sparta5

I can't believe there have already been seven episodes this season.  Maybe I shouldn't be surprised though--as with the books, this is going to be over before you know it.  As always, there will be spoilers for the show and the books, so do make sure you're caught up before reading this post.


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Book View Cafe is a consortium of writers, as I've mentioned before. The last four months, several people have worked really hard on completely redesigning the book store from scratch. This is what companies pay big bucks for, but since none of us have big bucks, it's all volunteer labor.

If you have the time, we'd appreciate it if you would try this link and poke around. There is a place for comments, if something is buggy, confusing, you think something would be better.

If you choose to buy a book, great! Let us know how that goes, but just poking around is a big help. Here is the comments link where the designers will actually see them. (I don't think any of them read my blog, so I am going to try to close comments here.)

Thanks!

This is an infographic on how a book is born. Beverage warning.

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

I've just posted the book discussion for Michelle Sagara's new book Silence, the first book in The Queen of the Dead series, over at the DAW Books blog (dawbooks). Anyone here read it yet? It certainly looks significantly different from Michelle's other books. If you haven't heard of it, swing on by and check it out!

Guster, the rescue corgi, has now gone on to his home with my parents. He will hopefully be very happy. He’s a loving dog, but really scared after all the clear abuse he must have had from his former people. I’d really like to kick them around a little. But anyhow. Back to the subject.

Gus is a really athletic corgi and he was willing to jump on any furniture at any time. And now . . . Voodoo is doing the same. He no longer cares if he asked. He just bounces up and then rolls around on the couch with evident delight. Or jumps up and walks across my laptop keyboard and lays down, covering one or all of the following: one arm, both arms, half the keyboard, all the keyboard, the touchpad, and the screen.

Is it bad manners if he’s so cute that you can’t stop him?

Now that’s bad enough, but Viggo has begun shoving the kids off my lap if he wants to lay there. He jumps up and lumps on top of them and licks until they have to retreat.

I believe both dogs have begun calling my laptop: The Interloper. Or possibly: The Invader. Both seem to hurry to get to my lap before it can get there.

In other news, I could probably make a dozen pillows from the hair they are losing. These are small dogs. Where the heck is it all coming from?

Originally published at www.dianapfrancis.com. You can comment here or there.

kith_koby sent me this link. As you're watching, see the effect of personal history on the map, and other elements. At least I found it mesmerizing.

That’s all for today.

Originally published at Jodi Meadows. You can comment here or there.

After some deliberation, I am calling an Open Dinner in Austin, Texas next Monday, May 21st. We'll meet at the Hyde Park & Grill at their original location on Duval Street, at 6:30 pm. Please let me know here in comments if you'll be attending, as headcount can be something of an issue at that restaurant.

See some, all or none of you there.

So I'm thinking about an art-fiction project. Somebody would have to be very chill to collaborate on this with me, so I don't know it if would work out, but here goes.

I want to write a fairly surreal piece of short fiction, something on the far tilted end of New Weird. And I'd like to publish it by having it tattooed as a full sleeve on someone's arm. I envision the words spiraling down from the shoulder to the elbow to the wrist.

The really hard part is I'd like to encode something a lot shorter by having every 7th or 10th or 14th word be red in the tattoo, and have the red words constitute a micro fiction embedded within the main story.

I don't know if I could get anyone to commit to this — that's a lot of needle time, and a lot of spend with the tattoo artist, which I can't afford to underwrite these days — but I think it would be cooler than hell.