I’m pleased to announce that the formatting and publishing of Cannon Fodder went smoothly, and it’s now available for purchase at most mainstream e-book sites. Check it out:
Smashwords
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
I also got a news spot written about me and the book.
Spring is here, spring is here.
Life is skittles and life is beer.
I think the loveliest time of the year is the spring.
I do, don’t you? ‘Course you do.
But there’s one thing that makes spring complete for me,
And makes ev’ry Sunday a treat for me.
All the world seems in tune
On a spring afternoon,
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park.
Ev’ry Sunday you’ll see
My sweetheart and me,
As we poison the pigeons in the park.
When they see us coming, the birdies all try an’ hide,
But they still go for peanuts when coated with cyanide.
The sun’s shining bright,
Ev’rything seems all right,
When we’re poisoning pigeons in the park.
We’ve gained notoriety,
And caused much anxiety
In the Audubon Society
With our games.
They call it impiety,
And lack of propriety,
And quite a variety
Of unpleasant names.
But it’s not against any religion
To want to dispose of a pigeon.
So if Sunday you’re free,
Why don’t you come with me,
And we’ll poison the pigeons in the park.
And maybe we’ll do
In a squirrel or two,
While we’re poisoning pigeons in the park.
We’ll murder them all amid laughter and merriment.
Except for the few we take home to experiment.
My pulse will be quickenin’
With each drop of strychnine
We feed to a pigeon.
It just takes a smidgen!
To poison a pigeon in the park.
Original lyrics are by Tom Lehrer. No actual pigeons were harmed making this blog post.
It snowed again since I took these photos, but I still maintain that it’s spring. Sort of.
As of the closing of the campaign on March 28, we’d raised $266, or 118% of the $225 goal. Thanks to all the backers, here’s the cover art that you have made possible:
Yeah! Again many thanks to Kelsey King, the illustrator who drew this. E-books of Cannon Fodder with this cover will be available at Smashwords and Amazon very soon. I’ll keep you guys posted.
First of all, I’m happy to announce that the Kickstarter campaign for Cannon Fodder‘s cover art is now fully funded. Thanks to everyone who backed the project. There’s still ten days left on the campaign, so if you want a copy of the book or you want to help it meet its reach goal, check it out.
Meanwhile, here’s a few more Kickstarter campaigns that I think are pretty awesome:
Image courtesy of the campaign page.
The Bacterionomicon by Nerdcore Medical
Nerdcore Medical is a tiny company based in Texas that makes educational games based on the founder’s own experience going through med school. Their latest project: the Bacterionomicon, a lushly illustrated book where antibiotics are cast as clerics and infectious diseases are eldritch abominations. Just check out the illustrations on this thing.
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Image courtesy of the campaign page.
Skies of Fire by Ray Chou
Another project I picked out for its gorgeousness. It’s a full-color webcomic about various fantasy nations doing airship battles with each other. Need I say more?
I was in the mood for baking and wanted to try something completely different. So I tried rugelach, a traditional Jewish dessert. This is Baking With Julia‘s take on the dish, modified so it would be easier to cook in my kitchen.
The dough:
* You can use all-purpose flour. I find that half and half all-purpose and whole wheat flour works just fine and gives baked goods a nutty taste.
The filling:
The topping:
Beat together the butter, cream cheese, and salt with a mixer. Beat in the sugar. Switch to mixing with a spoon and gradually mix in the flour. Divide the dough in half and form each half into a rough brick shape (see below). Wrap each brick up tightly and put in the freezer for one hour.
While the dough’s chilling, prepare the filling and the topping. For the filling, put the apricots in a saucepan and just cover with water:
Stew the apricots on low heat until they’re just mushy, about 15 minutes. Take off the heat and add the lemon juice and rum. Mash the apricots into a paste. Set aside.
Mix the cinnamon and sugar and set aside.
For the topping, chop the nuts into large pieces. Set aside.
Once your dough’s chilled, you’re ready to assemble your rugelach. Work with one dough brick at a time. Roll the dough out until it’s a rectangle about 1/4″ thick. Cut the rectangle in half the long way.
Spread each side with one quarter of the apricot pureé, then sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar. Then roll it up like a jelly roll.
At this point, the rugelach are delicious raw. The dough doesn’t contain any raw eggs, either, so you don’t have to feel bad about making off with some of it. Wrap the rolls tightly in plastic wrap and put them back in the freezer for an hour. You’ll have four rolls total.
When you’re ready to bake the rugelach, work with one roll of dough at a time so it doesn’t get too soft. Slice the roll into disks of desired thickness (this will only affect the cooking time.) Put the rolls on a lined baking sheet. I can’t emphasize that enough.
Sprinkle the disks with the chopped nuts, and if you want, more cinnamon sugar. Bake for 15-20 minutes.
Here’s what they look like when they’re done:
Somehow, these rugelach look nothing like the photo in Baking With Julia, and neither my rugelach nor Julia’s look like other pictures of rugelach from the Internet. But they were delicious.
Fireside Magazine is a monthly e-zine that aims to publish great short stories and pay writers a fair price for their work. It’s well worth your attention.
The campaign for this little guy is over, but I still want one.
I have a Kickstarter campaign running right now for my book’s cover art. So throughout the month of March, while that’s running, I’m going to point out other Kickstarter projects that are cool.
To start off with, did you know that Kickstarter has special pages dedicated to projects about Cthulhu and robots?
Hey, guys? I have exciting news. My last ebook, The Confederacy of Heaven, was published in the fall of 2010. Now, after three and a half years, I’m finally ready to publish another ebook.
Kelsey’s concept of what the book will look like.
It’s called Cannon Fodder, and here’s a taste of how it goes:
The good guys always win – and Alec Nightshade isn’t going to take it anymore. Alec’s a fifteen-year-old member of the Norgolian Society of Evil Overlords, which means not having much of a life expectancy. When a hero hunts down and kills his aunt, the Viper, he sets off on the first evil scheme of his life to set things straight.
Starting an evil scheme proves to be harder than it looks. Alec catches a break when a friend tips him off about the Eggbeater of Doom, a device that can summon a kiloton-sized elder god with a grudge against those puny hairless apes. If Alec blabs about the Eggbeater, gets a hero to go after him, then kicks the hero’s ass, he can break the cycle of prophecy that dooms his side never to see the age of fifty. He doesn’t mean to hurt anybody else. But when another overlord steals the Eggbeater with the intent to actually level a city, Alec knows what he and his gang of minions will have to do: save the day. He will never get to live this down.
Like the sound of it? I’m running a Kickstarter campaign starting today to raise money for professional cover art. I’m working with Kelsey King, a local artist who’s illustrated my other ebooks. If you preorder a copy of Cannon Fodder through the Kickstarter, not only do you get to help support the cover art, but you’ll get the book at a discount.
Check out the Cannon Fodder Kickstarter campaign.
Want to know more about the project? Drop me a line. I’ll keep you guys posted about the campaign’s progress now through the end of March.
It’s late February and there’s still a thick layer of snow over everything, but I have an amaryllis to brighten up my kitchen table:
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Ender’s Game is a hard book to review. It’s considered one of the classics of the science fiction genre, so what do I have to say about it that hasn’t already been said?
Since the movie of the book came out last November, you probably already know how the story goes. Ender is a super-intelligent child, probably genetically engineered, who’s destined to lead Earth’s military forces against an alien insectoid race. At the age of six, he’s enrolled in Battle School with a bunch of other superkids. The teachers put them through war games that get ever more grueling until everything goes horribly wrong – or horribly right, depending whose side you’re on.
This book was just as hard to read as it is to review. One of the reasons is that Ender’s Game was never really meant to be a novel. Orson Scott Card originally published this story as a short story in 1977, then later beefed it up so he could write the sequel, Speaker for the Dead. It shows in the pacing, which goes by in fits and starts. And the ending is bizarre by a novel’s standards. Throughout the book, Ender makes the same mistake over and over again. He only means to beat his opponent, but he beats him so thoroughly he winds up killing him. At the climax of the story, Ender makes the same mistake, big time. It’s only in the denouement that he starts to change and get better.
But the biggest reason this book was so hard to read is that it’s chillingly real. Orson Scott Card is a skilled writer and he puts you through the hell on earth Ender has to go through. In my edition of Ender’s Game, Card writes in an introduction that the book’s become a manifesto for gifted children. Of course I’m nowhere near as smart as Ender, but I was a gifted child. I knew that same alienation and embarrassment when I’d run circles around my classmates academically, so the book struck close to home. Petra could have been me.
Should Ender’s Game be a manifesto for gifted children? Ender is no role model. Ender commits atrocities, and the book is never totally clear whether Ender’s a monster or just unlucky. Would any bright kid in Ender’s situation have done the same things? Does the book condone this?
I don’t know, but I want to add that I watched the movie at the same time as I read the book. It’s never destined to be classic cinema, but the movie was good. It fixed the pacing issues and lightened the story up a lot. Fine with me. It’s a great way to chase out nightmares after you’ve read the book.
One final note: the book wound up undercutting its own scariness, completely by accident. I couldn’t help snickering every single time one of the characters mentioned the Buggers. *snerk* Buggers!