With record heat and very little rain, Peter and I will be celebrating the fourth sans sparklers this year. (This picture is from a few years ago, when we still lived in the pleasantly cool and damp state of Washington.)
Instead, we are gathering with a few friends for traditional independence day foods like pizza and cake (because all traditions should include cake), and will spend the evening comfortably air conditioned and playing cards and board games.
Happy 4th!
Issue #20 of Beneath Ceaseless Skies is now online, including my story “The Land of Empty Shells.”
Excerpt:
The rest of the birthing was hard work, but painless. Dziko and Terra sprinkled water over the clay to soften it and kneaded the flesh together until there was no way to separate his riverbed brown from her sunset orange. Then they divided the babyflesh into two equal pieces, soon to be their children.
Read the rest here.
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I finally got around to updating my webpage, which had gotten a bit out …
I’ve had a couple bits of good news on the writing front — back in April I sold my story “Stone Wall Truth” to Asimov’s, and this morning I got an acceptance from Greatest Uncommon Denominator (GUD) for my story “What Happens in Vegas.” The latter story was originally written while I was at Clarion West, which reminds me…
It’s write-a-thon season at Clarion West. There are many wonderful writers looking for sponsors, and the money goes to support Clarion West (about which I really cannot say enough good things). I don’t have time to participate as a writer …
Shimmer is giving out free PDF downloads of Issue #10. The table of contents for the issue is:
Blue Joe, by Stephanie Burgis
The Carnivale of Abandoned Tales, by Caitlyn Paxson
A Painter, A Sheep, and a Boa Constrictor, by Nir Yaniv (Translated by Lavie Tidhar)
One for Sorrow, by Shweta Narayan
The Bride Price, by Richard S. Crawford
Jaguar Woman, by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Firefly Igloo, by Caroline M. Yoachim
The Fox and the King’s Beard, by Jessica Paige Wick
Interview with Cory Doctorow, by Jen West
River Water, by …
I had a few close friends over for a casual birthday shindig. As far as I’m concerned, the entire point of turning 30 is to have an excuse to eat cake. I decided on a chocolate-almond-espresso cake, which I got from the Upper Crust Bakery.
It went really well with homemade French vanilla ice cream.
I also made quiche for the party:
I’ve made quiche many times before, but this was a …
Originally, I was going to post about this piece of lemon cake:
The cake was tasty. But now I have news, so I will post about that instead!!!
Scott Andrews at Beneath Ceaseless Skies has accepted my story “The Land of Empty Shells.” I’m really excited about this sale — Beneath Ceaseless Skies is a great market (go check it out if you haven’t yet, they’ve got some awesome stories!).
The Interstitial Arts Foundation is doing a search for cover art for their Interfictions II anthology. Interested artists can post their work directly to a flickr pool for consideration. I’ve submitted two photoshop projects of mine that I thought might be a good fit for the anthology.
Petal Fire:
Pencils Magnified:
Last Thanksgiving, Maureen asked me if there was a side dish I’d like to bring, and, feeling rather adventurous, I volunteered to bring quinoa (pronounced keen-wah). I had never had quinoa, but I’d seen it described as having a nutty flavor. In my mind, quinoa would be about the same size as barley, and would have a flavor halfway between an oat and a pecan. Therefore it seemed like a good base for a Thanksgiving side dish.
Turns out, quinoa is nothing like that. It is …
Jessica (jess_ka) made several beautifully-decorated miniature rooms, and she let me stop by the other day and photograph them. Each room is built inside a box, and they have an astounding amount of detail for how small they are (it’s hard to tell in the photos, but I’d say the boxes are between 10 and 20 inches tall). I had a lot of fun playing around with the lighting and the post-processing.
Jessica did a lovely …
I’m in Olympia this week, visiting family, and tinaconnolly came to visit me. We made shortbread cookies:
The cookies have rosemary and thyme in them. We got the recipe from a post on Maureen’s blog. The recipe says to press the cookies into flat rounds on a baking sheet, but ours were kind of crumbly so we pressed them into a square pan instead. After making the recipe version, we tried a couple variations:
