BASFA members Cheryl Morgan and Frank Wu won Hugo awards tonight. Not bad for a club that typically has 10-20 members at each meeting.

Oh, and: Go, Cheryl! Go, Frank!

Read Cheryl’s account here.

Read More

I was looking over my msses last night, trying to get a grip on whether I was primarily a fantasy writer or an SF writer.

It turns out that I’ve got almost twice as many science fiction manuscripts as fantasy ones, but the total word count for them is 1/3 of the word count for the fantasy pieces. So, not surprisingly, my fantasy is longer, on average. Why isn’t this news?

Read More

So two people recommended Mövenpick (aka Marché) for breakfast, so Michael and I tried it (Rick having been hungry and gone off earlier than we were ready).

Nice format (many little stations), reasonable prices, and, as with any cafeteria-style format, quick service.

Read More

Skipped all the panels, hung out in Autographings for a while, took a nap, then went out to dinner with Serah Eley, Erin Cashier, Lawrence Watt-Evans, and others. Great fun!
It was mostly a Viable Paradise alumni gathering, though not strictly so.

Read More

A friend saw Terry Pratchett wearing a t-shirt that went something like this:

Tolkein is Dead
J.K. Rowling said No
…
Hi, I’m Terry Pratchett

Melanie Miller Fletcher offered a better transcription:

Terry Pratchett (the Guest of Honor this year) ambled by wearing
a t-shirt that will go down in fan history. It read, in decreasing font
size:
Tolkien’s dead.
J.K. Rowling said no.
Phillip Pullman couldn’t make it.
Hi, I’m Terry Pratchett.

Read More

So, I got my MA in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill, specializing in science fiction and fantasy. No doubt, the romance writers have had the greatest success (in part because of the huge number of romance novels printed each year).

So I’m reading the first alumni newsletter, mentally saying “romance,” “romance,” “more romance” and starting to feel grumbly.

And then there’s me!

I feel happy now. 🙂

I am going to pick up Marta Dana’s book. She’s amazing.

Also, in fairness, a couple of the other pieces weren’t romance.

Anyhow, go, me!

Read More

AlphaSmart makes great gadgets. If you attend any writer’s conference, especially romance writers, you’ll find a bunch of them using AlphaSmarts. They’ve finally come out with the Neo, which is a successor to their 3000 rather than their more powerful PalmOS Dana.

Some serious production writers use AlphaSmarts in lieu of computers because:

1. Fewer distractions.
2. Longer battery life. An AlphaSmart 3000 can have up to 700 hours.
3. Rugged. Pretty polycarbonate.

Once upon a time, I interviewed with AlphaSmart, who then sent me for a final interview in Salt Lake City. I didn’t get job, but the interview occurred during the Olympics. I was scheduled on flights that allowed me to catch one Olympic event (women’s hockey) before catching my flight home. And for that, I’ll always think they’re a great company.

Read More

I hadn’t really read the manual carefully, so I’ll need a different kind of Bluetooth adaptor for my Canon i80. Not surprised, really, but it doesn’t matter — the extra adaptor and gender changer will come in handy anyhow.

Read More

Occasionally, I’m amazed at the attempt for a technological solution to solve a social problem. Today, this is the source of my amazement.

Thinking back, I can’t say I’ve been so tickled by a display of geek bravado since, well, Flo Control, which was, admittedly, a very long time ago.

Normally, I’m very anti-graffiti in any form, but the amazement is that someone bothered to think the whole thing through and do it.

Read More

Laura Branigan died the same way my late husband did — of a sudden brain aneurysm. Like him, she also had headaches she’d been complaining about.

If you have headaches, especially if the level of them increases, please make an appointment to get a cat scan or an MRI. It could save your life.

Read More