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Child of Fire reviews, part 7

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I honestly didn’t think it would keep getting reviews for so long.

Behind the cut. Continue reading

Randomness for 12/14

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1) So infuriating and depressing: What happened to Hope Witsell.

2) In a less awful note, Dominick Dunn: bestselling writer with appalling taste.

3) Comfortable interstellar travel

4) Terminator Offers Some Lessons for the Salvation of Your Novel

5) One thing that continually astonishes me about people is the way they leap to the defense of the powerful. Some seem to want to side with authority as a matter of habit. But before I could write about this–and about Dr. Peter Watts’s experience at the U.S./Canadian border–Jo Walton did it better than I ever could.

6) Frank Frazetta’s son smashes through the Frazetta museum with a backhoe to steal $20 million dollars worth of his father’s paintings. via James Nicoll

7) Joe Lieberman promises to filibuster health care reform. His current rational is that he’s against the expansion of Medicare. He had the opportunity to negotiate with Senators on this issue but refused to show up for those meetings. Of course, he previously supported the policy when he ran for VP. He doesn’t want to negotiate; he wants to obstruct. He’d previously opposed the public option for completely counterfactual reasons; in fact, he seemed about as knowledgeable on the subject as trolling conservative commenters on John Scalzi’s blog. Why did Connecticutters vote this asshole back in?

Here I am

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I’m sitting in Starbucks on a day when I’d normally be at Day Job. I’ve taken two days off this week to work on Man Bites World. Hopefully, I’ll have it close enough to done that I can send it to my agent on Saturday or Monday.

Research has been concluded (I hope). Internet squabble dabbled in.

Time to work.

Randomness for 12/3

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1) “Climategate:” Not as damning as certain people would like.

2) My Hilarious Warner Bros. Royalty Statement Former front man for the band Too Much Joy jousts with a major label over royalty statements. Much more interesting than it sounds.

3) NFL creates more stringent rules to prevent players from going back into games with concussions. Which is great and all, but it doesn’t tempt me to watch again.

4) I wish I understood why the NY Times included this as the second sentence in this article: “She is tall, fashionable and, dare we say it, slim.” Maybe it’s a valuable piece of information in an article about a new bill in the French parliament that would require all retouched photo to be labeled as such. Maybe they wanted to deflect accusations that the politician was just a jealous fatso who should get to the gym. Maybe the writer couldn’t write a story about fashion and women’s bodies without taking careful note of who has an approved body type and who doesn’t. It just seems unprofessional to me.

5) I do not want to know.

6) Patrick Nielsen Hayden on HP Lovecraft, the founding of SF fandom, and friendships with people you’ve never met in person.

Guh!

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It turns out that Joshua Jackson has been cast as Captain Foster in the feature film adaptation of the British SF TV show UFO. No word yet on who will be cast as the ultra-fashionable but mean as hell Commander Straker.

And yeah, that sound you hear is me falling over like I’ve been punched in the gut.

Joshua Jackson! In an Interceptor! You know he won’t be stuck with that one stupid missile on the front of his ship. Mr. TV Star is going to have, like, ten!

And he’s going to slide feet-first through an opening in the wall to board his space ship, and I never, ever will. The bastard. I wonder if I can sneak onto the set.

Suspect shot

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I haven’t been online all that much for the last few days, but the news here has been filled with stories of the four murdered police officers in Lakewood (a suburb of Tacoma). Coming hard on the murder of a Seattle police officer on Halloween night, it’s a tough time to be an officer of the peace in the northwest.

The suspect in that Halloween shooting was killed by police while the cop’s funeral was going on. Maurice Clemmons, the troubled Arkansas man who was the leading suspect in the shooting, was also shot and killed by a police officer investigating a stolen car early this morning. Early reports indicate he was carrying a gun taken from one of the officers who were murdered, but I’ll wait to hear if that’s confirmed.

I hope they got the right guy, and I hope the inevitable questions of “How could this have been avoided?” don’t run rampant. I sympathize with Mike Huckabee (for one of the first times ever) for the way “Governor frees convict who goes out to shoot cops” meme has been spreading. I sympathize with the Washington state government officials who only allow a suspect to be held without bail in capital crimes. Both tried to do the right thing, and no one has a crystal ball.

But we still have a chance to do the right thing here. Those four officers left behind 9 kids between them. You can donate to help support those families through the donate button on that page (which should be larger and more visible) or you can mail in a gift. Checks should be made out to the LPIG Benevolent Fund at P.O. Box 99579, Lakewood, WA 98499.

Reviews of Child of Fire, part six

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Continue reading

Randomness for 11/28

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1) Can this be true? It sounds like an urban legend. Peruvian gang spends 30 years murdering people and extracting their fat for use in European cosmetics. Where was *your* makeup made? via lilaschow

2) Now, a palate cleanser: Freelancer funny. Via autopope.

3) Evil kisses? I think I’ve found my first “Nick Biter” title.

4) Ten percent off King Tractor Press comics until Christmas!

5) This link is a serious one: Patrick Stewart describes his personal history growing up with domestic violence. Heart-wrenching stuff. via James Nicoll

Randomness for

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1) Easy newspaper article, type 12: Carefully selected dumb student answers.

2) Author Jackie Kessler breaks down the problems with “Harlequin Horizons”.

3) Photos of a river of hydrogen sulphide in Mexico. via Jay Lake

4) Fish on Europa? via Jay Lake

5) A beautiful animated book trailer that fails to promote the book. Sound, people. If the image is a little out of focus or awkwardly lit, people will muddle through. But if the sound isn’t right, nothing’s right.

6) Smash putt!

7) Twilight: New Moon. “However, last year in the line, I did interviews, where I handed out a list of ten things and asked for which ones happened in the books. Seven or eight out of ten got circled. Then I pointed out that the list was ten warning signs that your partner is becoming abusive or controlling, and asked what they thought of Edward’s behavior in this new light.

Responses included, “I wish a guy loved me enough to treat me that way,” and, “But Bella needed it.”

This year I was behind a group of girls who briefly discussed Team Edward vs. Team Jacob. Each one pointed out that the other person’s champion was possessive and controlling/bossy. “Well, but she let him,” was the final word, on each side.”

Bonus 8)! Team Lipbite!

Randomness for 11/19

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1) How many baboons could you take in a fight, armed with only a giant dildo? My score: 38.

2) The milk industry responds to the findings of Jamie Oliver’s nutritious school lunch experiment, which I linked to in a previous Randomness. Naturally, they claim (falsely) that kids won’t drink milk without a ton of chocolate and sugar. My own son drinks milk once in a while, but I imagine it isn’t nearly as often as the dairy lobby would like.

3) Men married to smart women live longer. via E.E. Knight

4) Economic stimulus that makes sense: Cash for Caulkers. via Ezra Klein

5) The dummy-slap heard round the internet: RWA revokes Harlequin’s preferred-publisher status over new vanity press. I link to Making Light because the RWA still has their open letter behind a member login, for whatever reason.