The Cambias Digression

Notes and thoughts on everything from what I had for breakfast to the fate of the Universe.

  • LunaCon 2014, Featuring ME!

    If you're going to be near Westchester County, New York this weekend, please consider stopping by the Hilton Westchester hotel in Rye Brook for Lunacon, New York's venerable science fiction convention. I'll be there, and here's my schedule: Friday, March 14, 5pm: Alternate Technologies in Historical Fiction — I'll be moderating a panel as we discuss…

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  • Promotional Round-Up

    A little housekeeping here. I'll be a guest at Lunacon in Rye, New York this coming weekend (March 14-16). If you're in the area, come and hear me talk about games, time travel, and Gravity, among other topics. You can also hear some expert science discussion by Dr. Diane A. Kelly. March 30 I'll join Brian…

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  • A Darkling Sea — The Musical!

    Despite having written a guest blog post about who I'd like to see in a movie version of A Darkling Sea, I'm pretty certain that it's one book which will never be filmed. As I pointed out in the blog post, it's about the most unfilmable novel ever written. Most of it takes place in…

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  • How To Authorify, Part 3

    February 2014 was a revelation to me. Up until A Darkling Sea came out, I still had the quaint belief that the author's job was to write stuff and the publishers took care of selling it. I forgot that one of the most effective selling tools in the publisher's kit is the author. During February…

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  • More Guest Blog Action!

    Here are a couple more guest-blog posts.  At My Book, The Movie I give my imaginary cast for the entirely hypothetical film version of A Darkling Sea. At The Qwillery I've got a guest post about sexifying monsters in fiction and film. Don't worry, it's safe for work.  

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  • It Gets Real

    Recently I've been rereading some classic detective stories — some of the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, some of G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown stories, and some of Raymond Chandler's works. It occurred to me that mystery stories, and the historical development of the genre, had an interesting parallel with science fiction.  Both science…

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  • Lovecraftian Interlude

    Recently I've been re-reading H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness for the umpty-ninth time. It's one of my favorite stories, and like many great stories one keeps finding new bits in it. This time around I noticed something subtle, so subtle I can't make up my mind if Lovecraft meant it deliberately or not.…

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  • Wow

    A Darkling Sea has even reached the newly-Bezosicated pages of the Washington Post. No word about whether the reporter had to meet with secretive crustacean informants in some dingy parking garage. Read the review here.

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  • Guest Blog Round-Up!

    As part of the process of letting readers know about my new book, I've been doing a lot of guest blogging. It's been fun, and I trust the 'blog-reading public aren't getting sick of hearing from me. Here's my 'blog tour, so far: For the Tor/Forge 'blog I wrote about building Ilmatar. For Lawrence Schoen's…

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  • On the Road, Week 2

    The A Darkling Sea book tour continues! I and my two colleagues Brian Staveley and Ramona Wheeler will be reading, answering questions, and signing books at the following locations. Tuesday, February 11, 7 p.m.: RiverRun Bookstore, Portsmouth NH. Thursday, February 13, 7 p.m.: Harvard Coop Bookstore, Cambridge MA. Friday, February 14, 7 p.m.: I'll be…

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