So “Kick” is up on Kobo today, on the front page of their “New Free Titles” section. It’s a lucky location. But it has an even cooler twist. An author friend of mine, Libbie Hawker, is sitting right beside me today, at least for a little while. The way titles move around, we’re sure to be scattered apart soon, so I snagged a screen shot. Her book is “The Sekhmet Bed,” writing as L.M. Ironside.
Filed under Just Cool, Writing Market
This is sort of cool.
http://shelfbuzz.com/handpicked-kindle-books-for-nov-21-judged-by-their-covers/
Lots of great covers there — I’m flattered.
Filed under Just Cool
It’s 4:35 a.m.
I was supposed to get up an hour from now, to write, but couldn’t sleep. Now I know why — someone was out there writing about “Kick” on her wonderful blog: http://glindaharrison.com/2014/11/19/review-kick-by-john-l-monk/.
The L’Monks of old, in scratchy old Scotland, would wake up an hour early whenever the M’Gibson clan got drunk and attacked. We always managed to beat them back to their ancestral “hooms” (homes) where they belonged. Our motto then was: “They can take our 8 hours of slumber…but they’ll never take…our freedom!” We used to shout that motto everywhere, wherever we went — more or less nonstop — and we were finally forced out of Scotland for it. The M’Gibson clan then stole the motto, changed the words a little, and killed anyone who said it hadn’t been theirs all along.
The rest, as they say, is history.
A common theme in the Armcast (dead sexy horror) Podcast is the host talking about the various conventions he goes to. I’m so jealous. Many years ago, I think 1994, I went to a science fiction convention in Baltimore. What a blast! I got to meet:
I got to see Stephen Baxter speak on a panel about something or other (he’s British, no beard).
Totally going to a con again in the next year. In the meantime, I’ll continue to live vicariously through Hugh Howey and Armand Rosamilia and other authors who share their experiences.
Filed under Just Cool
No matter how busy I get or what I’m doing, there’s always time for something by Neil Gaiman. Here, he writes about his friend Terry Pratchett’s anger.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman
Filed under Just Cool
Can’t post it here or they’ll sue me hehe, but it’s pretty cool nouveau old-school SF art.
Filed under Just Cool
The wife and I saw Guardians of the Galaxy over the weekend and we absolutely loved it. When it comes out on Amazon, totally buying it. One of those movies you can play on infinite loop. Great music too.
Filed under Just Cool
Leanne Neanne and my wife over at dot2trot are big inspirations. Yesterday, Dot posted her weekly weigh-in, and today I got my notification from Leanne that she’d also posted something. Lo and behold, she’s down 1.7 pounds this week. She also posted about her Fitbit gadget/thing, which allows her to keep track of all the running and jumping around she does.
Dot posted something similar the other day, and a guy at work has one and takes the stairs all the time and avoids the elevators. I get tired on elevators, but I’m a writer so it’s ok.
Back to the Fitbit: apparently you can compete with your friends about who’s struggling up the most flights of stairs and all that. On the surface, this sounds crazy, right? But humans are funny. We love to win, we hate to lose, and this kept the dinosaurs from killing us a million years ago.
It’s a little like my Sunday word count thing: confession keeps me honest. Mostly with myself. Net result? I get more done, and dinosaurs leave me alone.
Filed under Just Cool, Writing in general
Last year, my wife got us one of those horrible packs of fireworks with sparklers and snakes and little swishy spouts of colored flame. As a kid, I always wanted rockets and firecrackers and M-80s and pipe bombs. This year, she went to a bloggers’ conference in Savannah, and when she got home she had rockets and firecrackers and M-5000s and this enormous thing in a box. I would have loved this stuff when I was a kid. And when we lit that box, fire rained down from the sky, banshees screamed into the air and terrifying explosions rattled the bones in my chest. It was awesome…if I was a kid. But as an adult, the only thing I could think was, “I’m so going to jail for this shit…”
John L. Monk 