This week I’m reading The Towers of Sunset, by L.E. Modesitt, Jr., in which a young prince (sort-of — I haven’t quite figured out the exact nature of royal roles in this book) decides to skip town instead of allowing himself to be married off to a nearby ruler’s daughter. Because the “town” in question is a castle that’s basically situated in the middle of an arctic plateau, skipping it is a pretty major undertaking.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 11/21/2017: “The Towers of Sunset””
This week I’m still reading The Hole Behind Midnight, by the aptly-named Clinton J. Boomer (apt because he has made a lot of things go “boom” in the book by this point).
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 11/14/17: Still In “The Hole Behind Midnight””
This week I’m reading The Hole Behind Midnight, by Clinton J. Boomer, in which Royden Poole, a dwarf (or possibly a midget), gets involved in a conspiracy taking place in the Sideways*, AKA the 25th hour, a place that exists in the second between 11:59:59pm and 12:00:00am, and which can be accessed from locations that are abandoned by or don’t receive much attention from humans, such as your corner video store or my web site.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 10/31/2017: “The Hole Behind Midnight””
I don’t often do awards on this blog, because Dennis gets them all reasons, but recently my friend Sharkbytes of My Quality Day gave Dennis me a Liebster award. Also known as Joan D. Young, She is the author of the Dead Mule Swamp series of small-town mysteries, and her late vizsla, Maggie, was Dennis’s longtime blog friend. Naturally Dennis snagged the award and proceeded to put on a Sunday Awards and Meme Show in his inimitable style, and while I can’t compete with his showmanship, I thought I would go ahead and post the award and answer the questions.
This week I’m reading The Drawing of the Dark, by Tim Powers.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 10/10/17: “The Drawing of the Dark””
So this week I’m reading Rage Against the Night, a short story anthology that was put out by the HWA with the charitable goal of helping one of its members, Rocky Wood (who happened to be president of HWA at the time), purchase an eye gaze machine* as he battled ALS.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 10/3/2017: “Rage Against the Night””
So last week, I posted an ancient report card progress report and mentioned that when I played the clarinet, our dog, Miss Marple (AKA “Missy”), would plant herself in front of me and howl. I further mentioned that it was too bad there was no video because it probably would have made us―or at least Missy―Internet stars. Well, there’s still no video, but since my dad knows where all his pictures are, there is, at least, photographic evidence:
Continue reading “The Early Years: Jim’s Clarinet Sounds Like A Chicken”
This week I’m reading Hyperion, the Hugo award-winning novel by Dan Simmons, in which … uh … well I’m not really sure I can explain what’s going on, because it seems really complicated. Suffice to say there’s a planet named Hyperion that seems to be about to become ground zero in an interplanetary war between a couple of different human factions (one planetary, one space-based), and which is also haunted by a possibly shapeshifting, definitely fearsome creature, called the Shrike, which essentially teleports around impaling people and hanging them as ornaments from its gigantic backwards-in-time-traveling aluminum Christmas tree, and which is worshiped as a god throughout inhabited space, and which our small band of protagonists is currently traveling upriver, Heart of Darkness-style, to visit. Oh and also there’s a huge planetary labyrinth (one of at least nine such labyrinths on different planets) full of cruciform parasites whose significance I don’t yet know.
But other than that nothing is happening.
This week I’m reading volumes 1-3 of The Great Iron War, by Dean F. Wilson, a science fantasy steampunk series in which Earth (or someplace like it) is invaded by outsiders, called “demons” (even though I’m pretty sure that’s not what they are) who come in search of iron. Hence the name of the war.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday 8/15/17: “The Great Iron War, Volumes 1-3””
Viscosity 