More science!

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For those who missed the first one on Monday, these comics are 100% made by my son, to illustrate (with humor) his science lessons.

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Announcing a month of book giveaways! Day three!

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Game of Cages will be coming out on the last day of the month, so I’ve decided to hold a special month of book giveaways. Every day (unless I screw up, which I probably will) I’ll give away a book or themed set of books to someone who asks for it. To enter, you have to comment on this blog or on my LiveJournal–email, Facebook, and Twitter won’t count, and if more than one person speaks up, I’ll roll a die to determine the recipient. U.S. residents only, please.

You get a new book every day, and on the last day of the month I’ll give away my own.

Today’s books:

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No explanation necessary, yeah? Who wants them?

Update! These have been won.

Now, I bring you… SCIENCE!

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As part of my son’s homeschooling, I’m asking him to create fun, funny, instructional science comics. He wrote, shot, and put together the comic below all by his lonesome. I offered to help, but he didn’t need it!

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What do you think?

Announcing a month of book giveaways! Day two!

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Game of Cages will be coming out on the last day of the month, so I’ve decided to hold a special month of book giveaways. Every day (unless I screw up, which I probably will) I’ll give away a book or themed set of books to someone who asks for it. To enter, you have to comment on this blog or on my LiveJournal–email, Facebook, and Twitter won’t count, and if more than one person speaks up, I’ll roll a die to determine the recipient.

You get a new book every day, and on the last day of the month I’ll give away my own.

Here’s today’s book:

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Writing a book set in the Regency period? Love reading those books? Here is a history of crime and the criminal underclass of that time, as well as a look at how a modern(ish) police force was built to combat it.

Is it comprehensive, accurate and interesting? I don’t know! I haven’t read it. It hurts to give this one away, actually, because it sounds so damn interesting. But it’s sat on my shelf for about 12 years w/out being cracked open, and it’s time to accept facts. Who wants it?

Update: This book has been claimed.

Announcing a month of book giveaways! Day one!

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Game of Cages will be coming out on the last day of the month, so I’ve decided to hold a special month of book giveaways. Every day (unless I screw up, which I probably will) I’ll give away a book or themed set of books to someone who asks for it. To enter, you have to comment on this blog or on my LiveJournal–email, Facebook, and Twitter won’t count, and if more than one person speaks up, I’ll roll a die to determine the recipient.

You get a new book every day, and on the last day of the month I’ll give away my own.

For day one, I’m offering this:

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No, it’s not a horror novel. It’s actually an examination of the concept of Satan in a historical and social context, especially with regard to creating a Christian identity by identifying and defining Christianity’s enemies. Interesting! But I’m not going to reread it, so why don’t you try it?

Update: This book has been won.

A spider has set up home on my desktop computer

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It’s awfully cute, hanging there, and I supposed I could take plotty inspiration from the complexity and interconnectedness of its web, but it’s also anchored to my reading materials. I’ll have to sweep it up and dump it outside eventually, but I’m willing to wait until it warms up out there.

Besides, it may help keep my son off YouTube for a little while.

Head, meet wall

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I’m trying to get a package together for my agent (sample chapters and selling synopsis, basically) and sweet mole sauce, have I been struggling. The last couple of months have been stressful–I don’t need to review, do I? Good.–and my daily word counts have been small. Now that I’m in the revision phase, I’m finding all sorts of repetitive and contradictory stuff in there. Characters are introduced twice, the protagonist discusses a clue with a character then decides to hide the info from him 50 pages later, the protagonist is confused by changes to a building he said he’d never seen before.

It’s a damn dirty mess. I really need to work faster on these early drafts, if only to save myself time and effort during revisions.

Anyway, I picked up a bunch of weird books at a yard sale today, and I’ll be slipping out of the library as soon as I dig up a movie for the family to watch tonight. We have a big afternoon of de-cluttering planned, although it remains to be seen which family members will be willing to get rid of some of their belongings (me) and which will not (them). Wish me luck.

Randomness for 7/31

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1) First Pacey-Con squelched by private police force. SDCC just isn’t like it used to be, man.

2) Autoeroticism in America (in convenient graph form!)

3) Kermit Bale. Yes, poster, you do, in fact, have too much time on your hands.

4) What does Harvard have to teach YOU about vampires in film and literature? Take the online course and find out.

5) Captain Higgins, flatworm of power!

6) Photoshop Time portals. via Kurt Busiek

7) Job prospects for 2011 in the urban fantasy world. Pretty funny, and let’s just pretend she didn’t use the phrase “tramp stamp.”

I try not to duplicate content on my blog and twitter feed

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But I’m making an exception for this:

Tucker Carlson’s conservative news site, The Daily Caller, has been trying to make hay with the Journolist story (refresher for folks who don’t know the story: For a few years there was a private email list for left and center left professors, journalists, policy people, etc to discuss ideas in an informal, off-the-record manner. Recently, many of those emails have been made public, and conservatives have been Breitbarting quotes from them and trying to play it off as a conspiracy of the liberal media. At the forefront of the conspiracy-mongering have been Sarah Palin and The Daily Caller).

It’s driving traffic to TDC, so I guess they’re doing well with it. However, there’s nothing in the world worth the self-humiliation of posting this hilariously stupid editorial about the attractiveness of the Journolist members.

Nevermind the usual juvenile obsession with liberals as filled with resentment and rage. The amount of time the editorialist spends talking about high school cliques is enough to get him laughed off staff of any decent news site. I don’t expect it from The Daily Caller, though.

Here’s a quick tip: Andrew Sullivan doesn’t live in San Francisco. Yes, he’s a gay man, and yes, he’s gotten older over the years, just like all of us. I’m sorry you don’t think he’s sexy any more–I suggest checking out Rentboy.com. I understand you can find some sexy young men on that site. Thanks, though, for mentioning the San Francisco waterfront, though. I wonder where that reference comes from.

Here’s another: being left or center left does not make a person an atheist. Thought you should know.

Last tip, because I don’t know how many more you can absorb: You’re a grown man. For fuck’s sake, get over the high school thing already.

God, it’s a whole new level of “pathetic.”

Randomness for 7/28

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1) Mom creates tableaus to illustrate what she imagines her sleeping baby is dreaming.

2) Via Sherwood Smith: Jane Austen’s Fight Club. (added later: Yeah, this has been going around for the past couple of days, but I’m not going to yank it just in case someone here still hasn’t had a chance to check it out.)

3) Introverts unite! (quietly).

4) Poppy Z. Brite, Tim Wildmon, and The Home Depot. I’m so tempted to send (anonymously) a copy of CoF to the AFA so they can boycott me, too. I could use the publicity.

5) Random House and Andrew Wylie clash over ebook publication.

6) How self-absorbed people behave: political columnist writes open letter to his ex on her wedding day and reacts badly when he’s criticized for it.

7) And we mourn the end of an era: No more blowing up Michael Jackson zombies with your cornapult.