by SB Sarah • Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 09:49 AM
As Hurricane Gustav takes aim at the Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas coastline nearly three years to the date after Katrina, folks are heading out of those areas under mandatory evacuation orders. Among them: conference attendees at Heather Graham’s Writers for New Orleans Conference, scheduled for this weekend. The conference began in 2006 as a way to bring business and tourism back to New Orleans.
Here’s hoping everyone, residents and tourists alike, in that area is safe, the damage is minimal, and that next year, the conference can return to a healthy, happy city of New Orleans. I’ll be there with beads on. Travel safe, everyone. And fuck off, Gustav.
by SB Sarah • Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 03:44 AM
Thanks to Kelly Maher for the link: Diesel has a mess of public domain ebooks available for download. Anyone looking for Alice in Wonderland or Anne of Green Gables, enjoy like a happy ebook glutton.
Brandi sent over a rather startling example of, well, evolution. Based on this article about Florida science teachers faced with teaching evolution to a classroom of students who enter the classroom convinced that science and their faith operate at cross purposes, a romance novel cover parody was born.
As a service to science, I’d like to inform you that coffee snorted up one’s sinus cavity, based on my empirical evidence, hurts like a mother.
Hey. That image looks familiar. But, um, did you have to cover up the blue lady? She’s my favorite.
From StarOpal: do you have a librarian that you love? Nominate him or her for the 2008 I Love My Librarian Award, and your favorite booksmith could win $5,000. Public librarians are eligible from now until October 1, and librarians from academic circles (university or college libraries, etc) can be nominated after September 2.
Taylor Reynolds (can I say again I’m glad you’re home safe?) send over this link, with the following message: “I was introduced to this website and was specifically told, “You’ll like this because you’re smart.” Cool. That was two hours ago. I’ve done no work since....” The Badass of the Week is exactly that. Historical and fictional badasses profiled in irreverent style. If you’re looking for inspiration for an iconoclastic alphamale, have a tour. But like Taylor says, you’re not getting that two hours back.
Wanna see two ladies on a really stripey couch, one of whom is Ann Aguirre, and one of whom is me? Back in April, I was asked to interview Ann Aguirre, and we got into a reaaaalllllyyyy long conversation about the world built in her books and the future of her Sirantha Jax series. You can see them all online - and let me say, if I were sofa shopping, that’s not the sofa I would choose. It was shiny and slippery and very stripey. But for a hotel sofa, not bad.
If you’re looking for travel plans, Anne of Green Gables is 100 and PEI is bracing for the tourism. I want to visit PEI like you have no idea, but mostly because I hear it’s breathtakingly gorgeous, and because I want to check out their absolutely amazing waste management program for myself. Thanks to EW for the link on Anne’s 100th.
by SB Sarah • Saturday, August 30, 2008 at 01:14 AM
If you recall my Open Letter, I have challenged DocTurtle of the Random Romance Title Generator to a readerly challenge. He has accepted!In order to rebut his idea that all category romances are low-grade and throwaway, I shall be sending him a category romance.
DocTurtle, it seems, is a turtle of very large brain, and a professor of mathematics, so in my efforts to select a book that might best represent the category romance subgenre and catch his interest, I’ve been searching through that thread for a book that might fit. His preferred list of fiction is vast and very toothsome: quoth DocTurtle, “I’m pretty big on some of the (pre-)Victorians (Austen, Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray), a lot of early twentieth-century novelists (Woolf, Steinbeck, Galsworthy), magical realism (Garcia Marquez, Hesse, Grass, Bulgakov), and a good deal of Jewish literature (Malamud, Levin, Potok, but especially I.B. Singer).”
Based on this new information, you might have a category romance that may possibly fit his reading preferences. I’ve also listed the three recommendations from the prior thread in the poll below, based on your ideas and DocTurtle’s reading list. If you do have an alternate suggestion, please make sure to list it in the comments. I hope we can find a title that will happily introduce him to the best of category romance!
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by SB Sarah • Friday, August 29, 2008 at 07:20 AM
Cheyenne McCray used a highly scientific method for picking her winners for the Cast a Spell, Win a Book Contest: Sleepy child random number generating.
“I have my youngest son pick numbers in the range of total entries. This time he was half asleep, but I managed to pry the winning numbers out of him. Those numbers translated into the following 13 winners!
I really enjoyed reading along through all the entries. I’m one of those that wants to say “all of the above!” But if I have to choose one, I’ll stick with a spell for a clean house which includes wiping off whatever’s on my youngest son’s face from what he’s just eaten.
Thanks so much for finding homes for these ARCs of Dark Magic!”
The winners are:
Phinea: “I would be able to run my fingers through my hair and it would be perfectly styled.”
Ana: “I would like to have a spell that could cloak my desk and computer at work from everybody else’s eyes (but specially my manager’s) so that I can spend the whole day reading blogs, writing reviews and reading ebooks without worrying that someone will catch me in flagrante delicto.”
Tibbles: “My wish would be that all the sick children in the world would get better and never be ill again. And I don’t mean the sniffles or the flu; I mean the kids with things like cancer and aids and kidney failure. I feel blessed every day that my kids are healthy and would love for every parent in the world to know that same peace of mind.
I am also married to one of those men who leave everything where it’s convenient for him, so that would be wish #2.”
Leeann Burke: “I love the calorie free food and clean house.
However I would also like to control time to stop it so I can get a breath and enjoy the moment. I don’t know about anyone else but I always want to enjoy the moment or I tell myself I should, but never have time or make the time to do just that. So if I could I would like to have tha ability to freeze time to catch my breath or enjoy the moment.”
Vicki: “The instant transport thing is very tempting and I have wished for that when I have been travelling. However, I think I would go with “health and happiness” that I could spell onto a person in need of it. In a sense, that is what I try to do every day as a pediatrician, but it would be nice to have it work quickly and reliably and not have to depend on tired moms remembering meds.”
Jessa Slade: “Since world peace has been taken…
I’d like a smoothing spell. It could go like this:
Twist me, knot me, crinkle me, nay.
When I wrinkle my nose this way
Every knot and twist in my day
Is oh so smoothly wiped away.
This would take care of age and bed-head related morning maintenance routines; laundry issues; interpersonal communications; traffic snarls; and possibly that world peace thing too.
You’d have to wear slip-on shoes all the time and you’d need a counteracting spell when you wanted kinky sex. But other than that I think it’d be useful.”
Tina M.: “an insulated bubbled around my house to keep out all the noise I have in my neighborhood and it would also zap people who cross onto our property line (my property is not the public park people!).”
Ember Case: “nstant Cabana Boy Crew.
At a snap of my fingers, a whole crew of cabana boys (why stop with one when you can have a flock/swarm/harem) would instantly appear, willing to fulfil my every desire. These cabana boys would be willing to do any dirty, nasty thing I wish.
You know what I mean - drive car pool. Drop off the dry cleaning. Pick up the limbs TS Fay blew down that still litter my yard. Take out the trash. Take the stack of packages to the post office. Remember to do daily back ups of the mission critical files on the pc.
What did you think I meant? ;)”
Isabeau: “One that I haven’t seen, that I totally wouldn’t mind at all, is a spell that would allow perfect communication. Sometimes I’m pretty much nonverbal (because of pain/exhaustion/whatever) and would love to have, not telepathy, but an ability to find the words I need; sometimes I say one thing and the other person hears something completely different; this would take care of both those things, as it would allow me to say what needs to be said and allow the other person to hear what I mean.
...and if it extends to “putting the story I’m writing on paper exactly as it is in my head”, so much the better.”
Mahaira: “Since I live far far away, I can’t visit any book signing or RT book fair. I would love a spell that can help me go back and forth, havng fun with my fav authors. Also, it would be wonderful if I win all those awesome contests and comeback with loads of books and stuff!”
Cherbear: “For myself, I’d like extra time when I need it. So I can get enough sleep, get my house cleaned, make dinner, get 2 kids to 2 different activities at opposite ends of the city, catch my train, do my hair, not be late for anything, get all my work done and not have to stay late. Well you get the picture.”
Katherine Dupuie: “If I had to pick a spell it would be to have my bills paid. The stress would be gone and I could read and relax.”
LiJuun: “At all hours of the day, whenever I need a meal or a snack, one will pop up. Food from all around the world, with exactly the type of nutrients I need at that moment, nothing I don’t need, and tasting exactly what I happen to be in the mood for right then. Time for lunch? A perfectly prepared Maine lobster would appear. Dinner? Moroccan lamb comin’ right up! Feeling a bit peckish at around three? A nice little dish of Kalamata olives would be nice. The trick is to match what I need nutrition-wise to what I need taste/texture wise.
And, of course, if I’m at work, it will appear unobtrusively in a brown paper bag and take the form of something likely to be brought for lunch. A salad from Greece or a sandwich from . . . someplace that’s famous for really good sandwiches. The possibilities are endless!”
by SB Sarah • Friday, August 29, 2008 at 05:32 AM
The Langum Literary Trust, which awards two $1000 prizes each year for works of historical fiction, has blacklisted Random House due to the publisher’s decision not to release the Jewel of Medina.
The Langum Trust said that Random House’s decision not to print Jones’s novel represented “a threat to all literature”. “We cannot pretend that this type of cowardice will disappear without serious remonstrance,” it said in a statement. “We do this reluctantly, since our most recent prize in American historical fiction went to a Random House title. Nevertheless, this issue must be confronted.”
Last year’s recipient was a Random House book: Kurt Andersen’s Heyday.
Meanwhile, I have an ARC copy of The Jewel of Medina thanks to a marvelous Bitchery reader, and I’ll be reading it over the weekend, time permitting.
Thanks to Rebecca for the link.
