Got some more work done on the Leverage novel -- sorry I haven't been posting word counts, but suffice it to say I'm behind where I want to be. Hoping for some progress this weekend, but that'll depend on how many Guest of Honorish things I'll be doing at DucKon 21 this weekend.

Those of you going to the con can view my schedule here. Those of you not going to the con can also view the schedule and eat your hearts out for all the cool stuff you'll be missing. So there, nyah nyah.

Had a good day today, not only writing, but also doing some teaching at the dojo. My dojo attendance has been minimal of late, and has been almost entirely teaching. My stamina has been down, my belly has started to expand, and I totally need to fix this. I refuse to return to the days of my early-to-mid-30s when I was winded walking up stairs, dammit.

Anyhow, here's a bit from the Leverage novel: "There are three choices available to you, Spencer. One, you stand very very still until we're finished. Two, you move, three thirty-calibre rifle rounds rip through your chest, and I deliver your bloody corpse to the Butcher of Kiev as an early Christmas present. Three, you agree not to harm me in any manner—beyond that, of course, of your caustic wit, limited though it may be—and I call off the dogs and the three of us have a nice chat. Or six of us, assuming the rest of your little gang is listening on Hardison's ear gadgets."

And now to bed, as I have to get up stupid-early to catch my flight tomorrow..............

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "Squeeze Box" by The Who

Heard this Jethro Tull song from 1969's Stand Up earlier today and it's stayed in my head, so now I put it in yours. It's got particularly strong instrumentation, even by Tull's high standards.



Bonus: here's the band performing it at Fillmore East in either 1969 or 1970.

Current Mood: tired
Current Music: "For a Thousand Mothers" by Jethro Tull

Klingon civil war! Kurn being awesome! Worf being conflicted! Lursa and B'Etor being evil! Data in command! And none of it matters because Denise Crosby just sucks the air right out of the episode as the TNG Rewatch kicks off season 5 with "Redemption II."

An excerpt:

There is no way, none, that Picard’s blockade could possibly be effective, because space, as Douglas Adams reminded us, is big—really big. The Klingon Empire and Romulan Empire are two gigunda empires spanning many solar systems. It’s impossible to credit that there’s only one possible route between them. Interstellar space doesn’t have narrows or rivers or eddies or anything like that, it’s just really big. So why doesn’t Sela just go around the blockade?

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel

We got in late last night from Balticon, which was most excellent. I sold a metric butt-ton of copies of the Precinct books -- not just the newly released Goblin Precinct, but also lotsa copies of Dragon Precinct and Unicorn Precinct. In particular, the Eternal Launch went phenomenally well, with lots of people showing up to look at all the spiffy new books from Dark Quest. Wrenn also had a great time doing tech and seeing people.

The launch party really was a highlight -- we had five-minute readings by the various authors, we had music by Jonah Knight and SJ Tucker, as well as some lovely harp music, and a ton of food that got consumed quite rapidly. (Seriously, it was like the con was populated by vultures....) Kudos to party organizer Danielle Ackley-McPhail and all the folks who brought food (including me and Wrenn....).

In addition, I had a great time hanging out with various podcasting/audio drama folks, including getting to meet more of the voices behind HG World, including M. Sieiro Garcia, Laura Nicole, Bryan Lincoln, and Veronica Giguere, and getting to hang with them, as well as the HGW people I already knew -- Jay Smith (and his lovely wife Pam) and the Stokes/Rinas family -- was a treat and a half. I also had tremendous fun with fellow Dark Quest folks Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Mike McPhail, Christine Norris, Bernie Mojzes, James Daniel Ross (and his lovely wife Jennifer), KT Pinto, Patrick Thomas, C.J. Henderson, Jess Novasteras (and her nifty husband Jamie), and Elektra Hammond (and her nifty husband Michael), as well as any others I might have missed. Plus there was the World family, Zan, Renee & Day, Monica V., Myke, Ron & Robin, Ian & Joy, Mary S., the Kraus family, and others I know I've forgotten who should forgive a tired writer for not remembering.

And, most of all, we had a great time with our roommates, Neal Levin & Tina Randleman, who remain made of awesomesauce.

The panels were good, too, ranging from a rather ridiculous late-night panel on animals in SF/F (which the panelists, including me, were all wondering what we were doing on it), to the latest in a stellar series of Eye of Argon readings, to a great dynamic voice acting demo, to a really strong talk on editing anthologies. Plus I got to read from Leverage: The Zoo Job and do some networking.

The convention and the hotel did their best to spoil the weekend with assorted fuckups. The only ones that really affected me were 1) the room not being ready when Tina & Neal arrived, so they gave us a room that was ready, which was sufficiently far from the main part of the hotel as to almost be in the next county, and 2) programming putting the author signings by the dealer room, which makes sense on the face of it, but any autographings that occurred during hours when the dealer room was closed were disasters, because there was absolutely no foot traffic to that table if the dealer room was shut. Bad planning, guys.

Now I'm off to do the TNG Rewatch, as we kick off the fifth season, then it's Leverage, Leverage, Leverage......

Current Mood: satisfied
Current Music: "The Shape I'm In" by Levon Helm

Ape Entertainment has launched "Kung Fu Friday" in honor of next month's launch of Kung Fu Panda: Tales of the Dragon Warrior, to which I'm contributing a story to the first issue.

Written by KFP editor, and all-around awesome dude, Aaron Sparrow, the first installment looks at the rough pencils by Massimo Asaro for Quinn Johnson's story in #1, "Baby Beatdown."

Check it out!

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: "Thinking of You" by Christian Kane

The Black Widow is awesome. Scarlett Johansson is awesomer. While doing a Q&A with Robert Downey Jr., he gets asked a detailed question about the journey the character of Tony Stark undergoes in Iron Man, Iron Man 2, and The Avengers, while Johansson is asked if she needed to go on a special diet in order to play Natasha Romanoff.

Johansson's response: "How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, 'rabbit food' question?"

Indeed. It's funny, but it's also sad.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: still "St. James Infirmary"

I'm going to be signing at Annie's Book Stop in Worcester, Massachusetts on 9 June, and in preparation for that, the good folks there did a quick interview with me. Check it out!

An excerpt:

What is your favorite event story that you could share?

Well, there was the 1999 signing where =EVERYONE= had a nontraditional spelling of their name. There was the convention in 1997 when the hotel got flooded. There was the Dragon*Con in 2008 when I was discussing the Presidential election with George Takei, Walter Koenig, and Peter David. There was meeting Robert Meyer Burnett at San Diego in 2005, when I was geebling at him about FREE ENTERPRISE while he simultaneously geebled at me about ARTICLES OF THE FEDERATION. Hard to choose just one……

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "St. James Infirmary" by Cab Calloway

Themes of family, politics, and strong ensemble acting -- not to mention a lot more mediocre episodes than I remembered -- permeate the show's middle season, as the TNG Rewatch does the fourth season overview.

An excerpt:

This is a strong ensemble, and the strength of that ensemble is on display all over this season. Jonathan Frakes has nicely relaxed into Riker — he’s got some great scenes, from his grumpy snark in “Brothers” to his attempts to bluff his way through “First Contact” to his imitation of Frank Luz in “The Host” to his advice to Data in “In Theory.” Brent Spiner makes the most of his spotlights, from “Brothers” to “Data’s Day” to “In Theory”; ditto Gates McFadden in “Remember Me” and “The Host.” And O’Brien gets more and more time in the sun, getting a full name in “Family,” a wife in “Data’s Day,” and a background in “The Wounded,” and gets to be an integral part of La Forge’s brainwashing in “The Mind’s Eye.” Even Lwaxana Troi gets some depth, as “Half a Life” provides one of the show’s most tragic love stories.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: "Gun Street Girl" by Tom Waits

This weekend is Balticon 46, and one of the big events of the convention is the Eternal Book Launch, at which my novel Goblin Precinct will be released (along with Sto's House: Mutants on the Rocks by KT Pinto, Mystic Investigations: From the Shadows by Patrick Thomas & John L. French, The Sword of Danu by Christine Norris, and the anthology Galactic Creatures, edited by Elektra Hammond). The launch is being held Sunday 27 May from 7-9pm, and in addition to all the above-listed authors being present, there'll be food, prizes, artwork, and other fun stuff -- including two concerts! Both Jonah Knight and S.J. Tucker will be performing. I spotlighted Jonah back in February when we were both at Farpoint, and here's "Sooj's" official video for her song "Neptune."

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: "Solo Le Pido a Dios" by Tao Rodriguez-Seeger & Pete Seeger

I have updated my Balticon 46 schedule to include an autographing and a reading.

See some of you there!

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "Play That Fast Thing (One More Time)" by Rockpile

In honor of my writing The Zoo Job, here's the song Christian Kane wrote (with Blair Daly) for his album The House Rules, but which also featured heavily in the episode "The Studio Job" (in which it was performed by Kane, by John Schneider, and by Alona Tal).



As a bonus, here's Kane singing the song in character as Eliot Spencer from the episode itself, which is when the rest of the crew discovers that Eliot can actually sing and stuff.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Thinking of You" by Christian Kane

A whopping 4700 words written today. I fucking rock. And I also roll. Plus, I got to have dinner with alorarose, an added bonus.

From today's scribblings, this line from Parker's POV:

Besides, seventeen-story falls were way more fun than three-story climbs.


Tomorrow, I pick up people at the airport, go shopping for Balticon, write the TNG Rewatch (fourth-season roundup, ho!), and then in the evening, wrenn and I are making an early start to Baticon. My preliminary schedule is here, but I suspect it will have additions by Friday.....

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "Bears Don't Dig on Dancing" by Tim Minchin

Another bit from the work-in-progress, Leverage: The Zoo Job. Remember, this is only a draft, and may not represent the final text....

"Nate, I'm gonna stop you right there. I can follow pretty much every programming language out there, I can make a two-hundred-year-old diary out of some really nasty ingredients, and I can actually make sense out of the instruction booklets that come with Ikea furniture, but I can not make heads or tails of this nonsense right here."

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "The War of 1812" by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie

George Tierney, who is apparently a golf caddy from Greenville, South Carolina, thought it would be funny to call Sandra Fluke names on Twitter. Being blissfully unaware of how the Internet in general and Twitter in particular work, he was rather appalled to find his words retweeted to Ms. Fluke's followers, who number around 36,000, and now is dismayed to learn that his name is all over the Internet as a sexist fucknut. He apparently threatened legal action against the TBogg blog for screencapping his tweets. He seems to think that he can successfully sue TBogg for quoting his tweets, and he also thinks it's within TBogg's power to remove his name from Google.

Well, far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to make a sexist fucknut realize that there are consequences for calling a woman a cunt in public, so I write this here post in the hopes that it will add to the pile of Google hits about George Tierney, who is a golf caddy from Greenville, South Carolina (just in case there's any doubt that I'm talking about the sexist fucknut who is from Greenville, South Carolina and not some other George Tierney).

Hi, George! Welcome to the 21st century.

And yes, he has the right to call Ms. Fluke a cunt. And I have the right to call him a sexist fucknut. Ain't freedom awesome?

Current Mood: disappointed
Current Music: "Edge of Seventeen" by Stevie Nicks

Worf resigns, Gowron reigns, Lursa and B'Etor display their political acumen and their cleavage, and we get the cliffhanger we never expected and didn't particularly want. The TNG Rewatch searches for "Redemption."

An excerpt:

Lursa, B’Etor, and Toral meet again with their Romulan allies, announcing that the Enterprise has left orbit with Picard refusing to assist Gowron. Toral declares Picard to be a coward, but the shadowy Romulan tells him not to discount Picard, as he is human, and humans tend to show up when you least expect it. As if to prove the point, she steps out of the shadows and is revealed to be blond and played by Denise Crosby (which those of us who identified her voice two episodes ago already figured out).

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: "Sunshine of Your Love" by Eric Clapton

Okay, back to Leadbelly. My first introduction to Leadbelly was actually from the Arlo Guthrie/Pete Seeger live album In Concert, which was one of my favorite albums of my youth. On that album, Arlo did a performance of "On a Monday," which he identified as a Leadbelly song. That's what lead me to track him down in the first place.

Here's Leadbelly's original, quite appropriate for Monday music:

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "On a Monday" by Leadbelly

It's official! The first issue of the comic book series Kung Fu Panda: Tales of the Dragon Warrior will be out in late July, and will include my story "Contest of Chompions," with art by Massimo Asaro.

Here are the covers, both of which are Marcelo Ferreira:

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: "Beggar's Farm" by Jethro Tull

Frank Michael has reviewed -30-, the first in the Viral series, and given it 4 of 5 stars, saying, "The writing is good, the story was good."

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "The Third Hoorah" by Jethro Tull

Audrey at Bibliosaurus Text has written a very nice review of V-Wars, the upcoming shared-world vampire anthology edited by Jonathan Maberry, with stories by a bunch of cool folks including me, with "The Ballad of Big Charlie."

Money quote:

None of the stories here are weak. Each author has a strength and unique voice, and those add up to a rich experience. Readers see the Vampire Wars as they play out across the country, and even around the world: on the talk show circuit, along the Mexican-American border, on an Indian reservation, in the Bronx, in Chinese gangs, in the backwoods, and in Europe. I think what I appreciated best about the world building is the way that a multiplicity of vampire archetypes are at play here. This is really a vampire aficionado’s dream. Vampires run the gamut of classic western vamps, to flesh-eaters, to psychic vampires, and everything in between. They’re called by their cultural names, and are even sometimes pitted against one another. Anyone who enjoys vampire horror from Carmilla through Anne Rice (maybe not Twilight fans so much) is sure to have a great time with this book.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "Poor Old Dirt Farmer" by Levon Helm

Donna Summer died this week at the age of 63. I was never the hugest fan of hers, but her music was part of the soundtrack of my youth, and she will be greatly missed. So here's a break from the Leadbelly tribute -- let's all raise a glass to a woman who worked hard for the money....

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: "Last Dance" by Donna Summer

Data gets a girlfriend (sorta), the Enterprise gets a poltergeist (not really), the O'Briens bicker over socks (kinda), and an engineer fall through the floor and dies horribly when the floor rematerializes (really). The TNG Rewatch does "In Theory."

An excerpt:

To Moore and Menosky’s credit, the minute the stakes are raised — when Van Mayter is killed (and brutally so; the image of half her body sticking up out of the floor was one that stuck with me for weeks after watching the episode) — the silly romance plot is abandoned until the ship is out of danger. Though that part of it has its moments of ridiculousness, not the least being Picard insisting on piloting the shuttle. This is a ship with a thousand people on board, they must have dozens of qualified pilots. In what universe does it make sense for the captain — who by his own admission way back in “11001001” hadn’t taken the conn in years — to be the one to do the incredibly risky piloting? (To make matters worse, he half-asses the job, and gets the shuttle destroyed. Imagine what might have happened with a good pilot.)

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: "My God" by Ian Anderson w/orchestra

I read from Goblin Precinct, and talk some about the series as a whole. Plus news on V-Wars and a request regarding the Parsec Awards.

You can download the episode from iTunes (either from the podcast's own feed, or via The Chronic Rift Network), the Rift web site, or from Mevio's DKR page. You can comment here on the blog, DKR's Facebook page, on the Rift web site, by e-mail to keith at decandido dot net, or by phone at 888-866-9010.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: "Aqualung" by Ian Anderson w/orchestra

From 1-3 June, I will be the Klingon Guest of Honor at DucKon 21 in St. Charles, Illinois, just outside Chicago. It's my second time as that con's KGoH, and I'm really looking forward to going back. Here's my schedule:

Friday
7-8pm: Opening Ceremonies (New Orleans Ballroom)
8-10pm: Ambassador's Reception (location TBA)

Saturday
10am-12pm: Training Day, w/David West and Daniel Molinari (New Orleans Ballroom) -- an open interactive Martial Arts seminar/discussion/workout session.
1.45-2.45pm: autographing (MegaCenter)
3-5pm: Klingon People's Court, w/Ronnie Virga and Lee Busko (MegaCenter main stage) -- We will be putting JJ Abrams on trial for crimes against humanity/Klingons/Vulcans and even Romulans. He will be made to answer for such crimes as: Killing the Star Trek franchise and then killing the Vulcans. That was our job!
5-6pm: reading (Gallery Hall-Chagall)
10pm-12am: Klingon Love Poetry, w/Ronnie Virga and Lee Busko (MegaCenter main stage) -- Come to the 21st celebration of the longest running ORIGINAL Klingon event in the country!

Sunday
10-11am: How to Love Your Editor, w/Gene Wolfe and Steven Silver (Gallery Hall-Vermeer) -- Having a strong author-editor bond is a huge benefit to being successful. What should you do to improve your relationship with him/her? How do you develop a unique partnership?
11.15am-12.15pm: Collaboration: Go Team!, w/John Everson, David Benton, and W.D. Gagliani (Gallery Hall-Vermeer) -- Our panelists discuss the benefits or drawbacks of putting together collaborative literature.

Hope to see many of you there!

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "Shake It" by Tom Waits

Wrote a bit over 4000 words today, bringing me to the end of Chapter 5. Tomorrow: Chapter 6! Woo hoo!

Now to walk the dog and fall over...........

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "My God" by Jethro Tull

This is one of the ads that you'll see around Balticon for the Precinct books, including not just the launch of Goblin Precinct, but also that the other two books in the series will be avaialble:



Thanks to Danielle Ackley-McPhail for the spiffy-keeno design work!

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: "Audition" by Jethro Tull