I’ll be reading in Portland tonight: @ Powell’s Books. . . . Beaverton location at 7 p.m. Check out the cool shot of Mount Hood I snapped from the plane on the way in. 
It’s great to be back in the Pacific Northwest. . . and don’t forget, reading in Seattle at UBookstore tomorrow night!
I’ll be reading this evening at 7 p.m. at Artomatic, D.C.’s month long arts festival. Which of course is at:
I’ll be in the Poetry Room, on the 9th floor. No poetry, though. Trust me, you don’t want to hear my poetry.
What you want, of course, is to buy BURNING SKIES.
Industry luminary James Nicoll has posted on my conversation with Jerry Pournelle. The resultant conversation on his blog covered many topics, including SDI, but was in sharp contrast to the one on mine in that:
(a) people were civil to each other
(b) no one sought to argue from authority: e.g., Pournelle was there when SDI was invented, how dare you question him, or I’m an expert in military history, so what I say should be taken as gospel, etc., etc.
(c) there was no chest-thumping from partisans during the blog discussion about how much Pournelle and his friends were owning me/kicking my ass/destroying me/taking me apart/taking me to the cleaners.
(d) people seem to be alert to this thing called nuance.
Conversation is here.
And I’m in a bit of a mood this morning, so will probably just delete any comment that falls into the above categories while Spartacus laughs like the maniac he is. You said it already, guys, so save your breath.
Use your energy instead to buy BURNING SKIES at Amazon and other fine bookstores.
That’s the subject of my latest post over Bantam’s Suvudu. Check it out.
And why not check out BURNING SKIES as well?
I’m pleased to announce the creation of the Autumn Rain legions! All you have to do to join is sign up on the right-hand side of my Contact/More Info page, at which point you too can receive batches of cool 4×6 cards that you can plaster all over your local coffeeshops, bookstores, and libraries. Plus you’ll get your name in the acknowledgments of Book Three, and qualify to win an advance copy of the book!
You can also put your pen into the service of AR, writing reviews/blog-entries, etc. . . . and you can even go into your local bookshop and persuade them to carry BURNING SKIES if through some incredible oversight they aren’t already. Joining the AR street-team doesn’t require you to commit to any particular activity; it’s whatever you feel most comfortable with.
And what makes all this particularly exciting is that I’m now featuring banner-ad widgets, so you too can take the code for my new banner ads, and plaster them all over the World Wide Web! You don’t even need to join the legions/street-teams to do so!
And of course you can always buy BURNING SKIES!
I’ll be in North Hollywood at the Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society tonight, the world’s oldest continuously meeting science fiction club—meeting regularly since 1940! Stop by if you’re in the area: 7:30 at 11513 Burbank Boulevard.
On other fronts, I saw The Hangover at the Arclight last night. All I can say is (a) you LA-ers sure know how to build a movie theater, and (b) believe the hype. From one angle, Hangover is the dumbest movie ever made, but from where I was sitting last night, it’s one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen: a comedy juggernaut that is crushing everything in its path. And with good reason.
Meanwhile, BURNING SKIES continues to await you!
No coincidence that my favorite bookstore is in my favorite town . . . and the Borderlands reading this year was the most successful yet, featuring stan
ding-room only capacity! I brought Spartacus along, but he suffered a Transmogrifying Event from all the excitement, and now looks a little different than before. (Or maybe that’s me. I can’t tell.) Ace writers Erin Cashier, Gail Carriger, and Chris Reynaga were also in attendance, thanks for coming out, folks! A special highlight was meeting the OpenBuddha; we’ve corresponded before, but it was cool to meet up and realize the extent of our shared interests.
Then that evening was WriterswithDrinks, with the amazing Charlie Jane Anders as MC. She blew us all off the stage, and we loved every moment of it. Not to be missed. It was a great line-up too, and a packed venue: the first time in my “career” that I’ve performed to more people than I could actually see. Needless to say, it was a complete rush. Now if I can only figure out how to reattach Spartacus to his fur. . .
BURNING SKIES continues to sell like crazy on Amazon, so buy now while supplies last!
I’m heading into the Bay Area tonight—assuming LAX, Virgin, and the SF fog cooperate—and have two events tomorrow, to wit:
—Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia, at 3 p.m.
—Writers with Drinks, 7:30 p.m. @ the Makeout Room, 3225 22nd Street.
They’re both in the Mission, which means I won’t have to fall prey to Eddie Izzard’s discovery that there are, in fact, only five cabs in all of San Francisco. . .see his DVD, Dressed to Kill. And see you there!
And why not buy BURNING SKIES in the meantime?
Well, it’s all over. Book Three, which bears the title I came up with back in 2002—the oldest of my three titles—is now into Bantam. Of course, there’s plenty more revision work to do, but the hard part’s over. Now I need to get on with the business of saying goodbye to the characters that have haunted my dreams for nearly a decade now . . . and since I know some of you are wondering:
—yes, this wraps up the #$# series.
—no, it’s not a fake-set-up for a book four.
—and no, it’s not an anticlimax—it’s easily the best thing I’ve ever written. Perhaps I’m not exactly the most Reliable Narrator/Witness in that regard. . . but right now my head’s spinning with the surrealism of it all—and I can’t think of a better place to process it than in southern California, where the sun always shines and traffic is a figment of everybody’s deranged imaginations. See you by the pool.
And what better book to bring to that pool than BURNING SKIES?
Well, it’s all coming down to the wire here. MACHINERY OF LIGHT is due to Bantam on Monday, which will wrap up this trilogy I’ve spent nearly a decade working on; meanwhile, Monday is also the day I transfer the base of operations out to Los Angeles for much of the rest of June. You do not want to know what my apartment looks like right now. Spartacus certainly doesn’t.
But in the meantime I did an interview with the awesome Jeff Vandermeer for Omnivoracious/Amazon where I explore (among other things) my approach to writing about the U.S. president, not to mention my take on the reaction to MIRRORED HEAVENS. Check it out . . .
Meanwhile BURNING SKIES is available at Amazon and at other fine bookstores!
