So late last month, my novel A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder (or, as we lazy folks refer to it, Crows) picked up a review over on Amazon.com. That makes two (count ’em!) Amazon reviews for this book since it was published in 2002. At this rate I’ll be hitting the magic number of, oh, say, 50 reviews, somewhere just shy of halfway through the millennium. Of course by then everyone will be reading their books under the sea on their waterproof devices, and Crows will be classified as science fiction because it takes place on dry land, but hey. Genres shift.
Author: James Viscosi
Teaser Tuesday: “The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser”
This week (and probably next week …) I’m reading The Adventures of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, by Fritz Leiber, a “box set” (insofar as anything on an eReader is a “box set”) comprising Swords and Deviltry, Swords Against Death, and Swords in the Mist.
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Random Contract: “Night Watchman”
It’s been quite a while since I reached into my giant pile of rejection (and some acceptance) letters, so this week I spun up random.org to have it tell me which folder I should reach into. It selected folder I-J, from which I pulled an old contract from Hard Shell Word Factory (now an imprint of Mundania Press, home of some oddly specific genre categorizations), for the eBook rights to Night Watchman. “Hard Shell Word Factory” doesn’t belong in the I-J folder, of course, but, you know, sometimes things get misfiled. But anyway, I picked it, so here it is. Rather than reproducing all umpteen pages of the eBook contract, I thought I would just pull a few selected sections from it, which may serve as an interesting illumination of how the eBook world has changed since the year 2000 (or, as we called it back in those panic-stricken days, “Y2K”).
Teaser Tuesday 1/30/2018: “The Way of Kings” (Last Time, I Swear)
Well, it’s Groundhog Day … Again …
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Teaser Tuesday 1/23/2018: “The Way of Kings”
Remember a few weeks ago, when I was reading The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson? Remember when I said I would probably be reading it for several weeks, because it was over a thousand pages long? Well, guess what I’m still reading?
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A Game of Polls
Wife (reading news): “Do you think Oprah will run for President?”
Me: “No.”
Wife: “Why not?”
Me: “I don’t think she wants the job.”
Wife (considering): “I think she and Daenerys Targaryen should run together.”
Me: “I thought it was going to be a Daenerys/Tyrion ticket.”
Teaser Tuesday 1/9/2018: “The Way of Kings”
AThis week (and next week, and probably the week after―it’s over a thousand freaking pages long!), I’m reading The Way of Kings, by Brandon Sanderson.
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Still, Still Not A Review Of “Game of Thrones”
As 2017 came to a close, so too did our getting caught up on all of the available seasons of “Game of Thrones”. It only took us about five months to get through them, because that’s how we binge around here: At a deliberate pace. Sort of like how long it takes the Night King to move south from Hardhome while everyone else flits around the continent on Air Westeros, or however they do it.
Since my wife got hooked by the show, she’s been staying awake for pretty much the entire episode each time — at least until season 7, when the episode lengths started to approach the running times of short movies, which is pushing it on how long she can stay awake even when watching something she likes. But she never stopped with the pithy observations about what’s transpiring on-screen, and I never stopped scurrying off to write them down for later use******, helpfully arranging them by season, so that those who may not be caught up will know when to stop. Because …
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Teaser Tuesday 12/26/2017: “Six-Gun Snow White”
So this week (or rather, last week, by the time this appears), I am (or rather, was) reading Six-Gun Snow White, by Catherynne M. Valente. As one may guess, this is a retelling of the “Snow White” story as a Western, in which Snow White is a half-Crow gunslinger, the Evil Queen (known only as Mrs. H) is the second wife of a robber baron, the Huntsman is a Pinkerton agent, the Seven Dwarves are outlaws, and Charming is a horse. And yes, it’s still written as a fable.
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That Was The Year That Was (In Books)
Regular readers of this blog―i.e., my parents―may have noticed that there was no post here last week. That’s because on Thursday, December 7, we got out of town as the Lilac Fire advanced on our house. At the time we left, the fire had charred a path nine miles long in a single afternoon. Officials were saying there was a good chance the fire would go all the way to the ocean. And what was directly between the fire and the ocean?
Viscosity 