Month: October 2015

  • Saturday Morning link roundup

    Saturday Morning link roundup

    A few of the things that caught my eye on the internet this week… A very unusual book. It’s not a self-published memoir, but one published by a chemical company? And a fascinating glimpse into the world of chemistry in a time when things were very very different than they are now. Recklessness, determination, and…

  • Curmudgeon Reviews: Steelheart

    Curmudgeon Reviews: Steelheart

    Steelheart (Reckoners Book 1) by Brandon Sanderson A review written by Sanford Begley I think I owe Brandon Sanderson an apology, though I’ve never met him. I have avoided his books like the plague because in my opinion he couldn’t write an ending. I am happy to be proven wrong. This is the first book…

  • Halloween Sale!

    Halloween Sale!

    A bunch of Indie Author friends decided the Labor Day Sale was so much fun, we should do it more often. So, Oh Best Beloved Readers, here are a bagful of treats for you… Books on sale, even some for free! Check the sale prices, they will be changing through the weekend. Herding authors is…

  • It’s Back

    It’s Back

    After a couple of days of being less than functional, my blog is back up (I hope. If you’re seeing this, then good!) and running. On the other hand, I have an exam in a couple of hours. I’ll try to put up a real post with actual content this afternoon. I have a lot…

  • Brushstrokes III

    Brushstrokes III

    I’m still painting, and I don’t think I will stop when October and the Inktober challenge ends. I’ve been experimenting with adding color, and the alcohol inks are still a challenge but I’m getting a better feel for them. I will be setting up a shop in time (when I have time) and selling originals.…

  • Reading to Write

    Reading to Write

    A group of us were prompted to offer some advice to a group of young writers who were considering NaNo this year. You can find Brad Torgerson’s excellent post on the topic here, and if you follow the Mad Genius Club I suspect you will see more along that line – I did mine more…

  • Darkside Cookies II: The Prequel

    Darkside Cookies II: The Prequel

    When I started work on the perfect recipe to lure people to the dark side with cookies, I knew it might take a while to get it right. By working off the base of known-to-be-yum recipes, I managed it in two tries. It’s not that the first recipe attempt was bad. In fact, the First…

  • Darkside Cookies

    Darkside Cookies

    If you hang around with science fiction fans (of any flavor) you will inevitably hear a certain phrase. It’s always offered up with giggles, or a leer, or… Come to the Dark Side, we have cookies! Being a geek, and a foodie, when the First Reader made a joke about the dark side having better…

  • And the books lie in mouldering heaps

    And the books lie in mouldering heaps

    I was noodling around on the net and ran across a book last night. As I downloaded it, because it’s a Project Gutenburg book (free!), looks interesting, and I might read it, something occurred to me. We keep hearing that the book as a form of entertainment is dying. I know people who proudly proclaim…

  • Review: Aggregation

    Review: Aggregation

    While I have been reading this past week or so, I haven’t read any of the books I’d planned to review. I read Dave Freer’s deeply tongue-in-cheek noir detective send up, The Bolg and the Beautiful, a continuation of the adventures of his immortal Pictish king turned private eye. This one centers around Freya, her…

  • It’s all Literature

    It’s all Literature

    From the Encyclopedia Brittanica: “Deriving from the Latin littera, “a letter of the alphabet,” literature is first and foremost humankind’s entire body of writing; after that it is the body of writing belonging to a given language or people; then it is individual pieces of writing.” It is only within that broad generalization that we see…

  • Eat This While You Read That: Lou Antonelli

    Eat This While You Read That: Lou Antonelli

    When I asked Lou Antonelli for a story and a dish, he did something no other author has… he paired a story with the dish. Irredenta, which you can read here for free, is set on a colony world which has roots reaching back to Old Earth’s northern Italy. Perfect to read while you cook…