Here's an updated guide to Dead Kitchen Radio: The Keith R.A. DeCandido Podcast. All the episodes are available from iTunes (just enter "dead kitchen radio" into the search field of the iTunes store, and there it shall be), or the DKR pages on either Mevio, or The Chronic Rift site. DKR is part of The Chronic Rift Network.

2011
Episode 1: Dungeons & Dragons: Dark Sun: Under the Crimson Sun. Talking about my D&D novel, part of the "Abyssal Plague" crossover, and reading a chapter from it.

Episode 2: Unicorn Precinct. Discussing the second book in my "Precinct" series of high-fantasy police procedurals, plus reading a chapter.

Episode 3: SCPD: The Case of the Claw. On writing about cops in a city filled with superheroes, plus reading a chapter from it.

Episode 4: Guilt in Innocence: A Tale of the Scattered Earth. Talking about the Scattered Earth shared-world science fiction universe in general and my own contribution to it in particular, and I, natch, read a chapter.

Episode 5: Farscape comics. As the monthly series comes to an end, I look back on three years of continuing the story of the cult science fiction TV show in comic book form in collaboration with its creator, Rockne S. O'Bannon.

Episodes 6/7: Liar Liar. A double-episode as I talk about the writers cabal known as the Liars Club (of which I'm a proud member) and our anthology Liar Liar. I also read my story in the anthology, "Under the King's Bridge."

Episode 8: Star Trek: Starfleet Corps of Engineers. A look back at the monthly Star Trek eBook series that I co-created, edited, and sometimes wrote for, which ran from 2000-2007.

Episode 9: Tales from the House Band Volume 1 (Part 1). Talking about the Deborah Grabien-edited anthology of stories about music, and reading the first half of my contribution, "Ragnarok and Roll."

Episode 10: Tales from the House Band Volume 1 (Part 2). More on the anthology and writing about music, and reading the second half of "Ragnarok and Roll."

Episode 11: KRADitorial Services. I talk about my lengthy and varied career as a professional editor as well as my current editorial service for personal clients.


2012
Episode 12: Irons in the fire update. After a jury-duty-induced delay, I kick off 2012 with a look ahead at what I plan to be working on. (Might be amusing to listen to this now and see how spectacularly wrong I was...............)

Episode 13: Supernatural novels. Discussing the CW TV show and the three novels I wrote in that universe, Nevermore, Bone Key, and Heart of the Dragon.

Episode 14: A musical interlude. Find out how I got the nickname "Bongo Boy," as I talk about my career as a musician, both as a member of the Don't Quit Your Day Job Players and Boogie Knights, as well as backing up other musicians here and there.

Episode 15: Viral. I talk about Steven Savile's series of shared-world thriller novellas Viral, and read from my contribution, -30-.

Episode 16: Ramblin' on. A somewhat random episode recorded while I was feeling ill, talking about life, death, and my Leverage novel, among many other things.

Episode 17: Movie novelizations. I talk about my movie novelizations: Gargantua, Darkness Falls, Serenity, and the first three Resident Evil films, and the trials and tribulations thereof.

Episode 18: V-Wars (Part 1). The Jonathan Maberry-edited shared-world vampire anthology V-Wars is the subject, as I read the first half of my story "The Ballad of Big Charlie."

Episode 19: V-Wars (Part 2). More on the anthology with a very new, yet very old, twist on vampires, with me reading the second half of "The Ballad of Big Charlie."

Episode 20: Goblin Precinct. Celebrating the release of the third "Precinct" book, and also reading a chapter from this latest in my series of fantasy police procedurals.

Episode 21: Star Trek Klingon novels. A look back at my novels featuring Captain Klag and the crew of the I.K.S. Gorkon, including Diplomatic Implausibility, The Brave and the Bold Book 2, A Good Day to Die, Honor Bound, Enemy Territory, A Burning House, and A Singular Destiny.

Episode 22: This is Todd Rage... Talking about my voiceover acting on assorted audio dramas, including the Parsec Award-winning HG World, Rift Network standby The Dome, and an oldie but semi-goodie, The House at Morning Heights Drive.

Episode 23: Remembering Josepha Sherman. Following Jo's tragic death, I look back at our friendship and professional collaborations, from Urban Nightmares to various bits of Star Trek fiction, to conventions and parties.

Episode 24: Tales from Dragon Precinct Part 1. The first of several readings of stories from the collection of "Precinct" short stories. Tales includes six reprints and four original stories appearing for the first time in the book, and this and the subsequent episodes under this header have me reading one of those. This time 'round it's the Danthres solo story "Brotherly Love."

Episode 25: Couch Potato Salad. With the "in-review" episodes of The Chronic Rift on hold for a while, I catch up on some TV reviews, including Elementary, Revolution, Vegas, Last Resort, The Big Bang Theory, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Person of Interest, 2 Broke Girls, and Castle.

Episode 26: Tales from Dragon Precinct Part 2. This time I read "Heroes Welcome," the semi-sequel to the novel Dragon Precinct.


2013
Episode 27: Tales from the House Band Volume 2. The second of Deborah Grabien's music-themed anthologies has yet another story by me in it, this one called "I Believe I'm Sinkin' Down."

Episode 28: Bad-Ass Faeries: It's Elemental. I talk about the award-winning anthology series co-edited by Danielle Ackley-McPhail talking about my contributions to the first and fourth volumes, and reading the latter, "Undine the Boardwalk."

Episode 29: Leverage: The Zoo Job. I read from my novel based on the TNT TV series, and also talk about how awesome that series was.

Episode 30: Tales from Dragon Precinct Part 3. Reading the story that focuses on Iaian (and honestly one of my favorites in the book) "Catch and Release."


COMING SOON...

Episode 31: Tales from Dragon Precinct Part 4. Reading "Blood in the Water," the Dru-and-Hawk story that at last reveals "the Corvin case" mentioned in Goblin Precinct. Going live this week.

Episode 32: the Marvel novels of the 1990s. With Marvel Comics adaptations all over the movie screens (and soon TV, too!), I talk about a line of Marvel adaptations to another medium that I was responsible for from 1994-2000: the Marvel novels, 45 novels and a mess of anthologies about Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Avengers, and more. Going live in June.

Episode 33: Ragnarok and Roll Part 1. The first of two episodes with readings from my urban fantasy short-story collection taking place in Key West, Florida. This one will see me reading "Love Over and Over." Going live in July.

Episode 34: Ragnarok and Roll Part 2. The second reading from this collection, "God of Blunder." As with most of the stories in the book, this involves some heavy Norse mythological influence, as well as rock and roll music, scuba diving, and folklore. Going live in August.

Episode 35: Dragon*Con. A look at my time at Dragon*Con in general and at D*C 2013 in particular, possibly with some recordings of me from there. Going live in September.

Episode 36: Doctor Who at 50. On the month of Who's golden anniversary, I look at my own brief history of Who fiction from Decalog 3, the charity anthology Missing Pieces, and the Short Trips anthologies. Going live October.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "I Know What I Know" by Paul Simon

"Expanded universe" is usually a term reserved for Star Wars fiction, but some have used it to apply to the Star Trek novels that go beyond the TV series.

Empire Online has done a nice roundup of that type of Trek fiction. They've included some stuff I've contributed to, most notably my Klingon Empire and Starfleet Corps of Engineers series (and kudos for singling out one of our more esoteric stories, Cory Rushton's Fables of the Prime Directive, which pleasantly surprised me as their "if you must read one" choice), as well as stuff I've contributed to, including The Lost Era, the post-finale DS9 fiction, and the Typhon Pact books.

An excerpt:

The vast majority of Star Trek expanded universe novels are Starfleet-centric, so this series, written solely by Keith RA De Candido, is unusual in focusing entirely on the Klingons. Initially a series about the crew of the IKS Gorkon (“to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilisations… and to conquer them for the glory of the Klingon empire!”) it expanded to take in the entire Klingon culture in the fourth book. Sadly, there was never a book five. The series fleshed out a Klingon underclass both in the inner cities and rural communities of home planet Qo’Onos [sic], whilst also taking in higher-level political intrigues and the High Council. We even learn something about the Klingon medical establishment through the interesting Doctor B’Oraq.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)" by Simon & Garfunkel

"I am Tosk." First contact with the Gamma Quadrant puts the station in general and O'Brien in particular in the midst of someone else's ritual hunt. The DS9 Rewatch engages in a "Captive Pursuit."

An excerpt:

It’s a great vehicle for the always-magnificent Colm Meaney, who turned a transporter button-pusher on TNG into a significant recurring role, and then a starring role on the spinoff from the sheer power of his awesomeness. O’Brien’s easygoing style goes beautifully with a superb performance by Scott MacDonald (in his first TV role!) as a character O’Brien himself perfectly describes as the galaxy’s greatest straight man.

The script takes the hunter/Tosk dynamic seriously as a cultural thing, doesn’t judge either the hunters or Tosk for what they do—only how they go about it, mostly in terms of dragging DS9 into their hunt. (Also Gerrit Graham’s hunter really is a dick, which I suspect is half the reason why Sisko let O’Brien get away with what he did.)

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Paul Simon

Here's the full and final cover for Ragnarok and Roll: Tales of Cassie Zukav, Weirdness Magnet, thanks to the mighty Nic Grabien at Plus One Press:



Going on sale in August, this collection of eight stories set in Key West, Florida features rock and roll, folklore, scuba diving, and Norse gods. They include:

"Ragnarok and Roll"
"Undine the Boardwalk"
"I Believe I'm Sinkin' Down"
"Love Over and Over"
"Cayo Hueso"
Part 1: "A Farewell to Cats"
Part 2: "The Buck Stops Here"
Part 3: "Twisting Fate"
"God of Blunder"
Bonus track: "How You Can Prevent Forest Fires..."

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" by Paul Simon

In 1991, Paul Simon did his tour for The Rhythm of the Saints, using some of the same musicians from the Graceland tour, but this time he focused entirely on his own music, from some great new versions of his older songs to stuff from his two then-recent classics Graceland and Rhythm. Here's a particularly strong version of "The Cool, Cool River" from Rhythm, performed at Simon's Central Park concert in '91.

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: "The Cool, Cool River" by Paul Simon

I stole that word from Tobias Buckell on Twitter, BTW....

Anyhow, I was so awash in The Project That Cannot Be Named (Yet) that I totally missed that 1 May 2013 was my 15th anniversary as a freelancer.

Back in early 1998, I had completed half a Spider-Man novel and a movie novelization. The latter, I did in six weeks off an incomplete script while working a full-time job. Correctly identifying that as a marketable skill, having a great desire to seriously nurture my burgeoning writing career, growing fed up with a lot of the nonsense at my day job at Byron Preiss (which would come to a head that October when I walked away completely), and having the full (and generous) support of my wife at the time (who was far and away the breadwinner in the household anyhow, so that even the initial dip in monies coming in would be a drop in the bucket, plus her health insurance was way better than what I got from Byron anyhow), I ceased being a salaried employee as of the first of May 1998.

The decade-and-a-half since have been amazing. It hasn't always been perfect, mind you. For the first ten years, it was great -- between fiction writing, freelance editing, and web site stuff I made a better living than I did as a salaried employee after the first year. But the last five years have been more difficult, as the crash of 2008 had a brutal ripple effect on my ability to get work -- advances went down, freelance editing work all but disappeared, two editors got laid off and their replacements showed no interest in hiring me -- and I had to do things like work for the U.S. Census Bureau and my old high school library.

But I wouldn't trade my career for nothing. There's lots of things I wish I'd done better or differently, but overall, I'm pleased. And I'm so incredibly not suited to office work (and after 15 years, I doubt an office would take me) that it's better for the universe that I keep doing it this way.

So here's to 15 years, and lots more after that....

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: "Rattlebone" by Robbie Robertson

A reminder that the I, Reader Special Edition: Star Trekking Into Darkness event is TONIGHT at Singularity & Co. in Brooklyn. It was moved from Friday due to bizarre scheduling nonsense. See me, fellow Trek novelist David Mack, former Trek prose editor Marco Palmieri, Tor.com's Emily Asher-Perrin and host Ryan Britt, and Singularity's own Cici James.

Bowing to the will of the majority (both here and on Facebook), I will be reading from Articles of the Federation, probably my most popular and poorest selling Trek novel.

Hope to see folks there!

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: "This is Us" by Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris

Fill awesome hilt reactor at hailed printer. Irridescdent fix rain pill? The DS9 Rewatch does "Babel."

An excerpt:

Still, the character set pieces alone make this a worthy episode. I could watch an hour of just O’Brien dashing about the station trying desperately to keep up with all the systems failures while he does a slow burn of sleep-deprived snark, and it’s pretty much impossible for a scene between Rene Auberjonois and Armin Shimerman to not be delightful, and this episode has several. (I love the revelation that Odo doesn’t know how to gamble.) And there are few better father-son relationships in the history of television than that of Ben and Jake Sisko, and it’s on magnificent display here.

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: "The Cool, Cool River" by Paul Simon

One of my favorite music DVDs that I own is Graceland: The African Concert. While touring for his 1986 Graceland album, which included a great deal of music from South Africa, Paul Simon was joined by a bunch of South African musicians: Hugh Masekela, Miriam Makeba (both, at that point, living in exile), and the magnificent a cappella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. He also put together a superb band, led by Stimela's Ray Phiri on guitar. A few years later, when he toured for The Rhythm of the Saints, he used many of the same people in his backing band.

Simon's concert in Central Park for the Rhythm tour was released on CD, but the Graceland: The African Concert, which was recorded in Johannesburg in 1987, was only released on video, which is a crying shame. Mainly because I really really really really want an MP3 of this song: "Township Jive," which led off the performance here (and also when I saw them at Radio City Music Hall in New York the same year). It's a delightful song named after a popular type of music from South Africa, one that had influenced music all over the world. If you don't tap your feet while listening to this you have no soul. Seriously, you don't.

Current Mood: sick
Current Music: "Township Jive" by Paul Simon

Skyboat Media is the company that recorded the audio of the Jonathan Maberry shared-world anthology V-Wars, which includes my story "The Ballad of Big Charlie." Skyboat has posted three videos that chronicle the making of the audio of the anthology.

You can watch 'em by clicking on the link, or watch 'em right here.........

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover" by Paul Simon

This Audi commercial has Zachary Quinto and Leonard Nimoy and is the single greatest commercial in the history of the universe. A great colloquy on old school vs. new school, though the best moment may be Nimoy crooning his 70s hit "Bilbo Baggins" while driving.

Anyhow, watch this. There will never be a better commercial than this. Ever. Seriously.

Current Mood: amused
Current Music: "Still Crazy After All These Years" by Paul Simon

The Project That Cannot Be Named (Yet) has been gone over, fixed, prodded, poked, and completed. Now it's off to the licensor for their approval.

*breathes*

About fucking time. Now to do the other 50 things on my plate................

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "The Boxer" by Simon & Garfunkel

Hannah Means-Shannon wrote an excellent piece on the "Iron Man at 50" panel that I participated in last week alongside Denny O'Neil, Matt Fraction, Stuart Moore, Marie Javins, and moderator Danny Fingeroth.

Money quote:

Getting a bunch of people so versed in IRON MAN and AVENGERS history into one room for a couple of hours, especially those with writing and editorial insights, was a pretty remarkable thing, and those moments in which the panellists seemed to be creating a kind of organic oral history of Iron Man as a character were particularly illuminating. It suggested that they, too, had certainly bought into the “magic realism” of the character, and felt as connected to him as they might to a living human being. Maybe even more so, since they’d helped to craft and influence his personality over time through their own insights. They had all become fans of Iron Man in different ways, but the result was the same: a very personal relationship with one of the most flawed and fascinating characters in the Marvel universe. On the eve of the premier of IRON MAN 3, establishing just what has kept Stark alive as a character for so long, his ability to adapt and change, and his drive for personal redemption, couldn’t have been more relevant. Hearing these pros relate many of the same questions and responses that readers and fans of the movies generate only confirmed how universal Iron Man has become, partly due to their own work making him as human and as complicated as possible over the years.

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "No Lullaby" by Jethro Tull

The Blue Jays are a leading pick to dethrone the Yankees from the AL East crown, but they're in last place five weeks in with the second-worst record in the league. I look at their fall on my latest Pinstriped Bible blog.

An excerpt:

The Jays haven't even been in any danger of being a good team so far. They've only won one series, and split another. They've lost every other series, including their sweep at the hands of the Yanks, not to mention losing two out of three to the Red Sox by a combined score of 20-11, and a four-game stretch where they didn't score more than one run per game.

Most of it's on the offense. Jose Reyes was doing great until he was sidelined by injury, and the rest of the team features all of one player with an OBP that doesn't make you wince: Adam Lind at .391 (entirely on the back of his 15 walks, as his BA is .226). Everyone else is under .340. J.P. Arencibia is hitting home runs, but doing nothing else (a .256 OBP and a .513 SLG), Yes, we're only five weeks in, but when ESPN's team page lists Melky Cabrera's .252 as your team batting average leader, you're doing something wrong.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "Wond'ring Aloud" by Jethro Tull

The dojo spring camp was tremendous fun. We had our one fourth-degree black belt there (though he had to leave midday Saturday to attend a wedding), five second-degrees (including me), two first-degrees, two yellow belts, and two advanced blue belts.

Friday we checked into the house -- it's a lake house in the Catskills with a mess of land behind it -- and then had an afternoon workout, which was a nice little review class. All the training we did was done outside. Then dinner -- all the meals were provided by excellent local restaurants who fed us very well -- then an evening stretch-and-meditation workout. After that we just had some fun hanging around, which included card tricks, ping pong, and a karate-themed Jeopardy! game.

Saturday was the big day. We started the day with a run, then breakfast, then a morning workout that was mostly kata (Shihan took some video of that, including me and the other second-degrees doing Koryu gojushi ho, which I hope to be able to share soon). One of the great things about training outdoors is that we can do bo techniques with full staffs, instead of the jo staffs we usually settle for in our small, low-ceilinged dojo. It was a true pleasure to be able to swing loose...

After lunch, we had some free time, then the "Navy SEAL" workout. It wasn't really that, but it was pretty damned intense. We were broken down into four teams of three people each (two black belts, one color belt), and each team had to run the following course three times: run around the house while throwing a medicine ball back and forth among ourselves; put on bag gloves and each of us has to punch a large pad 100 times while one other team member holds the pad and the third one does pushups; run down the hill, doing at least one roll while running down; take the canoe out onto the lake, row it across to touch the dock on the other side and then row back; run back up the hill; pick up a (very heavy log) and rotate it around 360 degrees; do ten burpees (this is the style of burpee we did); then grab a kettle bell (weight anywhere between 10 and 35 pounds -- I went with the 25-pound one) and do ten swings with it (you start holding it with both hands between your knees and swing it up until your arms are parallel to the ground, then back down). Our team came in fourth, which is mainly due to the fact that neither Vivian nor I had ever been in a canoe before; Senpai Dayana was very patient in explaining how to operate the fershlugginer thing to us, but our total inexperience in canoeing pretty much screwed us up for everything else. But we showed excellent spirit, and I'm quite proud of how our team did.

After dinner Saturday we had another stretch/meditation workout. Those two evening workouts were the parts I was most looking forward to. While I'm generally pleased with my strength, my stamina, and my technique, my flexibility is shot to shit. The intense stretches we did in these two classes were magnificent and did wonders for making me feel all limber and stuff.

Saturday night we sat around a big bonfire in the back and ate cookies and marshmallow, drank our alcohol of choice, and generally had a wonderful time just enjoying each others' company. Sunday morning was another workout. This was less formal and included sprinting, some self-defense, and finally a tug-of-war of men vs. women. Mind you, there were seven women and only four men, and we've got some strong women in our dojo -- the women kicked our asses, even after Shihan joined us to help out.

After doing a final run-through of cleaning and packing, we had fun with a weapons training class, which included methods of defending yourself against punches, kicks, knives, and guns -- basically real-world defense training -- and then we did our usual archery competition. That's a nice humbling experience, as none of us are all that great at archery, but it's fun.

It was a wonderful wonderful time, and I'm really glad I was able to make it this year. (Last year's spring camp was the same weekend as RavenCon, so I couldn't do it.)

Current Mood: pleased
Current Music: "Two Short Planks" by Ian Anderson

Today was wrenn's birthday. The celebrating actually started last night, when we followed the Iron Man panel with a trip to one of our favorite restaurants (Sauce on the lower east side), then today I had flowers sent to her at the office. Tonight, we and the family had dinner at Molyvos in midtown, which was followed by Wrenn, Dale, and I seeing my dear friend Lilly perform in a burlesque-themed play at the Elektra Theatre on Eighth Avenue.

And then I finished the first draft of The Project That Cannot Be Named (Yet). I fucking rock.

Now to bed................

Current Mood: exhausted
Current Music: "You Can Call Me Al" by Paul Simon

Haven't been updating specifically on The Project That Cannot Be Named (Yet), but I did get to the end of the first draft. Gonna let it sit and percolate for a couple days, then tackle it again on Monday.

Tomorrow I'm off the the dojo spring camp, which ought to be fun, though I will also be interviewed for Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction tomorrow night at 11.30pm EST, which you can listen to at 90.1 FM if you're on Long Island or at WUSB online.

Current Mood: accomplished
Current Music: "Stimela" by Hugh Masekela

I was going to wait until I could name The Project That Cannot Be Named (Yet), but I'm tired of waiting for that, sooooo......

( Stuff what I've written and edited and stuff behind the cut....Collapse )

Current Mood: awake
Current Music: "Rags and Bones" by The Band

Two songs in honor of the day, Jonathan Coulton's "The First of May" and Jethro Tull's "Beltane." I'm off to talk about Iron Man and then have a romantic dinner with Wrenn in honor of it being the day before her birthday. Joyous Beltane to all y'all!

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: "The First of May" by Jonathan Coulton

Still slogging away at The Project That Cannot Be Named (Yet). Hoping to get it done this week.

Once that's finished, I have the following to do, not necessarily in this order:
---edit a novel by a client (who's been very patient)
---write Gryphon Precinct
---write two new Cassie Zukav stories, one for an anthology, one to submit to a short fiction market
---write the mystery novel
---write the remaining three issues of the five-issue comic book I have under contract
---work on some new comics proposals

That will likely carry me through to the end of the year (I plan to take my time with the mystery), along with other bits and pieces that may well show up. Also on the docket for the not-so-near future:
---Mermaid Precinct
---SCPD: Avenging Amethyst
---Innocence in Guilt
---the urban fantasy I started a thousand years ago
---a science fiction novel

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "The Boy in the Bubble" by Paul Simon

Odo is accused of murder, Jake and Nog meet for the first time and get in lots of trouble, Keiko opens a school for no compellingly good reason, and Bashir just will not stop hitting on Dax. The DS9 Rewatch sees "A Man Alone."

An excerpt:

On top of that, the resolution to the mystery is just absurd. He grew a clone and killed it? And nobody noticed that two Ibudans walked into the holosuite? And then Odo unmasks him like it’s a Scooby-Doo episode. (“I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for that meddling Starfleet doctor!”)

Current Mood: geeky
Current Music: "Already Gone" by the Eagles

So I'm doing the I, Reader Special Edition: Star Trekking Into Darkness next Friday at Singularity & Co., and I have absolutely no idea what to read.

I've got more than a dozen Trek novels that I can read excerpts from, I've got a mess of short stories I can read, not to mention all the Corps of Engineers eBooks. It's impossible to choose.

So I put it to you, the blog readers: what should I read next Friday? From one of the Gorkon/Klingon Empire novels? A Corps of Engineers story? A short story from one of the anniversary or Tales anthologies? From Articles of the Federation? One of my three TNG novels or two DS9 novels? Horn and Ivory? The Unhappy Ones? What?

Respond in the comments, please....

Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: still the Yankee game

On Wednesday 1 May from 7-9pm, I'll be at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art on Sullivan Street in Manhattan to join Denny O'Neil, Marie Javins, Stuart Moore, Matt Fraction, and moderator Danny Fingeroth for a talk on Iron Man at 50, just in time for some movie or other to open on Friday...

On Friday 3 May from 11.30pm-midnight, I'll be joining host Dr. Howard Margolin on Destinies: The Voice of Science Fiction on WUSB, 90.1 FM on Long Island, and also streaming online. I'll be talking about SCPD, the Leverage novel, Tales from Dragon Precinct, Ragnarok and Roll, and any number of other things, and likely doing a reading as well.

On Friday 10 May from 7.30-9.30pm, I'll be at Singularity & Co. on Bridge Street in Brooklyn to join New York Times best-selling author David Mack, along with Marco Palmieri, Emily Asher-Perrin, and curator Ryan Britt for I, Reader Special Edition: Star Trekking Into Darkness, as all four of us will be reading from various bits of Trek fiction.

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: the Yankees-Astros game on YES

On the Pinstriped Bible, I provide a list of 13 notable things about the Yankees in April 2013 -- and 11 of them are positive! (Well, okay, one can go either way, but still....)

An excerpt:

9. They're bunting waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much. Okay, it's Friday night. The Yankees are facing the Jays, who have been forced to throw Mets castoff Laffey out there because Josh Johnson is hurt.* Laffey has just walked the worst hitter on the team, Ben Francisco, who had only walked twice prior to that, and who hadn't even gotten his OBP above .200 until that walk. So what does Brett Gardner do? Does he work the count on the Mets castoff who just walked the worst hitter on the team? No, he bunts on the second pitch, handing back the out that the Jays handed the Yanks when they walked the worst hitter on the team. Adding insult to injury, Laffey then walks Nix and Cano, loading the bases with only one out. The Yanks only scored one run in that inning, and it's primarily due to Gardner and Girardi playing baseball like it's the National League in 1964 and the pitcher's at bat. The Yanks are currently tied for second in the league in sacrifice hits, which is obscene. Notwithstanding #8 on this list [which was about how strong the Yanks' offense has been], this isn't a team that can afford to throw away outs.


* With Reyes on the DL, Johnson hurt, and John Buck traded to the Mets, the Jays currently only have the services of two of the five guys they got from the Marlins, Mark Buehrle and Emilio Bonifacio.

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "The Boy in the Bubble" by Paul Simon

Graceland by Paul Simon was one of the seminal albums of my college years. Released in the fall of 1986, my first year at Fordham University, it was the subject of the first review I wrote for Fordham's the paper, though it was never printed due to a screwup. But the arts editors thought the review was great, and I had at least one review in every issue of the paper for the rest of that academic year, was made assistant arts editor in March 1987, and was the arts editor during sophomore and junior year, being bumped to executive editor senior year.

But I digress. Graceland was a superb album, Simon mixing in a bunch of rhythms from all across the world, the most compelling being the South African a cappella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Here's a live performance of "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" from the Graceland in Concert video, which had Simon playing with Ladysmith (as well as, elsewhere on the DVD, Miriam Makeba and Hugh Masekela).

Current Mood: busy
Current Music: "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes" by Paul Simon & Ladysmith Black Mambazo