Holiday update

Happy (belated) holidays, everyone!

Had a nice Christmas morning with the family. Got a new desk which will come in extremely handy for drawing. Also, a stuffed hamster that can moonwalk. I specifically asked for no books or gift cards to bookstores because I have way too many as is and in the next few months I'm getting a bunch more sent to me. But my sister is trying to clear out her stash so she's given me:

Elantris by Brandon Sanderson
The Outstretched Shadow (Book 1) by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
To Light a Candle (Book 2) by Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory
Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara
Cast in Courtlight by Michelle Sagara

So there. I'll get to them eventually. Really, I will. When? ::shrugs::

Hooray!

...and now I'm off until 2007! Hooray!

You do the math

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Math is hard.

No, no, no, and no

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Lather, rinse, repeat. For fifteen minutes.

The review queue

Queue is a funny word. Killer in Scrabble, but if you look at it too long your brain begins to fritz out. Anyways, even though I've put a lot of my reviewing tasks aside for the time being I still have books that need reviewing. At the moment, I'm just reading some books that have been on my shelf for a bit, waiting, waiting, waiting. But here's what I'll eventually get to in the first few months of 2007:

• The Flock by James Robert Smith
• The Awakened City by Victoria Strauss
• Fast Forward I edited by Lou Anders
• Farthing, Issue #5

And that's pretty much it for now. I discovered some vanity press novels that Damon had slipped me along with actual real novels (bastard!), but I doubt I'll ever even open them. It gets cold up here in North Jersey, though, so they'll be at least good for burning. Wow, I'm the nicest. I'm sure other books are coming in, and there might be the occasional pop-up review (a la Ysabel), but for the most part that should be it.

An empty sandwich

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Ever eat a sandwich consisting of just bread, shredded lettuce, and black olives? It's not bad, certainly edible, but I wanted my tuna. Shame I was too lazy to go back and complain. Least they remembered the bread. And to charge me $6 for it.

Wind it up...

A haiku for you

Haiku2 for wistfulwritings
my favorite shop i've decided i need to enlarge my tanith
@ aboutmylife.netadvogato.orgblogger.comblogs.gnome.orgblogspot.comdeadjournal.comgreatestjournal.comlivejournal.commyspace.comspaces.msn.com
Created by Grahame

Oh, now this is funny. Especially that last line...enlarge my Tanith, indeed.

Bow staff skills, vacuuming skills...

That's a lot of canes...

Not my seventh review

Check out my review for Robert Silverberg's The Seventh Shrine!

Old people, schmold people

Gift-wrapped truths

It's true.

The Burning Review

Check out my review of The Burning Land by Victoria Strauss!



From the FBS Quick Take:
The Burning Land is a novel worthy of the term epic, all without being book 1 of 12 and having a Dark Lord bent on making commoners suffer needlessly.

Raindrops keep falling on my head...

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Clearly, the rain gods of Clifton exist just to smite me.

Shtuffs...

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I picked up some more books at my favorite shop. I've decided I need to enlarge my Tanith Lee collection. Here's what I got:

• Ursula K. Le Guin - The Word for World is Forest
• Tanith Lee - The Birthgrave
• Tanith Lee - Don't Bite the Sun
• Tanith Lee - Drinking Sapphire Wine
• Stephen King - Carrie

I was really hoping to find some of King's short story collections, but alas, none could be found. I did notice, however, that Cell is out in mass market paperback. Might have to pick that one up soon too.

Olives in the sky...

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Sadly, I did not see this olive-eyed daughter of hers. I eventually grew annoyed with this woman talking only about her daughter and how pretty she was and how when she got older she was going to be the one girl all the boys fought over and blah, blah, blah. The guy with her was most certainly not a husband or boyfriend so I can only imagine what his opinions on this topic were.

In other news, I hit the first draft of an urban fantasy short story called "Nineteen and a Half Cats" at 3,700 words. I'm currently editing it and hopefully I can stick a fork in it soon. I haven't completed a short story in awhile and was beginning to worry I'd hit a snag of sorts. It's all right though as my backlog of tales is still pretty large.

A new month is here

...and it's raining out, but fairly warm with little to no breeze. What's up with the weather this December? I didn't mean for that question to rhyme as much as it did.

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Journal comics

I'm doing a couple journal-style comics, but don't expect these every day. Just more or less when I feel like doing them. And here's something I've discovered--I never draw myself the same way twice. Anyways, here are two for now (click them to enlarge the picture):

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Top 50 favorite short stories

I've been reading short stories now for several years, and this list (can you tell that I like lists?) has been growing inside my head for some time. To ease the migraines and furry little demon lords, I'm going to post what I think are my Top 50 favorite short stories EVAR. Well, maybe not EVAR since more and more will probably continue to impress me, but you get the point. These are more like my Top 50 stories as of November 29, 2006. And you'll probably notice that most of these come from recent or just emerging authors, and that's because I've been doing more reading of what's current than what's in the past.

Feel free to yell at me for that. Throw fireballs for all I care. Or, better yet, suggest short stories to me that you'd think I'd enjoy. I'm attracted to the weird, the extreme, and the tragic (and, well, anything involving broken robots).

Personal thoughts/comments/quips are added when I feel like adding them. So there.

Also, please note that these are in no order whatsoever. Just my favorite fifty I could come up with.

Top 50 favorite short stories

1. Cory Doctorow - "Craphound" (I will say this time and time again that Doctorow's story of aliens, yard sales, and friendship is one of the most powerful tales I've ever read.)
2. Ursula K. Le Guin - "The Birthday of the World"
3. Ursula K. Le Guin - "Darkrose and Diamond" (I'm a sucker for Earthsea, though I enjoy her short stories about the world more than the novels. Weird.)
4. Neil Gaiman - "Harlequin Valentine"
5. Margo Lanagan - "Singing My Sister Down"
6. Kelly Link - "The Girl Detective"
7. Paul Melko - "Doctor Mighty and the Case of the Ennui"
8. Jay Lake - "The Soul Bottles"
9. Jay Lake - "Fat Jack and the Spider Clown"
10. Albert E. Cowdrey - "Imitation of Life"
11. Sandra McDonald - "Lost and Found"
12. Patrick Samphire - "Uncle Vernon’s Lie"
13. Liz Williams - "Mortegarde"
14. Josh Rountree - "The Queen's Wood"
15. Josh Rountree - "A Better Place"
16. Lawrence M. Schoen - "The Game of Leaf and Smile" (One that I can see myself re-reading every Halloween.)
17. Michael Bishop - "Bears Discover Smut" (Brilliant and fun.)
18. Richard Bowes - "There's a Hole in the City"
19. A.M. Dellamonica - "The Spear Carrier"
20. Dario Ciriell0 - "Valley of the Shadow"
21. Ruth Nestvold - "The Old Man and the Sneakers"
22. Heidi Cyr - "X & Y"
23. Anne McCaffrey - "The Girl Who Heard Dragons"
24. Aliette de Bodard - "A Warrior's Death"
25. James Tiptree, Jr. - "The Women Men Don't See"
26. Paul Di Filippo - "Shipbreaker"
27. Ian R. MacLeod - "New Light on the Drake Equation"
28. E. Sedia - "God's Chosen" (Hooray for broken robots!)
29. Richard Parks - "Moon Viewing at Shijo Bridge"
30. Tanith Lee - "En Forêt Noire"
31. Mary Robinette Kowal - "Cerbo en Vitra ujo" (Effing disturbing. That's all I'll say.)
32. Jeffrey Ford - "In the House of Four Seasons"
33. M. Thomas - "The Tinker's Child" (Hooray for broken robots!)
34. Heather Lindsley - "Just Do It"
35. Ef Deal - "Czesko" (I was really drawn into the story simply by the voice of the narrator.)
36. Lisa Silverthorne - "Wild Feed"
37. Joan Bauer - "Blocked"
38. Pamela Zoline - "The Heat Death of The Universe"
39. James Tiptree, Jr. - "Painwise" (Too weird for words, but awesome regardless of the matter.)
40. M.K. Hobson - "Discovery's Wake" (Go tenure!)
41. Forrest Aguirre - "Treason Is"
42. Merrie Haskell - "Dead Languages" (I'm a Buffy fan, so what?)
43. Lavie Tidhar - "304 Adolf Hitler Strasse"
44. James Enge - "Payment Deferred"
45. Hannah Wolf Bowen - "Watch Dog"
46. Jeffrey Ford - "In the House of Four Seasons"
47. Ann Sterzinger - "Tremors" (My goodness, this horrific tale is tattooed in my memory.)
48. Lucy Sussex - "Frozen Charlottes"
49. Vera Nazarian - "The Slaying of Winter"
50. Paolo Bacigalupi - "Small Offerings" (You commoners won't get to read this for a few months, but by the gods I'm now permanently afraid of the miracle of life.)

And that's all for now. Looking over the list, I've realized I've missed many short stories that I absolutely loved, but they'll just have to wait for the next list, whenever that'll be.