Spam, spam, spam, spaceships and spam

A bit of annoying news: it seems my Hotmail account was hacked and a spam e-mail sent out to everyone on my contact list. If you received one of those e-mails I apologize. (Luckily it wasn't anything offensive or pornographic -- and I hope people could tell from the quality of the writing that I wasn't the actual author!)

More happily, LW Perkins, who created that great cover for Fall From Earth, has posted an alternate cover design that she did; it's a great interpretation of the Greyen ships which, like the rendition of the pods she did in the final cover, improves significantly on my description. She's graciously given me permission to reproduce it here; you can also see it and many other great pieces at her website.

Here it is:

Postdated Czechs

(Hey, I restrained myself last time.)

I got an unexpected surprise in the mail today: my copy of Trochu Divne Kusy 3, the Czech anthology that includes my story "Irregular Verbs" amongst the work of people like Jay Lake, Cat Rambo, Tim Pratt and many others. It's a hardcover, and definitely the nicest book my work has yet appeared in.


How nice is it? It's even got one of those ribbon-bookmark dealies.

Reading at the Dusty Owl

Anyone in the Ottawa area is invited to attend a reading of Fall From Earth, along with Hayden Trenholm's Steel Whispers , at Swizzles (246-B Queen Street) at 2 PM on Sunday, September 20th. The reading is part of the Dusty Owl reading series and each of us will read for about a half hour.

In the news

Some years back The New Yorker ran a story about the unreliablity of fingerprint evidence that was one of the inspirations for "Public Safety" (particularly a major theme we might call "Let's not be too smug.") Now they've published a similar article about the total lack of evidential base for most arson investigation techniques -- and how those techniques led to the execution of an almost certainly innocent man. Jason Kottke points you to the article here, along with responses from one of the article's subjects and its author.

Meanwhile, The Globe and Mail has an update on the status of Hans Island, seen in "The Coldest War," (it's real!) here.

In stores now

For those of you who live in the Ottawa area and haven't yet ordered your copy of Fall From Earth, it's now available at Collected Works on Wellington and Perfect Books on Elgin. Thanks to both excellent bookstores!

Worth mentioning

I finally got into a physical bookstore today and found out that "Another Country" got an Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Science Fiction. When I briefly saw Gardner Dozois at Worldcon I thanked him for listing some of my previous stories but didn't yet know about this one, so I'll thank him here.

Hello out there in radio land!

I'll be appearing along with my fellow Bundoran author Hayden Trenholm on "Literary Landscapes" on CKCU tonight at 6:30, talking about our new books. You can listen at 93.1 FM or online at http://bit.ly/16fbe5

"Great New Canadian SF and Fantasy"

I missed seeing this panel at Worldcon on "Great New Canadian SF and Fantasy," wherein I am endorsed by both my fellow Bundoran author Hayden Trenholm and also by Rob Sawyer, who calls me "a consummate prose stylist." Thanks to both (and thanks as well to Scifi Watch for posting it.)