Just in case whoever is concerned is reading this blog…

Someone tried to mail me something via FedEx mid-August. Unfortunately, it failed because I was out of the country at the time (and sent to an address where I have trouble receiving parcels). I’m assuming you got it shipped back–it’s not I’m not cooperating, but I was away from a while and didn’t really have the leisure to check mail…

Walking home today, I was stopped dead by an ad on a French shop, which went something like this:

[nameless shop] has teamed up with [big French charity] to offer you this exceptional deal!
Bring your used jeans back into the store and
1. Save 20% on the price of the new jeans
2. Help preserve the environment!

Turns out the charity is taking the jeans back and mostly selling them back for very low prices to poor people [1]. You know, I’d have thought that “help your neighbours in need” would have been a better description of what you were doing when giving back a pair of old jeans. And not a shameful one, either.

But obviously, the planet is a better draw. [2]

Sigh.

[1] The shabbiest part of the jeans will indeed be recycled to provide building insulation-so yes, it will protect the environment. But it’s the marginal part of what they’ll collect.
[2]Don’t get me wrong, I do think we should be more careful with the planet, and less wasteful in general. But people are important, too, and we’re very far from the point where we care for them all.

[EDIT: no spoilers past this episode please, we’re watching this for the first time…]

Ok, nearing the final lap of BSG (just watched “Escape Velocity” from Season 4), and I feel I have to ask: what the %%% happened to women on this show?
(cut because of spoilers)
Continue reading →

And another afternoon of being pretty busy… I tackled the pile of laundry to be ironed, and dented it significantly. I should have done it last weekend, but last weekend I was still recovering from a nasty tumble on the road with had resulted in a bunch of open wounds and an even bigger bunch of bruises (memo, never run after a bus and trip. Thankfully, I’m much better now, though the bruises are still around…).

In the series “my great experiments today”, I also got to wash a pillow in the new washing machine for the first time. It’s still underway, so I guess I’ll find out if I got the right settings for the beastie when it comes out (hopefully not half its original size, and hopefully whiter than it was on entering, too).

Writing activities: a bunch of edits, half a scene in the current short, and some minor website updatery. Also started signing my sheets of Angry Robot stickers (the ones that will go in the books), though I didn’t get very far before my wrist gave up the ghost.

Also did some shopping, and bought the new India Arie CD (Testimony vol.2 Love & Politics), and a cut-price DVD of Infernal Affairs (it’s got Tony Leung–what more need I say?).

Tomorrow, the BF and I are attending a christening, so I need to dig up something suitable in the way of formal dress… (and, if I’m lucky, will not have to iron it).

Hum, TGIF?

Tired. But it’s mostly good fatigue. I’ve spent a lot of time today doing writing things: I sent off the corrections on the Asimov’s story, and sent them out, wrote a bio for the same story and did the same (and forgot to mention the Campbell in it. *bangs head against wall*). Then there was novel-related stuff, which I probably can’t talk about in public–but it was good stuff, definitely. And submissions, though not enough of these.

I’m about two scenes into a new short, one that finally makes sense (after ditching three different beginnings. I seem to be doing that a lot lately). Brainstorming another one, though on the backburner.

I also updated my website with preorder information, just for the sheer heck of it.

Now I’ve done too much computing and my eyes are fried; I still have stuff to do, but I think it will wait until I feel a bit more rested…

And, in totally un-SF news, the BF has finished his PhD thesis today–all printed out and ready to be sent to the supervisory committee. It might be already sent, actually–I’m not sure what happened at the post office, but there’s still a copy lying on the dining room table. Yipee!
(he learnt last week that he was supposed to hand everything in by Thursday, which made for a very rough weekend…)

Gawked from Sarah Monette:
Dave Freer could use some help. He and his family are emigrating from South Africa to Australia, and their definition of “family” rightly includes their dogs and cats. As Dave says in his FAQ:

They had always been part of moving budget: we’re selling our home to do this, and will have to start afresh in Australia. The part we didn’t figure on was currency fluctuation and quarantine costs. Thus we have some money towards moving them, but simply not nearly enough.

Dave is putting his novel Save the Dragons up on the web, a chapter at a time on the Scheherazade model, to raise the necessary money. Waltz over to the website to read and/or donate.

• Currently looking at the page proofs for my story “The Wind-Blown Man”, forthcoming in Asimov’s. It looks like a real story…
• Apparently, you can now pre-order Servant of the Underworld on Amazon.co.uk… Aaand I would seem to have acquired an author page at Angry Robot, and a book page, courtesy of the AR crew…

Tis weird, but tis shiny shiny…

Marshall Payne interviews Mike Allen (aka time_shark on livejournal, editor of Mythic Delirium, Clockwork Phoenix, and Nebula Award finalist) here.

Haven’t been keeping with my short fiction reading lately (lots of novels), but here’s a bunch of stuff I enjoyed recently:

• Offerings by Stephanie Burgis (Fantasy Magazine)
  • That Wednesday, the witch found five silver paperclips laid across her doorstep, next to an apple and a sharpened No. 2 pencil. She regarded them gravely as the breeze from the lake swept up through the pine trees and ruffled her upswept black hair. Then she turned to see if she could spot any signs of who had left them.
• “Charms” by Shweta Narayan (Strange Horizons)
  • Edith nods, but what it’s not is fair. It’s too easy, the tide of war washing these feckless, smiling girls up, drowning Edith in the bile and brine of the past. And she’s hardly old, not yet. Not yet. She shakes her head tiredly. Women’s magic, she says, is like everything else. Not good enough for girls these days.
• “Thieves of Silence” by Holly Phillips (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
  • The women that moved within the ring of flames wore nothing but their shifts, silk and lace that freed long white limbs Zel could not help but admire. Three women among the flames, a fourth who held the knife: the old man’s ice maiden daughters.

Guy Gavriel Kay’s novel is going to be set in a Chinese-inspired universe!

The world could bring you poison in a jeweled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn’t know which of them it was…

Penguin Group (Canada) is pleased to announce the new novel from World Fantasy Award Winner and international bestseller Guy Gavriel Kay

UNDER HEAVEN will be published in April 2010, and takes place in a world inspired by the glory and power of Tang Dynasty China in the 8th century, a world in which history and the fantastic meld into something both memorable and emotionally compelling. (more)

OMG, where is the pre-order button? (love love Kay, and can’t wait to see what he does with Ancient China 🙂 )