I just realized that I forgot to post a link to one of my SCI FI Wire stories (and forgot to mark it down on my invoice, which is more important). In any case, at Worldcon, I interviewed Scott Westerfeld about his new novel, The Last Days.
SF/fantasy artist (and frequent creator of F&SF covers) Maurizio Manzieri has just started a blog. His first few posts detail the creation of his most recent F&SF cover, which was for Donald Mead’s “iKlawa.” For those of you who have had illustrations based on your work, it’s an interesting insight into the creative process of the artist as he tries to translate your vision from prose into pictures. And for those of you who haven’t had the pleasure as of yet, well, it’s still interesting.
Subterranean is serializing Cherie Priest’s new novella “The Wreck of the Mary Byrd,” which is the first part of a new book called Dreadful Skin (Feb. 2007). The first three chapters are up now, and updates will be posted throughout the month. Go read!
Today SCI FI Wire published a story I wrote about Matthew Hughes’s new novel, Majestrum, which is the first of a trilogy from Night Shade which will feature Old Earth’s foremost freelance discriminator, Henghis Hapthorn. I just read it, by the way, and I have to say, it ROCKS.
Jim Freund, host of the radio show Hour of the Wolf, posted a few photos from my appearance (along with Doug Cohen) on the show.
John Scalzi is auctioning off a bound manuscript of his new novel The Last Colony (which is months and months ahead of the May 2007 pub date) to benefit the John M. Ford Book Endowment. Last bid I saw was $460. The higher the bid price goes, the more free stuff Scalzi throws in. At the level it’s at now, you not only get The Last Colony, but you get a copy of Scalzi’s limited edition chapbook, Questions for a Soldier, and it’s very close to being eligble for an ARC of his novel Agent to the Stars.
Good cause! Bragging rights! Scalzi stuff!
Go bid!
Some commenters asked some questions about Gully, so here’s what I know:
He’s around seven years old.
He’s a German Shepherd mix. When I questioned what he might be mixed with, Hannah suggested that he looks labrador-like, and I agree (after looking at some lab photos). So I’m going to go with German Shepherd/Labrador mix.
He doesn’t seem to know any tricks, except that he will sit when he thinks you want him to (though telling him to sit doesn’t seem to be what makes him do it), and he’ll also come to you when you snap your fingers, slap your leg, or make smoochie noises. Can’t seem to fetch, and shows no interest in the chew toy bone or the tennis ball-like balls I bought him. However, I ordered a dog training book to see if there’s stuff in there I can use, as I have no real idea how to train an animal to do something. Though just by reading reviews to some of these books, I picked up some stuff, such as: you’re not actually supposed to say “No” to a dog when they do something wrong; instead you’re supposed to reinforce what the correct thing to do is. Or something like that. I suppose it’ll all become clearer once I read the book.
One bit of concern is that he seems frequently listless, and mostly lays around. When I let him outside into the yard, he sniffs around, but doesn’t seem to want to stay out there (and, as I said, he shows no interest in fetching–perhaps I need to get one of those tug-of-war toys). He does seem to enjoy going for walks, though; he’s a very eager walker, and seemed to like smelling the smells of the neighborhood. If I were inclined to run with him, I expect he’d like that; because he was so eager, I started jogging for a little while so he could go faster.
And as you can see from this photo, he’s obviously a literary sort of pooch. His preferred place to crash appears to be right next to my bookcases. Curiously enough, on the top shelf of that particular case are two copies of the book of his namesake…
