Geek Link!

Baby Mammoth!

Vey cool discovery. Amazing picture.

Unfortunately, the first page and the first paragraph of the second page is a writer's dramatic reconstruction of the baby mammoth's death.

But once you get past the fiction, there's some excellent stuff in here about the discovery, loss and rediscovery of this little mammoth, how it was preserved, and what they learned from it.

Really, really neat stuff.

And the edit continues...

And I am back at the beginning. Again.

This edit is becoming something of a frustrating process for me. I spent a week editing the prologue, which was too long and, when I finished editing it, was still too long.

That's when I realized it was also unecessary. Completely. A waste of paper.

So I've cut it.

And now I am editing the new begining for the book, and am hoping to make some better speed, though so far it hasn't been happening. We shall see, though.

Back to it.

Erik at Ad Astra

Was looking around the web one day...

All right, I was looking to see how many mentions there were of my name. This is a valid marketing exercise and should in no way be construed to be me desperately attempting to stroke my ego by finding signs of my popularity.

Really.

No, really.

Anyway...

I discovered Nick's Musings, which is a blog by a literature student from Waterloo. On there I found this post about Ad Astra, which featured some great pictures of panels, including this one of me:




















Nick, great photo. I especially like that you caught Small Magics in the shot, too.

Fantastic Creations

My friend and favourite sword- and prop- maker, Chris Warrilow, now has a website for his business.

Fantastic Creations is the best little prop house in Toronto. Great selection of stuff, amazing prices, and really, really good quality. I have a broadsword, rapier and dagger all made by him and all fantastic. Daniel Levinson of Rapier Wit has swords made by Chris 15 years ago that is still going strong.

So, if you are in the market for a prop or weapon for the theatre, film, or TV, give Chris a call. I highly, highly recommend him.

Performance Art at Its Best

I'm sure many people have heard of them already, but I just found out aboutImprov Everywhere, a group that works to make people's lives slightly more surreal and a fair amount more amusing by putting together strange, wonderful, interactive performance art pieces.

Looking at their website it looks like they started in New York, but have certainly spread around the globe, especially with the success of their No Pants Subway Ride.

It takes a certainly level of madness to be this creative. My hats off to them.

And They're Off!

I began the edit of Cold Magics this week. I've run into a slight snag in that I'm sick as a dog right now, but plan to be going again very soon. Will attempt some tonight, but not much. I'm for bed in half an hour.

Impossibilia

I just finished reading PS Showcase #5: Impossibilia, a collection of short stories by Douglas Smith. I've had the great pleasure of meeting Douglas at a few Conventions now, and the even greater pleasure of hearing him read. He is excellent live, which is good, because it takes an excellent reader to bring out the quality behind excellent writing.

Impossibilia is a wonderful book, with three of Douglas's short stories: "Bouquet of Flowers in a Vase, by Van Gogh," about art, death and psychic time travel, "Spirit Dance," about northern Ontario, native spirits and shapeshifting and ""Going Down to Lucky Town," about what happens when you can see good luck... and bad luck.

Each one is an example of how a master at the art tells a story -- and I'm saying this out of sheer envy. I write a decent short story, but Douglas has fine tuned the art of writing short prose to the point where he says very well in 10,000 words what other writers would take 100,000 to say.

Impossibilia is an amazing little collection and if you like the short story form I recommend it.

Douglas is rumoured to be working on a novel. I can't wait to see it when it comes out.