Favorite SF novel series? ... and randomness

This question was asked on my LinkedIn SF group. I had some ready responses I thought I'd share here:

Uplift War, David Brin
Ender's Game(first series), Orson Scott Card
Thursday Next, Jasper Fforde (okay, so it's fantasy...)
Foundation series and Robot series, Isaac Asimov
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, Douglas Adams
Grand Tour of the Universe, Ben Bova

Anyone else want to chime in here?

Awesome Lavratt now has three Amazon reviews to add to those I've had elsewhere.

Just watched Sixth Day again. I think it's almost time to watch The Thirteenth Floor again, too. Hmmm...I detect a pattern here. Perhaps I'm gearing up for another movie that involves only a number? 2012?

The Star Trek preview looks promising, too.

I now have a speaking profile (see link on right near the top). If you need a speaker, let me know.

I spent Christmas in bed with bronchitis. :( It's amazing the amount of email that accumulates in just a couple of days!

Finally, this is too funny not to share. Brought to you from the Brunching Shuttlecocks: The Geek Heirarchy.

Victimized! and Awesome happenings

Someone, somehow got a hold of my bank information and made a purchase at an adult website in my name. As a result, I had to close my bank account today. That was the easy part. Now I have to track down all those recurring payments that won't be able to recur... Not to mention the online billing information at a dozen different sites. And then there's the surviving without the ATM cards until the new ones come. UGH!

Well, on a brighter note, the Awesome Lavratt book launch is scheduled for Janurary 25th at Borders in Santa Rosa, CA. I'm also going to be on the radio promoting it on the 7th at 7PM. The radio station is at 91 FM out of Rohnert Park, CA but is also streamed on their website.

I just joined yet another social network. This one is for speakers. And within it is a subgroup of speakers who are writers. And then, since they didn't have one yet, I started a subgroup of Toastmasters. I had a dozen new members overnight. I have mentioned that I'm a networking junkie...

I've also volunteered to speak for the American Cancer Society. Did I mention I also suffer from volunteeritis?

Of course, the problem is that what with the FT job, the book publicity and the holiday preparations, there hasn't been much actually fiction writing of late. >>takes a deep breath<< I have to get better at budgeting what little time I have. I think I may have to blow up the TV. Of course, it's going to become obsolete in less than 60 days anyway...

BayCon, Towel Day and Novels to come

I received a tentative schedule for BayCon in Santa Clara. I'll be on 4 panels, reading and signing Awesome Lavratt and possibly organizing a Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. It just occurred to me today that Towel Day will be during BayCon this year. I'll have to take another look at that schedule. Surely they haven't passed up the opportunity for a Towel Day celebration. Might have to organize an unofficial one, if that's the case. It can't go unremarked.

I've just sent off my story of sentient whale creatures to my online workshop for critiques. Meantime, I'm trying to put a mainstream novel to rights that I started years ago. Someone asked about it the other day and I need something to work on while I wait to send the rewritten story out. I don't want to work on my new novel until the story is sent off since they are both in the same universe covering most of the same events. Too confusing.

Anyhow, the mainstream novel is Blind Date Blues. It has a flaming co-dependent, sharp-tongued woman, a cowboy who doesn't know what to do with her and his buddy who is fond of death-defying feats and alcohol. Oh, and the woman's kid brother dies under suspicious circumstances and one of the three knows more than they're letting on...

I've also sent a number of short stories off to make the rounds again. I'm still waiting for that last mega-issue to go up at Nanobison. I'll keep you posted...

I've started a new regime. Maybe I'll actually stick to this one. I bet the successful writers are the ones that have found that thing, oh what is it?...ah yes...self-discipline. Meaning they can keep their butt in the chair typing away on their novels while ignoring the laundry, the email, the phone, etc. So I've blocked off two hours a day in which I will do NOTHING else. Wish me luck...

I'm going to be speaking at some high schools over the next couple of months. I'm hoping I can keep the students' attention and perhaps even inspire them. A friend of mind warned me about the continuation school. He was afraid they might eat me alive. I doubt it.

I see most of them when I'm out walking the dog. They hang out at the "420 bridge" over the creek behind my house. I've raised five teenagers. I've found that, generally speaking, they don't bite. I treat them all as though they were my kids' friends. I respect them and they respect me back. And they love our beagle.

However, one time, I turned the corner onto the creek path to find a teenage boy of fourteen or fifteen facing me while urinating on the path. He said, "Ahhh...sorry," and put "it" away.

What did I say? "You should be!" and "I don't even let my dog do that!" His friends just stood there. "You're friends put you up to it?" He could only look at his shoes. His friends were probably fighting laughter, though I didn't turn to look. But none of them said a word as I walked on by.

Not one of my more gracious moments. I guess my sense of humor was on the fritz just then.

Tech "Support"?

Would that I could! I would love to post the transcript of my tech support chat today. Shouldn't a sufficient command of the English language be a prerequisite for helping people in English-speaking countries? And I don't know if he was juggling so many chats at once that he forgot what my problem was or he was just stalling for time while he read the help pages himself. Ugh!

Outlook has moved my emails from the outbox to the sent folder, but it's not clear if they're really gone. One of them bounced and it was an anthology entry with a deadline of noon tomorrow. Gmail came to the rescue there. And Outlook keeps trying to send the same two phantom emails that aren't there over and over again.

I knew I should stick to web mail for my lap top! And this is after losing all my emails when my son wiped my hard drive to fix another problem, because I didn't back them up. Lost those and all my pictures not loaded to Kodak. I guess it could be a lot worse. Some people have their whole hard drive fry with no back up. Oh, and I forgot to back up my desktop one last time, and the reviewer list for the Lavratt was sent from Outlook and stored on the desktop. Tomorrow's project is recreating that list. Not to mention calling tech support since the guy I was in the chat with finally admitted it was more than he could handle.

On the plus side, I finished my first story in the universe of my next novel. The people-living-on-whales one. This was actually a collaboration of sorts. My husband and I bounced ideas around on a walk and a drive. He gave me the ending. I wrote this in three days and love it. I've already posted it to OWWW (Other World's Writing Workshop) with one day to spare on the SSIAW (Short Story in a Week) challenge.

We went out to Himalayan to celebrate. Okay, so we really went out because I lost track of time between writing and tech bologna, and didn't have anything ready for dinner.

My Space after 40...

Never say never. I said I'd never have kids. I have 5. I said I'd never blog: I have 4! I said I was too old for My Space, too. Oh, well. If you can't get your readers to come to you, you have to go find them, right? While browsing on Technorati earlier, I found out that the complete novel, Starship Titanic is out. Starship Titanic is an invention of the late Douglas Adams and Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame) has written a whole novel about it. It was first a computer game, one of very few that I've played. I liked the accompanying audio so much I even loaned the tapes out by themselves. And of course, the blogger is a Douglas Adams fan. What Douglas Adams fan wouldn't be an Awesome Lavratt fan? And she was on MySpace. So there you go. >sigh<

Sometimes Backward Is the Way Forward or What's Up With the Wimpy Protagonist?

I was going to begin with a philosophical question, but I think I need to work up to it. In my novel, Under the Suns of Sarshan, my heroine is always, as my brother would put it, "landing in the soup." More to the point, she's always breaking bones, blacking out and laying in a hospital bed away from the crew and passengers she's meant to protect. I'm in the process of righting these wrongs. I'm having her make every entrance on her feet, fighting for her people.

I just rewrote chapter 14 --again, rather than moving on to the revision of chapter 17, where I left off. Like I said, sometimes, backward is forward. It was a major plot problem that was easier to fix before finishing later chapter revisions. Or is it just that I couldn't stand it when I realized that my second half was falling flat and lacking tension and risk? My epiphany demanded action. My novel demanded action.

So, why did I write my heroine like that? Was I feeling vulnerable at the time? Feeling that life was happening to me rather than the reverse? Hmmmm....

Well, onward and upward. I'm running out of people to kill. I've made for closer quarters to provide for more interpersonal tension. I'm also delaying the news of their ultimate fate, inserting more information about the mysterious saboteur and will reuse the xenoterrorists in conjunction with said saboteur.

The really funny thing? One of the subjects I suggested that I could present for BayCon was "Keeping Your Character's Feet to the Fire". Certainly I didn't mean by knocking them down physically every chance you get.

Idea For A New Book

I couldn't get back to sleep after hubby's coughing woke me at 5:30AM. But I'm so glad I couldn't. I got a gem of an idea for a new book. I'm so excited about it, I want to start right away. It will deal with population control, symbiotic relationships, telepathy, epidemic and threat of extinction. It will take place on an alien world with non-Terran humans and giant creatures (I can't tell you what kind yet - you'll have to wait). I have a fantastic world and plot created. Now, I need the characters who will create the story line.

But first, I must finish Under the Suns of Sarshan and revise the two short stories I drafted in September. Or do I? Can I eat dessert first? Writing is way more fun than revision. Maybe just the outline and some character sketches?

Oh, well. This is my kind of busy! It sure beats TPS reports. ;)

I have to sign off and go write my book reviews--which are also not the new book. Arg! Reviews of Red Thunder by John Varley and Armageddon's Children by Terry Brooks coming down the pike at Mostly Fiction.

By the way, I keep sticking my nose back into A Princess of Roumania by Paul Park. It's captivating. And so far it's "Not Another Vampire Story!" Not a vampire in site.

The re-write reality

NaNoWriMo has begun without me. Instead, I'm working on rewrites for Under the Suns of Sarshan, which was a 2004 NaNo novel. It just goes to show how much longer rewrites take than the initial draft. Especially the slop that you can crank out in a month. I'm big on deadlines and think NaNo is great. I just have too many unfinished manuscripts to deal with before I start something new. I'm hoping to get through the rewrites this month. For a break, occasionally, I'll deal with rewrites on the two short stories I wrote in September. Then there's the... I don't know seventh pass?...on the novel after this last rewrite is critiqued by my group. If all goes well, I'll be sending the final manuscript around to agents and editors in February while I write the screenplay. It's what the story REALLY wants to be anyway.

I'd rather be writing!! (@@)

Kicking it off with a new novel

Okay, so I finally gave in and started a blog. You know what they say: Never say never! I will be adding a Google calendar to list local literary events sometime in the next week or so.

The Awesome Lavratt, my first published novel, should be available in December. Here's the blurb that will appear on the back of the book. Contact me if you'd like to pre-order.

Beautiful Aranna Navna plans to conquer the galaxy one planet at a time. She steals the Awesome Lavratt, a mind control device, from a freighter in Horace Whistlestop's junkyard. She takes Horace, too. With the Lavratt, Aranna manipulates the thoughts and desires of everyone around her—until she gets to the Emperor of Calistania. Then things go from bad to worse for Aranna.

The Lavratt, however, has only just begun! Oh, the fun you can have from a small cube with mind control powers. Travel the galaxy with Tyrantz Lavratt.

Silly science fiction at its best. All puns intended.