Oh well, it seems the restoration of comments was a futile endeavor. Whenever they’re active, I get so much comment spam that it’s a burden to my server.
Anyone have any suggestions as to what I can use instead? When I had the comments linked to the Rumor Mill, it seemed like no one wanted to comment there. Or perhaps no one would have commented anyway…
The comments on my blog have been re-activated. Huzzah! Well, maybe. We’ll see how it goes. If you want to avoid comment moderation, try signing up with TypeKey. That’ll make sure your comment gets posted right away.
Dear Vast Network of Contacts:
Do any of you have connections at Irving Plaza in New York, or at Ticketmaster, or are otherwise able to procure highly-sought-after concert tickets? My Mom is an insane (insane!) Chris Daughtry fan, and she desperately wants to go see him in concert. Tix to the Irving Plaza show go on sale on Wednesday at noon, and Mother is concerned about not being able to get tix in the mad rush (someone at Irving Plaza wished her a skeptical “Good Luck” when she called to find out more information about the show). So I just want to make sure she gets the tix, because she’ll be terribly disappointed if she doesn’t get to see him. Anyone got any connections, or failing that, advice? I’ve never actually tried to get concert tix to an event that was likely to sell out before.
Incidentally, the Ticketmaster website was driving me fucking insane the other day, because it has this rule about too many page views per IP address or something, and it was only letting me view like three or four pages. Turns out this is not as stupid as it seemed; the reason it was shutting me out is because of the Google Accelerator program, which is supposed to speed up your web browsing. Because of the way it works (something about pre-fetching pages, I think?), it causes the server of the sites you visit to be hit more often, or something like that. So if you use Google Accelerator, be aware that that might happen on some websites. When it does, you can turn it off, or you can go into the preferences, where you can add certain websites to the “do not accelerate” list. Wikipedia is another one that needs to be added (well, if you want to be able to edit pages, anyway–if you just want to view, it’s fine, I think).
Speaking of Locus… their annual Locus Award poll is now online. Ballots must be completed by April 15 (just like your taxes!).
Since Doug did it for Realms of Fantasy, I might as well do it for F&SF…
The Locus recommended reading list for 2006 was recently released. Here are the F&SF stories that made the list:
Novellas
Novelettes
Short Stories
What was your favorite story in the Feb. 2007 issue? Vote in the poll! Let your voice be heard!
 |
||
| Selection | ||
| The Helper and His Hero, Part 1 – Matthew Hughes |  13% |
5 |
| Brain Raid – Alexander Jablokov |  18% |
7 |
| Fool – John Morressy |  15% |
6 |
| Stone and the Librarian – William Browning Spencer |  18% |
7 |
| Red Card – S.L. Gilbow |  26% |
10 |
| Plumage from Pegasus: Our Feynman Who Art In Heaven – Paul Di Filippo |  3% |
1 |
| I wasn’t impressed with any of them. |  8% |
3 |
|
|
|
| 39 votes total | ||
January’s acquisitions include:
I thought I should point out, in case I wasn’t entirely clear, that the ToC I posted for Wastelands is the permissions I’ve secured so far; so those stories will definitely be in the book. But there will also be a few more stories in the book that I didn’t list, because I haven’t secured the permissions yet. And I figured I shouldn’t mention them until I do so.
So, Bear, if you have altitude sickness now, it might get worse…
Jan. 31 — SCI FI Wire published a piece I wrote about Harry Turtledove’s new novel Beyond the Gap.
I was mistakenly holding off announcing this, because in my glee-induced stupor I misunderstood many of the things my agent told me on the phone the other day. So anyway, here’s the announcement:
Night Shade Books will be publishing my post-apocalyptic reprint anthology Wastelands. Publication details are up in the air at this point, but it will probably be published in Summer 2007, as a trade paperback.
I’m still negotiating some of the permissions, but so far, the table of contents looks like this:
So, there you have it. My first anthology. Yeah baby. Read more on the anthology’s website.