• Website outage and recovery (and kudos to IDrive)

    01 Jul 2011 » 2 min read about Blog & Site Meta

    So if you have been following along in the last 24 hours, you’ll know that this site was down for most of yesterday. It went down just before 11am. As of 2:30am EDT on July 1, the site is back up and by my estimates, 99.9% restored. The specifics of what happened are not completely…

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  • Where does a fan’s responsibility lie? Amazon’s screw-up with A Dance with Dragons

    29 Jun 2011 » 4 min read about Reading & Books

    It is by no means any secret now that Amazon in Germany screwed up and shipping about 180 copies of George R. R. Martin’s A Dance with Dragons to people who had placed orders. Martin is furious about this, as he should be. A Dance with Dragons is book 5 in the Song of Ice…

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  • Holiday weekend posts on writing short fiction

    29 Jun 2011 » 1 min read about Blog & Site Meta, Writing & Publishing

    I’ll be out of town for the Fourth of July holiday weekend. My access to the Interwebs may be limited. In order that you don’t feel neglected here, however, I am preparing a series of posts on writing. There will be four posts covering my thoughts on some of the basic areas of writing short…

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  • Google+ and Google Takeout

    29 Jun 2011 » 2 min read about social networking

    I saw two new Google tools today. One of them won’t be available for a little while, and one of them is available right now. Google+ is Google’s attempt to take on Facebook. It is a social networking venue that appears to address one of the chief concerns that people have with Facebook: that all…

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  • The Twitter twipping point

    28 Jun 2011 » 1 min read about social networking

    I noted today on my Twitter feed that I have reached what I call (in Elmer Fudd-like tones) a Twitter twipping-point; that is: the point at which your number of followers exceeds the number of people you follow. As of a little while ago, I followed 198 people and had 199 followers. I’m not really…

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  • Some good writing advice for those just starting out

    28 Jun 2011 » 1 min read about Writing & Publishing

    My friend, and fellow Arlington Writers Group member, Michael J. Sullivan has been writing a series of posts on writing advice for writers who are just getting their start. Michael knows what he is talking about. He is a best-selling e-book author of the Riyria Revelations series, which later this year will be re-released by…

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  • My latest Wayward Time Traveler column is up at SF Signal

    28 Jun 2011 » 1 min read about Blog & Site Meta

    In this week’s column, “Conversations with Dead Science Fiction Writers“, I list some of those writers I never got to meet, and what I would like to talk with them about today, if I could. Head over to SF Signal and check it out.

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  • Current events

    27 Jun 2011 » 1 min read

    While I no longer read a regular newspaper or watch the nightly news, I still managed to follow current events thanks to online news sources. Since there have been a few interesting ones lately, I thought I’d mention them: Congratulations, New York, for your demonstration of reason in allowing same-sex marriage. It boggles the mind…

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  • Vacation in the Golden Age, Episode 18: December 1940

    27 Jun 2011 » 14 min read about 1940, episodes

    I did a cursory roll call as I prepared for this Episode, which concludes the year 1940. The list of authors that have appeared in the first 18 months of this Vacation brings up two curious facts: So far as I can tell (and please correct me if I am wrong) none of the authors…

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  • My Readercon panels

    25 Jun 2011 » 2 min read about Travel

    I got my schedule of Readercon panels the other day. Since the schedule is still tentative, I’ll hold off posting the schedule until it is finalized. But I will tell you that I will be appearing in two panels: We All Produce, We All Consume. Paul Di Filippo, Gemma Files, Robert Killheffer, K.A. Laity (leader), Jamie…

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