listless Did that reading for the SFWA thing the other night. I was up last, so I got to fret about how awesome everybody else's stuff was. However, when I read, everyone seemed to find it pretty funny, which is all I ask, really. This was a selection from the 3rd Girl Genius novel (Agatha H and the Self–Slicing Salami [tentative title]), and it gave me a nice shot in the arm to renew the old writing efforts (Not that I needed one, but it feels so good to get one).
As for the media consumption part of my existence, today's book is: The Cunning Blood, by Jeff Duntemann. It's a bit tricky to find, it was published by Isfic Press, which is a publisher who publishes books by Guests of Honor at Windycon. The indicia says that they printed around a thousand copies, and frankly, the cover is the most god–awful bit of eye–pain I've seen on a published book in quite awhile. But you should not let this deter you! I found the book to be very enjoyable! Jeff wrote a slew of short stories back in the day, and got nominated for a Hugo for 2 of them in one year. This was so overwhelming (apparently), that he then took 30 years off to go write geeky technical manuals. Now he has returned to the fold. The geekyness comes through fairly strongly. In many ways, Jeff is channeling the old Analog writers of the 60's here, especially Heinlein, in that he throws in a lot of tech, which is important to the plot, and explains how it works (roughly). But, he is a good enough writer that he doesn't get bogged down in minutia, and he keeps things moving. I found it a refreshing change from all the fantasy and steampunk I've been reading lately. (Don't get me wrong–obviously I loves me the Steampunk, but occasionally I do enjoy a good old fashioned science fiction story where there's a good possibility that the amazing things I'm reading about could actually work) (http://www.amazon.com/The-Cunning-Bloo
When they are not being sick, the kids are gearing up to lose their minds over Halloween!!! And we are too, if only because it is the beginning of the seemingly endless bombardment of holidays that we, as a society, invented so that we'd bother to turn the lights on when it was cold and dark for 20 hours a day. It certainly has its perks; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4rUiV_H