I'm working on "The Deeps of the Sky" tonight, and generating a regular festival of Words Word Don't Know:

luminesced, tropopause, sheeny, thicks, unnavigable, dartlike,

Meanwhile, I had a little argument with myself on twitter as to whether I should use some modestly bogus science to create a cool special effect. I went with it. ;-) Now I'm stopping because I have to figure out how the protagonist intervenes to stop the Bad Thing from happening, or how he mops up afterward...

Oh, I might have just done so. Woot!

Guess what? The Frostbite graphic novel officially comes out tomorrow in English-speaking countries. It's already crept out down under and in some U.S. places, but May 24 is the official release day. I love Frostbite because that's where things GET REAL in the Vampire Academy series. The graphic novel does a great job of showing this, and in case you don't believe me, I think it's time we take a little tour (proceed with caution if you haven't read the original book). I give you:


THE TOP 10 REASONS YOU NEED THE FROSTBITE GRAPHIC NOVEL

10. Because the Ozeras like to set things on fire


9. Because Janine Hathaway has an interesting style of parenting


8. Because Dimitri makes learning fun


7. Because Spokane, WA is apparently a hideout for evil vampires


6. Because exploding aquariums are underused as weapons


5. Because Mia's been practicing some one-liners


4. Because awwwww, Mason


3. Because where else are you going to find this much sexual tension in a Honda?


2. Because Rose has some decapitating to do


1. Because Adrian is...well, Adrian



The Frostbite graphic novel was adapted by the fabulous Leigh Dragoon and drawn by the awesome Emma Vieceli. It should be available from online bookstores, and if your local one doesn't have it, they should be able to order it. If you've ordered an autographed copy from University Books, their shipment is expected to arrive (fingers crossed) tomorrow, and I'll be in ASAP to autograph them so they can ship out. I'll even use my sweet silver marker to sign.

Unfortunately, I have no info on when/if the graphic novels will be translated in other countries. That's always a tricky issue, but if I hear anything, I'll let you know! I hope everyone loves this one when you get a chance to read it.

The sun just came out, and the weather is finally warming in Providence.

Wait...the sun went behind the clouds again. Oh, well...

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99% of the people who have supported the two Kickstarter projects I've been involved with have been utterly fucking marvelous (and thank you all again, by the way). But there's this remaining 1% who seem to believe they're buying stuff off eBay. Anyway, the very last three rewards for the latest project will go into the mail ($150 tier), rewards for the project that allowed kylecassidy to create his series of still photos based on The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, and that also allowed us to shoot the book trailer. My thanks to Spooky, who's had to manage the maddening task of putting most of this stuff together.

She'll also be schlepping the great heavy box of signature sheets for S. T. Joshi's Black Wings II anthology to the p.o., which reprints "John Four." And they will wend their way back to Yorkshire, England and PS Publishing.

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Yesterday, I sat here for hours trying to find the story that accompanies the title "Forbidden Love, We Croak and Howl," which will appear in Sirenia Digest #78. I think it's sort of "Romeo and Juliet" with ghouls and deep ones. My editor at Dark Horse sent me inked pages for Alabaster: Wolves #4, and they're gorgeous. I have to get her notes on those today. My editor at Penguin sent three cover designs for Blood Oranges, two of which were actually very good. But I'm not sure any caught onto the gritty, bawdy humor of the novel. So, I'll be talking to her today, as well. And...oh, yeah. Trying to work out the whacky – yet erotic – ghoul/deep one LOVE STORY. I hope the sound I just heard wasn't HPL rolling in his grave over at Swan Point. Oh, nope. It was Hubero in the litter box. Never mind.

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I've been getting some very enjoyable RP in City of Heroes and Villains. The Rift RP never materialized. I simply could not get more than a couple of people into the game. Mostly, people talked about wanting to RP at some future date. Anyway, I returned both our Rift guilds back to their inactive statuses, and followed stsisyphus back to the land of super heroes and super villains (and giant spiders). Spooky and I are both still playing quite a lot of Rift, and she's found a good guild on the Shatterbone PVE shard. But we're playing just to play, not for RP.

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Today is World Turtle Day, and I refer you back to this entry I wrote in 2010.

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And here are four more photos from Sunday's trip to West Cove:

( 20 May 2012, Part the Second )

I never get tired of lichens.

Rumbling,
Aunt Beast (La Cabrita)

He hates this room, he hates your mum and he hates your kid.

To celebrate the release of Blackout, here. Have an open thread to discuss the book.

THERE WILL BE SPOILERS.

Seriously. If anyone comments here at all, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. So please don't read and then yell at me because you encountered spoilers. You were warned. (I will not reply to every comment; I call partial comment amnesty. But I may well join some of the discussion, or answer questions or whatnot.)

You can also start a book discussion at my website forums, with less need to be concerned that I will see everything you say! In case you wanted, you know, discussion free of authorial influence, since I always wind up getting involved in these things.

Have fun!

Why did you choose to make Princess Danielle white in your princess books?

Isaac Vainio, the protagonist of your next book, is a straight man. Why did you decide to write about a heterosexual protagonist?

Jig the goblin is smart, resourceful, and in an admittedly nontraditional sense, rather courageous. What made you want to write about a strong male character?

Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.

Sometime this past week (it's all something of a blur now), I was having a conversation about realism in fiction. I think this was with @madge707. We weren't talking about realism as a literary movement, but rather the more plain meaning of the word. Specifically, the balance between enough detail and too much detail.

As they say, you can't fool all of the people all of the time. It's simply not possible. Someone with special knowledge is going to be a much more critical reader of fiction in their knowledge domain. The amount and precision of medical information I would have to put into a short story about doctors in order to satisfy a medically-trained reader is far greater and more demanding than what I would have to put in to satisfy a general reader. On the other hand, there are a lot of doctors and nurses and med techs and so forth out there, so this is probably worth getting right.

Another example of this is a short story I read some years ago, possibly in a Writers of the Future volume. In it, the protagonist is time traveling, and flips through a series of historical vignettes. At one point, the arrive atop a yurt in Genghis Khan's horde, and climb down the central tent pole to take some action. This threw me out of the story, first of all because "yurt" is a Russian word, and to Mongolians, it's a "ger". Second of all, gers don't have a central tent pole. They have a pair of offset poles supporting a central ring. Why do I know this? Because I've spent time in Outer Mongolia, including visiting and sleeping in actual Mongolian gers. However, this is a knowledge domain that I share with about seven of the people who ever read that story.

One of the challenges of being a writer is knowing where to set that dial. When does reality trump realism? Sometimes the actual details really are less believable than the fictional details.

The example that had generated the conversation was that @madge707 was working on a story about a San Francisco police detective. In the SFPD, detectives are titled as "inspectors". Someone in her critique group at the conference was confused by this, not realizing this bit of San Francisco detail. So the question was, did she go for the reality, which was confusing, or the realism, which was erroneous. (Obviously, there are fairly simple ways to resolve this, it's just an example.)

I provided a similar example from living in Portland. While Portland has a police department, just like virtually every other city or town in the United States, the Portland police department is formally known as the Portland Police Bureau. (The fire department is the Portland Fire Bureau, etc.) I'm not even sure most people in Portland realize this. It's not prominently painted on the police cars or anything. Almost certainly no one outside Portland knows this unless they have special Portland knowledge. So, as I said to @madge707, if writing about crime in Portland, would it be confusing to refer to the Police Bureau, or the PPB? Because that would look odd to most American readers, who expect the term "Police Department".

A couple of days later, I'm reading Mark Teppo's excellent and gripping novel Lightbreaker [ Powells | BN ] (which I have since left on an airplane, forty pages from the end, grrr) and what do I find but a reference to the Portland Police Department, being used by a character who is a cop from the Seattle Police Department. The reference is in initial caps, i.e., the proper name, which is of course, not correct. Something the character in question would absolutely know better than to do, insofar as real life goes.

I cracked up hard.

Ah, the magic of synchronicity.

On Saturday at Paradise Lost II in San Antonio this past weekend, we took up a collection to fund a cheese spread. @dratz, @itsaJuliasaurus, @gwenthing and I then hied ourselves over to pillage Central Market on Broadway. We did pretty well by it.

Unfortunately, due to the impending hunger of the crowd upon our return, I did not have time to photograph the spread in detail as is my wont. I did, however, keep the receipt. Forthwith, here is the photo and an accounting of the fruits of land and cattle therein.



From the top, clockwise:

Mortadella with pistachios
It's my understanding that true mortadella is illegal to import into the U.S. The bologna from hell, basically. I like it grilled.

Sopressata citerio
The closest thing to a basic salami in this spread. A flavorful cured meat that isn't particularly challenging to most carnivorous palates.

Proscuitto di Parma (30 months)
One of my perennial favorites, though not everyone enjoys the slight muskiness of this Italian ham.

Hot capicolla
As @psursi said, this is salami for grown-ups. Assuming that by "grown ups" you mean people who like their lips to tingle when they eat meat.

Jamon Iberico
A very rich, smooth Spanish ham with some similarities to proscuitto.

Affidelice au chablis
A blended triple creme with a chablis-soaked rind. Quite tasty and rich as expected.

Chimay
Not the grand cru cheese, but their regular cheese. A good inclusion for the less adventurous cheese eater, as it is creamy and smooth and doesn't get into fistfights with one's tastebuds.

Delice de Bourgogne
Another triple creme. If you're not familiar with that kind of cheese, think of this as what Philly Cream Cheese gets to be if it eats its Wheaties and says its prayers and goes to cheese heaven when it dies.

Eiffel Tower cremeux triple creme
A third triple creme, because how much rich smoothness is too much?

Mimolette (12 months)
A hard, aged cheese that is rather bright orange, with a sprightly tang.

Manchego (4 months)
Young manchego runs a bit bitter and zingy, but without the oily, crumbly texture of aged manchego.

Sottocenere al tartuffo
My personal favorite cheese, a mellow Italian with truffle oil in the milk and truffle inclusions whose flavor has a complex finish much in the fashion of a good wine.

Valdeon bleu
A mixed milk Spanish blue that kicks ass, takes name and starts fights in your mouth. Not for the faint of heart, but awesome if you're a blue cheese fan.

Epoisses
A cheese whose rind is an offense against nature, but once you get past the stinky feet smell, tastes like butter on steroids.

Barkids moon
A new cheese we tried on a flier. Didn't impress me, seemed serviceable enough in a middle of the road way. Flavorful.

Cantal (6 months)
Somewhat parmigiana-like French cheese that was also new to me.

Plus duck rilettes, avocados, artichoke hearts, garlic stuffed olives, salad and bread. And wine. And beer. And more wine.

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Photo © 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Your Wednesday moment of zen.



Flower. © 2006, 2012, Joseph E. Lake, Jr.

The current photo series is from my 'favorites' file, hence the dates jumping about



This work by Joseph E. Lake, Jr. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Just What the (Bleep) Do I Think I’m Doing? – Redux — Richard Parks Is Wise on process.

The Oatmeal responds to a Forbes article criticizing the recent Tesla comic — This is freaking hilarious.

A really striking Absolut ad masquerading as a short film — This is a lot of fun. (Via willyumtx.)

Italy earthquake hits parmesan production — Cheese producers near quake's epicentre fear for 300,000 parmesan wheels that crashed to the ground in warehouses. Epic cheese disaster! (Thanks to Scrivener's Error.)

Gotthard Girl's Pioneering Intestine — Headline of the week. Do you even care what the story is about? (A historical map of European railroads, btw.)

Can a Surfboard-Sized Watercraft Cross the Pacific on Wave Power Alone?

News flash: Congresscritters using slightly shorter words and sentences — Language Log deconstructs a current, somewhat idiotic political meme.

Career Prospects in the Pain Business — Interesting bit of political media theater. (Thanks to danjite.)

North Carolina Pastor: Pen In ‘All The Lesbians And Queers’ With An Electrified Fence, Wait For Them To ‘Die Out’ — Man, I can really feel the enlightening warmth of that Christian love for their fellow man from all the way over here on the West Coast.

NBC, Fox, CBS etc. Protest transparency requirement on Political Advertising — Yeah. Because why would any citizen ever want or need to know that stuff? I should think no matter what your politics, this seems like an issue.

It’s Official: Watching Fox Makes You Stupider — According to a new study by Farleigh Dickinson University, Fox viewers are the least knowledgeable audience of any outlet, and they know even less about politics and current events than people who watch no news at all. But isn't that the whole point of Fox News, to foster a cohort of angry, low information Republican voters?

The Conservative Fantasy History of Civil Rights — Once you endorse counterfactual beliefs in any area (i.e., evolution denial), you enable them in every area. In historical terms, this may be the besetting sin of the conservative movement as it has developed in my lifetime. I can remember when conservatives were realists, but those days are long gone. (Thanks to shsilver.)

Bennett Backs Off Birther Threat, Apologizes To Arizona — I wonder what this is about? I mean, it's not like Republicans have ever had any shame regarding even their most blatant distortions of truth. And btw, this guy was the Romney campaign chair for Arizona. Did you know that? Any guesses on how Your Liberal Media would have reacted to an Obama campaign chair threatening to keep Romney off a state ballot?

?otd: Patty Duke or Jerry Mathers?

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5/23/2012
Writing time yesterday: 1.25 hours (WRPA)
Body movement: 55 minute suburban walk
Hours slept: 6.25 (solid)
Weight: n/a (forgot)
Currently reading: Light Breaker by Mark Teppo (except I've lost the darned book)