Wednesday, January 28, 2009

My blog made a top SF blog list!

I love lists. I love making them and ticking things off of them. But best of all is making it onto a "best of" list!

A brand new blog, Distance Learning Net, loves making lists, too. My blog is listed among 15 other general SF blogs on the blog's top 100 science fiction blogs list. There are also categories for movies, TV, books, reviews, etc.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Robots, AIs and mind control

I attended the robot exhibit opening at the Sonoma County Museum on Friday night. Amazing sculptures! Most were made from "found metal objects". Tea pot spouts became robot noses, clocks and radio cabinets became torsos. A very tall robot had moving arms and wore laser guns on its hips. Downstairs they have robot toys from days gone by. Mostly of Robbie the Robot. It was nice to see a photo montage and banner from the Technology High School Robotics club there since my son has been a member.

The exhibit will continue until April 3rd. Here's the website for more information.

Sticking with the robot theme, check out this robot that shoots webs like Spiderman to catch bad guys.

Here's more robot lover resources:
San Francisco Robotics Society of America
The Tech Museum: Robotics in San Jose
JPL Robotics
Robots Podcast and Community

Now, AIs and mind control? Where do we look for that?
If you're local, and read this in time, you'll trot on over to Borders on Santa Rosa Ave. in Santa Rosa at 3PM on Sunday, Jan. 25, for my launch of Awesome Lavratt.

If you can't make it, you can always order Awesome Lavratt online.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Book review and guest blogger, Sue Lange

My review of the Promise of Wolves by Dorothy Hearst is up at Mostly Fiction. It was a great book. Now I'm reading a mystery, Tahoe Avalanche by Todd Borg.

I've decided that I'm really mostly a SF gal. There's a lot of fantasy stuff that I just can't get into. So, I just started but didn't finish one. I won't tell you what it was because it wasn't the author. It was me. It's just not my cup of tea. And then the next book on my TBR shelf was yet another fantasy book. It's been too long since I read a good SF. I have plenty waiting in the wings.

I'm reading the mystery first as I promised to review it. I'm enjoying though, so far. The only reason I don't read mysteries is I'm afraid I'll like them too much. ;)

Mind you there's some fantasy I love. Promise of the Wolves is fantasy. And I'm crazy for the Thursday Next novels by Jasper Fforde. I'm just more picky with it than I am with SF.

I'd like to invite everyone to visit my other blog, Science Fiction Matters: and all things Lavrattian this week. My friend from Broad Universe, Sue Lange is guest blogger.

Friday, January 16, 2009

SF news, new gigs, new frustrations and bad omens

Received two invitations today. I'll be reading from Awesome Lavratt this Sunday at Coffee Catz in Sebastopol. I'll also be a presenter at a writing conference in October put on by Redwood Writers.

I had intended to upload at least a portion of the interview on KRCB to my website. I either don't have the right software to make it happen or I don't know enough about them to make it happen. I'll have to do some serious digging for the answer - unless there's someone out there that can help? I have the whole interview on CD and on my computer but the whole thing is 50 mb. I have garage band but don't even know how to import it or if I can. Ugh!

SciFi wire has a piece on the Stargate Universe cast.

There's a fun article at I09 about crazy or cruddy jobs held by SF authors. It reminded me of how blessed I am. It was my SF writing that helped land my day job, which is also writing. So I'm paying the bills with my writing while I establish myself as a novelist. It cuts into my fiction writing time but keeps my skills sharp and the financial pressure away.

Today at work one of the other staff writers suggested I write a sf novel about the payments industry. And the other writer interviewed a guy today who rode orcas at SeaWorld before he got into payments. I wonder if he considered writing sf first?

And who else is going to die? Celebrity deaths always seem to come in threes. We have Patrick McGoohan from The Prisoner and Ricardo Montalban both this week.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Mars - my current favorite planet

Mars on a Shoestring?

And the Chinese are sending a probe to Mars.

On the Awesome Lavratt front: Just found out my trade edition from createspace is spineless! Or rather, it has nothing printed on the spine. Ahhh, the joys of publication.

The Word by Word radio interview went well on Wednesday night. Aside from a couple of bonehead slips, I sounded reasonably intelligent. I'll be posting it on my site eventually. Or at least excerpts.

I attended the monthly meeting of Redwood Writers today and I think we must have had 60 people in that room. We had to keep fetching more chairs. If you're a Sonoma County writer or want to be a writer and live in the county, this is a hoppin' club and the best place to start.

Also, I want to plug LinkedIn again. There are groups there for everything. There's at least one sf group. Lots of writers groups. You can visit my page to see links to all the groups I've found helpful so far.

My favorite word this week was abyss. Perhaps if we intentionally come up with favorite words and intentionally use them to death for a while, we won't be doing it on accident? Worth a try. Anyone who has ever had to edit their own or someone else's writing, knows what I mean.

And we all have favorite words we pepper our speech with.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

On the radio tonight!

I'm the guest on Word by Word tonight at 7PM PST on KRCB 91 FM.
It's a local low frequency station but you can "tune in" on your computer on KRCB's website.

I read from Awesome Lavratt and also my short, "Jolaneering". And, of course, I talk about writing and SF.

I've also just sent off a review copy of Awesome Lavratt to Australia. International reviews. Awesome!!

More later. I'm still dragging from the bronchitis.

Friday, January 2, 2009

Awesome Lavratt news still pouring in...

The New Year, for me started with a review Awesome Lavratt from SFCrowsnest. :)

And the head cold that should have come BEFORE my bronchitis. UGH!

Thanks to Amazon tags, Awesome Lavratt is gaining all kinds of cyber space. 14 pages of Google search sites and counting.

And I've come up with a platform of sorts to help with marketing. Most exciting! Now it's back to my Toastmasters club to perfect my new speech topic: Control is just an illusion. Doesn't that just sum up Awesome Lavratt? And what a versatile speech topic that can go ANYWHERE!

It's time to vote for your favorite books over at Preditors and Editors. I'm in two anhthologies listed there. The Best of Every Day Fiction 2008 and This Ain't No Rodeo. And on the EDF front, my copies arrived on Wednesday. The cover is most impressive and sports a nice little snippet from a Wall Street Journal review. If you haven't purchased yours yet, they are still available at Every Day Fiction and Amazon.