This is designed to be a quick reference page for those of you who like your information fast. (Note I didn't promise interesting, just fast!). Here you'll find all sorts of odd details about projects I'm currently working on and other things that take my fancy. As this page is new there isn't a lot here yet. But have no fear I'll be filling in the blanks...and if there's no news for a couple of months then I'll do as Grift taught me: make some up!
October 23rd, 1998
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October 17th, 1998 Fancy reading and reviewing A Cavern of Black Ice months before it's published? Here's your chance to get your mitts on one of the highly rare and collectible galley copies. |
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October 1st, 1998
September 4th, 1998
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Methinks the lady doth protest too much! Okay, I admit it, I really do like cats. Nog is only nine weeks old, but already she's managed to dislocate her hock bone. We had to go to the vet, who promptly wrapped Nog's leg in a bandage bigger than Nog herself. Nog is completely unfazed by this, and is running around the house like a mad thing, dragging her cast behind her. She's taken to attacking me while I'm working, and has thoroughly chewed page 376 of my page proofs (sorry, Mari), which, as far as I can see, makes no mention of dogs or any other menace to cats. Bad Nog! |
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My Mac 145B: A Fine Machine |
It's with a heavy heart that I must put my old Mac laptop to rest. I've had her for nearly five years now and I wrote four of my books on her fine old keys. A Man Betrayed, Master & Fool, The Barbed Coil and A Cavern of Black Ice were all typed on her black and white screen. Some might call her RAM challenged and hard drive impaired, but she never crashed during the tough bits, and she ran her one and only program (Claris Works) well. Sadly, she's taken to overheating these past months and her hard drive will only cycle on when she's not attached to the mains. Recently she's taken to hanging dead in the air until given a thorough shaking to get her hard drive under way. The time has come for replacement. I'll miss her worn and shiny "e" very much. |
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Words Moo is back up and running. Stop by and visit Peter Monks (who programmed the environment) and the crew. Just don't blame me if you get lost in the cold dark caverns of Larn! Telnet there directly by accessing: telnet://erwise.mke.earthreach.com:6250 |
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This month I'm reading TEN THOUSAND MILES IN A DOG SLED by Hudson Stuck. Stuck was an English archdeacon who dogsledded across Alaska between 1905 and 1910. He was a crusty old goat who liked to speak his mind, and his observations on Alaska are wonderfully uninhibited. Some of his attitudes seem very modern to me. For instance back in 1912 (when he wrote this book) he complained about the largest mountain in the US being named Mount McKinley by a gentleman who passed no nearer than a hundred miles to the peak; totally ignoring the fact that native people already had a very nice name for it, thank you very much: Denali. Below is a passage that seems especially forward-thinking for its time: "The time threatens when all the world will speak two or three great languages, when all little tongues will be extinct and all little peoples swallowed up, when all costume will be reduced to a dead level of blue jeans, and all strange customs abolished. The world will be much less interesting then; the spice and savour of the ends of the earth will be gone. Nor does it always appear unquestionnable that the world will be the better or the happier. The advance of civilization would be a great thing to work for if we were quite sure what we meant by it and what its goal is." |
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