So...
PRE-ORDER TODAY
STARVE THE GLUTTON
DESTROY THE BEAST
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/three-s
I’ve been writing a lot and not reading much that isn’t research and so not posting much—though if you want to hear about my research books I could go on for a long time! I thought I’d look at some short stories, because they’re shorter.
A long time ago I wrote about five short stories with useless time travel, and today I was thinking about three short stories that are all about stranded time travellers. The first is H. Beam Piper’s “He Walked Around the Horses” which is free on Project Gutenberg, the second is Poul Anderson’s “The Man Who Came Early,” also old enough to be free online, and the third is Robert Silverberg’s “House of Bones.”
[Read more]
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Torcom/Fr
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/the-hea
Yesterday we gave you a preview of 
The Healer, Antti Tuomainen's new thriller about a dystopian furturistic Helskini where climate change is in fully lethal force. Kick off the long weekend by entering to win one of ten copies—comment in the post to enter!
NO PURCHASE NECESSARY TO ENTER OR WIN. A purchase does not improve your chances of winning. Sweepstakes open to legal residents of fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia, who are 18 or older. To enter, comment on this post beginning at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time (ET) on May 24, 2013. Sweepstakes ends at 12:00 p.m. ET May 28, 2013. Void outside of the 50 US, and DC where prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules here. Sponsor: Tor.com, 175 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10010.
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/arreste
And now the story of a wealthy family and the Hogwarts houses they were sorted into upon beginning their magical educa…wait. What’s happening?
The new season of Arrested Development debuting over Memorial Day weekend is some kind of something. It’s all anybody’s been talking about for the past month. I’m so sick and tired of hearing about how brilliant this Arrested Development is! Overrated. So I figure let’s have some fun with it and started thinking about what Hogwarts houses the Bluth family and hangers-on would get sorted into.
Look at post, reader!
[The cast of Arrested Development meets the Sorting Hat]
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Torcom/Fr
http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/05/index
Check out Seanan McGuire's new ebook serial, starting with Indexing, out now from 47North:
“Never underestimate the power of a good story.”
Good advice…especially when a story can kill you.
For most people, the story of their lives is just that: the accumulation of time, encounters, and actions into a cohesive whole. But for an unfortunate few, that day-to-day existence is affected—perhaps infected is a better word—by memetic incursion: where narratives the rest of the world considers fairy tales becomes reality, often with disastrous results.
A motley team struggling with their own unfolding narratives, they are tasked with identifying potential outbreaks using the Aarne-Thompson Indexing and making sure the story doesn’t reach “ever after”…because if it does, someone is usually dead, broken—or worse. When you're dealing with fairy tales in the real world, it doesn't matter if you're Cinderella, Snow White, or the Wicked Queen: no one gets a happy ending.
[Read more]
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Torcom/Fr
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/05/the-fol
Well, another long, adventure-packed chapter, but for fear of driving everyone nuts, we’ll try and do it in one go. Now that Aelius is back (with all the Vesani gold in tow), Basso’s got a chance to handle a few domestic problems.
Chapter Ten: A good deal is where both sides make a profit.
The chapter begins with Aelius’ “official” return to the City. Since he’s already had one triumph in the last year, he’s not allowed another. Basso encourages the House to vote Aelius a rather cruel/prestigious honor, The Order of the Headless Spear. It is… demeaning.
[Read more]
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2013/05/24/ph
http://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=21917
As most of you know, I’m heading to Phoenix to be part of the Phoenix ComicCon. But for those of you who are not attending that little soiree, you’ll be happy to know that I am also making a public appearance at Poisoned Pen Bookstore to chat a bit and to sign The Human Division (and other books you might have). Aside the information in the headline, here are all the details on that. Come on down, we’ll have ALL THE FUNS. Yes, I’ve arranged for all of the funs to be shipped to the store. They’ll be in boxes. Labeled “funs.” That’s how it works, people.
Now I always suggest taking any Wiki with a grain of salt. As a user, you don't know who's posting the info there. But I wanted to mention one way in which Wiki became invaluable to me in researching 1902 Portugal.
I used it extensively as a portal to Portuguese Wikipedia.
Let me give you an example:
Here's the English Wiki Page for Matosinhos, a town where part of The Golden City is set.
As you can see, there's hardly anything there. Apparently English speakers don't care much about this town.
But if you look down the left sidebar, you can see several other languages available.
When I click on Portuguese, I get this version of the page:
You can see that there's a LOT more information on this version of the page. There are also dozens of links on the Portuguese version that I can follow, both of other pages in Portuguese Wikipedia, and to external sites. Each of those might have links to dozens of other sites...and on it goes.
So I've used Wiki this way to help me slip into Portuguese research. If I tried to do research via a search engine in Portuguese, I would be overwhelmed. I wouldn't know where to start or which sites had any validity. With Wiki's help, though, I have a starting place.
But I don't speak Portuguese!, you complain.
I speak very little, and that I had to learn for writing these books, but there are always machine translators out there that can give you a leg up. I mostly use the Bing Tranlsator, but Google has one as well. (Keep in mind that these are machine translations, and are only 'better than nothing'.) Between my poor Portuguese and the machine, I do a decent job.
In addition, if you hop to another Wiki page, you can double check to see whether there's an English version. That page may have similar information.
To research for Book 3, The Shores of Spain, I'm now having to hop over to Spanish Wiki a lot. Since my Spanish is better than my Portugese, this is easier for me.
It's still proving a very useful research trick.
I’ve never been one for big cities. In some ways, I think of it as an extension of my introversion. Big cities = too many people, too much going on, and I get twitchy just thinking about it.
But I’ve watched my fellow authors do the occasional New York trip to visit with editors and agents, and it’s been strongly advised by a number of folks that I do the same, especially with the relative success of Libriomancer.
So when I received an invitation to moderate the Adult Book Bloggers Panel at Book Expo of America in New York, I was happy to say yes. I’m even happier now that I’ve been chatting with my panelists, including Sarah from Smart Bitches, Trashy Books — the woman responsible for making me do this — along with Mandi from Smexy Books and Rebecca from The Book Lady’s Blog.
My BEA schedule, excluding meetings and such, looks like so:
- 5/29, 11:15 a.m. – 12:05 p.m. — Book Blogging Panel.
- 5/31, 3:30 p.m. – 4 p.m. — Signing at the SFWA table.
- 6/1, 12 p.m. – 12:30 p.m. — “Meet the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America,” with myself, Jeri Smith-Ready, and Leanna Renee Hieber.
I am both excited and a bit intimidated. I’ve been to NYC once in my life, helping a friend move, and that was more than a decade ago. On the other hand, I’ll be spending time with a lot of great people, and attending an event devoted to the awesomeness of books. How can you not love that?
So blogging will be light to nonexistent next week. This will be my first time at BEA, and my second time in NYC (the first was more than a decade ago, helping a friend move, and I didn’t see that much of the city). My plan is to try to have fun, hopefully collect some books, and shamelessly gawk at everything.
Wish me luck, and if you’re going to be at BEA, then I hope to see you there!
Mirrored from Jim C. Hines.
Page Summary
nihilistic_kid : A reason to buy from amazon [+0] 
tordotcom : Three Short Stories With Stranded Time Travellers [+0] - tordotcom : The Healer Sweepstakes! [+0]
- tordotcom : Let’s Sort the Arrested Development Cast Into Hogwarts Houses [+0]
- tordotcom : Indexing (Excerpt) [+0]
- tordotcom : The Folding Knife Reread: Chapter Ten [+0]
- scalzifeed : Phoenix/Scottsdale: I’m At the Poisoned Pen, Saturday, 5pm! [+0]
- j_cheney : Historical Fudgery: Using Wikipedia as a Portal [+0]
wiscon :: ihuntsnarks : Welcome to WisCon [+0] - jimhines : To BEA in New York! [+12]