Ambrose & Elsewhere

Here’s my finally finalacious final schedule for the con.

Fri. 11:30 AM: Physics of Your Magic
Centennial I (H)
MAIN

Fri. 4 PM: autographing in the Pyr booth.
Booth #1601, Marriott Imperial Ballroom

Fri. 7 PM: Pyr panel. Cast of nearly a dozen.
Fairlie (H)
SFLIT

Sat. 12 PM: autographing in Pyr booth
#1601 Marriott Imperial Ballroom

Sat 2:00-3:30: autographing in Black Gate booth(s)
booths # 709 & 711 Marriott Marquis Ballroom

Sat. 10 PM: A Tour of Known Space (Larry Niven panel)
Greenbriar H
SFLIT

Sun. 9:00-9:45: Pyr Stroll
9AM, meets on the sidewalk in front of the main entrance (Peachtree Street) of the Hyatt Regency.

If you’re there, maybe I’ll see you there. (I may see you there even if you’re not there, due to an old head injury that the doctor says brignetz yunkalowixz.)

I was so busy erupting about myself yesterday that I forgot to honor Vesuvius Day as I’d planned. But some have argued that the volcano didn’t actually go off on August 24 anyway. But at some point in 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted and destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, among others.

In celebration of this event (bad for those who suffered on that day, but a tremendous boon for those who study life in the ancient world), here’s a video of Vesuvius’ most recent, much less destructive eruption.

Here’s a bit from National Geographic about Pompeii’s less famous cousin, Herculaneum.

Have fun and watch out for pyroclastic flows. They sting a bit.

… or at least one ballot: that of the World Fantasy Awards was announced this AM and I was genuinely shocked to see that Blood of Ambrose was among the nominees for best novel.

“And at the top of the list,” my son helpfully observed as I sat stunned, mutely pointing at the screen. Which is true, the list being alphabetical by author surname.

That the book would win seems extremely unlikely, given the other nominees. I don’t think this is false modesty, or even real modesty, just realism. But it does seem kind of unreal that a book which was deliberately designed not to be award-bait has been shortlisted for this most literary of fantasy awards.

Must be doing something wrong. Guess I’ll do it harder next time.

1. Science.

Not eating or sleeping much for two days makes you kind of tired and sleepy. I have tested this by experiment and know it to be true. Maybe I should test the reverse hypothesis: does eating and resting make you less hungry and tired? But first some food and sleep.

2. Fantasy.

Publisher’s Weekly is giving The Wolf Age a starred review. This is better than a poke in the eye with a sharp starfish.

3. Speculation.

As I was biking home tonight, I passed a house with a FOR SALE sign in front of it. The house next door had a huge BUDWEISER banner draped across its second floor. My guess is the first house won’t sell very soon.

Have not I made blind Homer sing to me
Of Alexander’s love and Oenon’s death?
And hath not he that built the walls of Thebes
With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
Made music with my Mephistophilis?
Why should I die then, or basely despair?

–Marlowe, Doctor Faustus

Repent, possibly. Despair, never. What’s in that for me? Bring it on, fall.

According to my rigorous habit of blogging every month or so, it’s time for another post.

It’s been a weird summer, not all bad (despite my divorce)–in some respects, very good. But not very productive writing-wise.

However, now black walnuts are falling from the trees, the temps are settling down to a chilly 90 degrees with fifty-two-thousand percent humidity, the town is filling with returning students, and the fairgrounds roar with the guttural music of the National Tractor Pull. Fall is coming; brain is waking; life is calling.

On the professional front, I’ll be at Dragon*Con in Atlanta over the Labor Day weekend. I just got my schedule, which I’ll put below the jump.

On the home front, it looks like I’m going to have to move the Fortress of Engitude to a new location posthaste. (Fortunately, like Shadowguard in Zelazny’s Jack of Shadows, it’s portable and goes wherever the hero/villain resides.) I have some photographic evidence, which I’ll also put after the jump.

Continue reading A New Engitude

This one goes out to my ex. Better luck next time, eh?

After some consultation with Dr. Internet, I laid healing hands on my bicycle last Saturday, replacing the severed brake cable and doing some general maintenance so that the thing might continue to run for a while. This is a new experience for me, as I usually buy throwaway bikes that are cheaper to replace than repair. But I’ve gotten attached to this one.

My son has decided that fireworks are not, in fact, All That, so it was just my daughter and me biking down to the local July 4th fireworks last night. We got a good place, pretty close behind the firing zone. But the fireworks weren’t flying as high this year as they sometimes do; in fact, I’m pretty sure some of them were still burning as they hit the ground. Fortunately, they didn’t seem to land back among the unfired-fireworks, so we narrowly escaped a major disaster–always a good way to celebrate a holiday, national or otherwise.

I spent a big chunk of the weekend excavating my home office, or computer room, or whatever one would call it. One can move around in here slightly more freely, and now I know where my 1992 tax returns are, in the unlikely event I ever need them. But the clutter wasn’t reduced as much as I’d hoped. I’m starting to think that it’s time to box up most of my old vinyl albums and store them away somewhere. I’ve got most of the music I listen to in e-form anyway, and it must be a year or so since I dropped the needle onto an LP.

Last week I read a great book that apparently everyone else read year: The Age of Wonder: The Romantic Generation and the Discovery of the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes. It’s sort of the flip side of a book I did read last year: Goodman’s The Sun and the Moon. Holmes paints the incandescent reality of scientific discovery in the late 18th/early 19th century, when science and the arts still intermingled. Goodman’s story is about the shadows cast by that same light.

At least one figure is prominent in both books: John Herschel (credited with the discovery of life on the moon in the Sun newspaper hoax). And it was interesting to see his father, musician and astronomer William Herschel, had speculated publicly about an inhabited moon: he thought the craters were circular sun-powered lunar cities. This is one of those things which ought to be true, even if it obviously isn’t.

[Edited to add: It looks like others weren't as lucky last night: some scary video here.]

A happy Independence Day to my compatriots; a happy July 4th to all.

Now the forces of entropy have attacked my bicycle: one of the brake cables snapped as I was cycling around town this morning. This has never happened to me before, but then I can’t remember the last time I had a bike that actually lasted two years, as my current one has. (Here’s a fair sample of my bike-luck in academic year 2007-2008, a.k.a. “The Year of Four Bikes” or “That Long but Single Year”.)

Still there were things keeping me in a good mood all day. Copyedits for The Wolf Age went in, practically nearly almost on time almost. Swords & Dark Magic seems to be piquing some people‘s interest in reading Morlock novels, anyway, which is encouraging. I’m working my way through the anthology myself, and every time I pick it up I’m a little freaked out that I have a story in it.

My copies of Le Sang des Ambrose arrived last month, and only today did I realize that this means my ego-googling can now ascend to a new linguistic dimension: JE googlant. (There are some very civil reviews of the book here and here.)

The best things about the day, though, had nothing to do with me, except that I was lucky enough to be there: reading Livy with an old student; running around in the most beautiful July day in the history of the Great Black Swamp; listening to an oboist talk about music, etc.