply lack exposure to some kinds of technology.) The challenge: How to make sure that everything’s ticking along more or less as it should when I’m a continent away, in a locale whose Internet decrepitude is surpassed only by the locale I need to monitor? If I wait until something’s gone so wrong that someone has to contact me, I’ve lost the game already. The solution: I’ve just hacked up a little OSD display in perl that uses SSH::RPC to poll server stats on all my production machines. It sits in the bottom left corner of my screen. As long as everything stays mostly green, I’m okay. Total bandwidth usage is about 2 Kbps. Given that this is manageable from my pathetically poorly conditioned 128K DSL line from home, I have every reason to believe that it will be viable in SA as well. For bonus points, I’m going to configure it so that it just pops up for a minute or so every $INTERVAL (which will likely be 15-30 minutes). For yucks, if load average gets completely out of hand, it starts shouting that my computer is on fire. (Blame Nik for this one.) I am one very contented geek. Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there. Tags: geek, hard-core, wonk (Leave a comment)
November 13th, 2009
10:22 pm oldcharliebrown [Link]	Acceptance: Fantasy Magazine 13 November 2009: "Wishes and Feathers" by Patricia Russo, 4000 words (welcome back!) (Leave a comment)

[<< Previous 25 entries]

My Website

Customize

Advertisement