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We now have a
publication date for my new novel,
SLOW
APOCALYPSE.
It will see print
on September 4, 2012.
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This
novel is my attempt to reach a larger audience, which I will never
do with hard science fiction like my Gaea Trilogy or the Thunder and
Lightning series. As such, the book begins with a more-or-less
science fiction premise in a more-or-less present-day setting, and
proceeds from there.
SLOW APOCALYPSE follows the story of a family in Los Angeles
as they attempt to deal with an energy crisis of unprecedented
proportions. What if, virtually overnight, all the crude oil in the
world suddenly became unusable? Hint: It would mean a lot more than
just having to walk to work in the morning ...
This is
what my editor called a "comp of the art director's take on the dust
jacket." It will be tinkered with, I'm sure, but this is the basic
concept. The idea is that this is paint peeling from the rusting
body of a car. I thought it looked more like dead leaves, but it's
just a first draft. It will also be jazzed up with "matte with spot
gloss and embossing," which sounds pretty cool to me. What do you
think? |
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Sometimes ya gotta laugh
A man walks
into a bar and asks the bartender, "If I
show you a really good trick, will you give
me a free drink?" The bartender considers
it, then agrees. The man reaches into his
pocket and pulls out a tiny rat. He reaches
into his other pocket and pulls out a tiny
piano. The rat stretches, cracks his
knuckles, and proceeds to play the blues.
After the man
finished his drink, he asked the bartender,
"If I show you an even better trick, will
you give me free drinks for the rest of the
evening?" The bartender agrees, thinking
that no trick could possibly be better than
the first. The man reaches into his pocket
and pulls out a tiny rat. He reaches into
his other pocket and pulls out a tiny piano.
The rat stretches, cracks his knuckles, and
proceeds to play the blues. The man reaches
into another pocket and pulls out a small
bullfrog, who begins to sing along with the
rat's music.
While the man
is enjoying his beverages, a stranger
confronts him and offers him $100,000.00 for
the bullfrog. "Sorry," the man replies,
"he's not for sale." The stranger increases
the offer to $250,000.00 cash up front.
"No," he insists, "he's not for sale." The
stranger again increases the offer, this
time to $500,000.00 cash. The man finally
agrees, and turns the frog over to the
stranger in exchange for the money.
"Are you
insane?" the bartender demanded. "That frog
could have been worth millions to you, and
you let him go for a mere $500,000!"
"Don't worry about it." the man answered.
"The frog was really nothing special. You
see, the rat's a ventriloquist."
More jokes
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Today's Video
I've always hated TV commercials. I've gone
so far as to deliberately NOT buy products
whose ads are ubiquitous and stupid, like
CHARMIN asswipe, GEICO car insurance, and
anything sold by the late (hurray!) Billy
Mays. So I really love commercials with some
wit, some humor. This genre was pretty much
invented by the great Stan Freberg in the
'50s and '60s. I also appreciate ads that
are no-bullshit, that don't oversell the
product, and are honest about what they
sell. Most local commercials for small
businesses really suck, but a few ... well,
I've collected some examples, and we'll be
running them over the next week or so.
Law Firm
More videos |
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Francine's
Texas Cuisine
Chex Muddy Buddies
9 cups of your
favorite Chex cereals (corn, rice, or wheat)
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup margarine or butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
Pour cereals
into large bowl; set aside. In 1 quart microwave-safe bowl
combine semi-sweet chocolate chips, peanut butter, and
margarine. Microwave on HIGH 1 - 1 1/2 minutes or until
smooth, stirring after 1 minute. Stir in vanilla. Pour
chocolate mixture over cereals, stirring until all pieces
are evenly coated. Pour cereal mixture into a large ziploc
plastic bag with powdered sugar. Seal securely and shake
until all pieces are well coated. Spread on waxed paper to
cool. Makes 9 cups.
NOTE: Do not use reduced-fat margarine or butter as
it may cause the chocolate mixture to clump and will not
coat the cereal mixture evenly.
More recipes
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Lee's Link
The
Democrats Who Unleashed Wall Street and Got Away With It
By Robert Scheer
That Lawrence Summers, a president emeritus of Harvard, is a
consummate distorter of fact and logic is not a revelation.
That he and Bill Clinton, the president he served as
treasury secretary, can still get away with disclaiming
responsibility for our financial meltdown is an insult to
reason.
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“...
this Podkayne's story is not a Shavian-Voltairean
satire but a nicely traditional combination of
bildungsroman, alien contact, planetary adventure,
and disaster scenario featuring a smart, mouthy
young person as narrator and stirrer-up-of-plotpoints. ”
Russell Letson,
Locus
Buy It
Graceful
Woman Warrior
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Cirocco
September 7, 1999.
Today at 2:45 PM we took our beloved dog, Cirocco, to the vet, where she
was given a lethal injection. She died in our arms and seemed to feel no
pain. I wish it was the same for myself.
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VarleyNews &
Updates
January, 2012:
Movie
Reviews:
Margin Call
*
Impostor
*
Midnight
in Paris
*
The
Little Giant
*
Hopscotch
*
Rio Bravo
*
Obsession
*
Contagion
*
The
Tree of Life
*
True Crime
*
The Way Back
*
Attack the
Block
*
Wild Target
*
Cutter’s Way
*
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
*
Hot Millions
*
The Stunt Man
*
Dead Calm
*
Cowboys
and Aliens
*
Water
For Elephants
December, 2011:
Movie
Reviews:
Richard III
*
The
Long Kiss Goodnight
*
The Town
*
The Company
Men
*
You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger
*
Good
Night, Nurse
*
Bigger
Than Life
*
It! The
Terror from Beyond Space
*
X the
Unknown
*
Win Win
*
Jane Eyre
*
A Day at
the Races
*
A
Night at the Opera
*
Stone
*
The
Invisible Man
*
The Innocents
*
The
Cameraman
*
Breakfast of Champions
*
Mother Night
*
In a
Lonely Place
*
The Pink Panther Saga
*
Two Tars
*
You’re Darn Tootin’
*
Putting Pants on Philip
*
Big Business
*
Habeas Corpus
*
The Prize
*
My Man
Godfrey
*
I Married
a Witch
*
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011)
*
Noises Off
*
Bridesmaids
*
Matinee
*
Cedar Rapids
*
Kelly’s
Heroes
*
Hugo
*
The Help
November, 2011:
Movie
Reviews:
Dead of Night
*
The
Adjustment Bureau
*
Rango
*
Welcome
*
El Dorado
*
Source Code
*
Tightrope
*
Rubber
*
The Best Man
*
Limitless
*
The Music Man
*
Under
Siege
*
The Fighter
*
Three Kings
*
Unstoppable
*
Legally
Blonde
*
Super 8
*
New
York, New York
*
A
Place in the Sun
*
Men
Behaving Badly, Series 2
*
The White Ribbon
*
Monsters
*
How to
Kill Your Neighbor’s Dog
*
The
Three Penny Opera
*
Gaslight
(1944)
*
84
Charing Cross Road
*
Night
Train to Munich
*
Airplane!
*
The Coen Brothers
October 27, 2011:
The results are in, and they are … inconclusive. About half
of you liked SLOW APOCALYPSE as the title for
my upcoming book, and half preferred ONE MINUTE TO
MIDNIGHT. That’s those of you who had a preference.
Some of you didn’t like either of them. A few thought either
one was okay.
There were a few dozen suggestions for alternatives. Some of
them were quite good, but none stood out as something I just
HAD to use. That’s the way it goes with titles sometimes.
Most of the time I KNOW what the title should be. There’s
just no question in my mind. But every once in a while
nothing really satisfies, and we go to press with something
that I will never be happy with. That looks to be the case
here.
I
have a policy of answering all my email, except for those
very infrequent rants from cranks and idiots. This time the
volume of mail was such that I’d end up using most of the
day writing emails, and I hope you would prefer me to spend
that time continuing work on my next novel, DARK
LIGHTNING, the fourth and final book in the
THUNDER AND LIGHTNING series. So please forgive me,
and accept this group mailing along with my thanks for your
responses.
October 21, 2011:
You Heard It Here
First!!!!
Earlier this year I finished a novel that I titled ONE MINUTE TO
MIDNIGHT. I withheld announcing that here on the website because my
editor had some concerns and said she might need some re-writes. And
there was also the matter of the title. She didn’t like it, and to
be frank, I wasn’t wild about it, either. It was just the best of a
dozen unsatisfactory titles I came up with.
Today I was informed that she wants to call it SLOW APOCALYPSE. This
makes sense, as the reason I wrote it is that she wanted a
post-apocalyptic novel, a non-SF story (though all post-apocalyptic
novels, by their nature, have SF elements) that she could push
harder than the typical SF novel gets pushed. That sounded like a
good idea to me, so I wrote a story about the development of a
bacterium that turns crude oil into a useless, gooey mass. It gets
loose, and suddenly we are faced overnight with the situation we all
know is coming sooner or later: The end of the world’s oil supplies.
How would this affect the world? Pretty badly, and pretty quickly, I
felt. So, though the disaster is slow compared to an earthquake or a
tsunami, it’s rapid enough to disrupt and then damn near destroy our
accustomed way of life in months, not years. I hope you, my readers
will buy it and enjoy it.
Publication will be in October … of next year. It takes time to plan
the sort of roll-out and ad campaign I hope to see for this book. So
please be patient. When I have an exact date, I will let you know
here. You can also come here for a first look at the cover, when I
get a copy. We’ll let you know.
So, purely to satisfy my curiosity, what do you think of the two
titles? Love them both, but one slightly more? Love one, hate the
other? Hate them both? Any suggestions? I warn you that suggestions
are unlikely to be considered unless they are SO good they might
propel me to the top of the bestseller lists. But I’d still like to
see them.
... before that
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