Category: Books
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This Summer’s Big Idea
I’ve got a guest post up at John Scalzi’s “Whatever” ‘blog, part of his series of other writers discussing the “big ideas” in their books. For this entry I decided to talk about my ideas for Venus terraforming — or, as I dubbed it in The Ishtar Deception, “cryoforming.” The capsule summary is that making…
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Ishtar Deception: The Movie
No, Hollywood hasn’t come calling (yet). But the Campaign for the American Reader’s “My Book: The Movie” blog has a post up featuring my thoughts on who I’d cast as various characters in The Ishtar Deception. Read it here.
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The Ishtar Deception Faces Its First Test
“The Page 69 Test” is a blog, part of the “Campaign for the American Reader” family of Web sites. Its specific focus is on whether Page 69 of a book gives the reader a good idea of what the rest of the volume is like. (It’s based on a quote from Marshall McLuhan.) You can…
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Unboxed!
I got my box of author copies of The Ishtar Deception, so here’s a first look! The official publication date is June 2, so now is the time to make sure your local book store has it on order, and to put in your advance orders on Amazon. And as always, if you are caught,…
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Retro-Review: Hellstrom’s Hive
Hellstrom’s Hive is a novel by Frank Herbert, better known as the creator of Dune. He wrote it in 1972, inspired by a somewhat obscure film by David Wolper called The Hellstrom Chronicle. I haven’t seen the movie, but I gather it’s an odd combination of a nature documentary about bugs, coupled with some alarmist narration by the fictional…
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EYES ONLY: The Ishtar Deception
I just submitted the manuscript for my next novel, The Ishtar Deception. My elevator-pitch description of the book is “a James Bond novel set in the year 10,000.” Writing it was fun, and I hope reading it will be, too. So, as a reward to everyone for being patient while I let the blog languish…
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Australia, Part 4
In honor of Independence Day in the United States of America, I'm going to continue the narrative of our visit to Australia. On May 5 we started our day with brunch at the Sydney Seafood Market — some big raw oysters and an assortment of sushi. No clownfish. Then by foot to the Australian National…
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Australia, Part 3
Our first full day in Sydney was Saturday, May 3. That was also the date of an "author event" at Abbey's Bookshop in downtown Sydney, which was one reason we scheduled our visit then. The reading and signing were set for afternoon, so in the morning we woke early and breakfasted at a chocolate shop…
The Cambias Digression 