KRAD's Inaccurate Guide to Life

There is very very very very good news. As soon as the go-ahead to say what the news is arrives, I will say so (and I won't be the only one).

That is all.

Twelfth Night

THE WORLD'S WORST SOUNDS

Professor Trevor Cox, an acoustics expert at Salford University, spent a year researching the world's worst sounds. Cox posted clips of 34 objectionable noises online, which were rated by 1.1mil visitors. In 2007, the sounds voted most unpleasant were:

1. vomiting
2. microphone feedback
3. wailing babies
4. train wheels scraping on tracks
5. a squeaky seesaw
6. badly played violin
7. whoopee cushion
8. an argument in a soap opera
9. the hum of electricity
10. a Tasmanian devil's scream


DRIGGLE-DRAGGLE -- slovenly clothing
"She insisted in dressing in hand-me-down driggle-draggle."

Here's a tentative list of where I'm likely to be showing up in public in 2009. This list is subject to change for no compellingly good reason.

16-19 January: Arisia 2009, Boston, Massachusetts
6-8 February: 2009 New York Comic-Con, New York City
13-15 February: Farpoint 2009, Timonium, Maryland
20-22 March: Lunacon 52, Rye Brook, New York
3-5 April: I-Con 28, Brentwood, New York
22-25 May: Balticon 43, Hunt Valley, Maryland (tentative)
10-12 July: Shore Leave 31, Hunt Valley, Maryland
6-10 August: Anticipation, the 67th Annual World Science Fiction Convention, Montréal, Québec, Canada (tentative)
4-7 September: Dragon*Con 2009, Atlanta, Georgia
18-20 September: FenCon VI (where I will be the Special Guest), Addison, Texas
20-22 November: PhilCon 2009, Cherry Hill, New Jersey (tentative)

The good news I was hinting at coyly in this earlier post can now be revealed!

terri_osborne's proposal for a Stargate: Atlantis novel has been approved by both Fandemonium (the publisher) and MGM (the licensor), and said novel, Portals of Discovery, is scheduled to be published in 2010. The manuscript's due 15 June 2009.

This is Terri's first full-length novel (her two-part Star Trek: Corps of Engineers eBook Remembrance of Things Past was 51,000 words, which is strictly speaking novel-length), and I couldn't possibly be more proud. *beams*

Portals... will be the memoirs that Dr. Elizabeth Weir was seen writing in the SGA episode "The Return Part 1."

Yay, Terri! Go congratulate her directly here.......................

(This is also why I've been up since 6.15. Fandemonium is a British publisher, so news from them tends to come first thing in the morning, and Terri, naturally, woke me up with the news.)

Well, not this second, as I'm typing, but I finally have my contributors' copies of Farscape #1. Me am happy writer! *bounce bounce*

(I also got a royalty check, which makes me even happier. It's only a hundred bucks, but it beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick....)

"And in a village in Texas there is much re-joicing, as at long last, their idiot is returning to them."

---sig line of a poster on the Trek BBS with the user ID of "Turtletrekker"

The month of April is shaping up nicely -- it looks like I'll have three comic books out that month: the second issue of Farscape: Strange Detractors, the Star Trek: Alien Spotlight: Klingons one-shot, and the first issue of the Comic Book That Shall Not Be Named (at least until the next Previews comes out). All in time for me to turn 40. *grin*