Did you ever have a group of friends who you liked to hang out with, some of whom also liked to hang out with someone you weren’t all that keen on? Someone you met at parties and might say hi to, but probably wouldn’t invite to any parties of your own? The friend didn’t have […]
Read More That Awkward Friend Of A FriendNASA is funding a 3D food printer, and it will start with pizza. This is awesome. We may never get teleportation or FTL, but food replicators are over the horizon of the doable. One day we may indeed dine on what Kjarten described as ‘probably goat’ made from templates. (Do they have pizza on Requite? […]
Read More Retort-Made Food comes closerI’m just back from a lovely weekend at The Frome Steampunk Extravaganza. It was amazing to see all the friendly people, from elegant old stagers to dapper urchins, dressing up in their often handmade, creatively accessorised best. I got to meet and talk to Andrew Beasley and Meg Kingston and buy their new books, I […]
Read More Steampunk Tea Duellist AnkaretIt’s all over the news this morning that a planet has been discovered orbiting Alpha Centauri, our nearest star. Okay, so it’s not an Earth-twin, it’s a tiny, superheated rock. But still, it’s an exoplanet orbiting our closest neighbour, and that’s pretty damn exciting. It’s particularly exciting for me, for the utterly solipsistic reason that […]
Read More Alpha Centauri has a planet!I’ve been neglecting my blog. I’m sorry: I just didn’t have a lot to say beyond ‘Still writing’ or ‘Not writing, due to my head being full of cold’ or whatever. I’ve been to Distant Worlds: Music From Final Fantasy in London, which was awesome, particularly the pipe organ during ‘Dancing Mad’, and Nobuo Uematsu […]
Read More Blog neglect, and Distant WorldsI just found one of the pieces of stock art I was seriously considering using for the cover of The Maker’s Mask on a commercially published book, which was surprising. Also, today I went to the British Museum and got to hold a Neanderthal flint hand-axe – they must have a ton of the things […]
Read More Stock photo surprise: also, hand-axes.I’ve just heard that the Tzenni sock pattern will be published on the pennies per hour of pleasure knitting fundraiser site tomorrow. I am very excited about this – they’re raising money for Médecins Sans Frontières, which is a great cause. Also, when I was thinking about what might happen after the books were published […]
Read More More on the Tzenni socksI am kind of charmed to note that Appellation Mountain has Ligeia as its name of the day. As you may have gathered, I got the name Ligeia from the Poe poem, or possibly the Vincent Price film. (I spent a lot of my teens watching Vincent Price films, and I really can’t call it […]
Read More Name your baby Ligeia!Looking back on 2010, the main event that stands out is that I published my books. (Well, all kinds of other stuff happened too. My husband crossed the country on a unicycle for charity, for example, and I got to get up at a ridiculous hour of the morning in February and walk around Stonehenge […]
Read More Slightly late end-of-year postToday I bought various books from Lulu for Christmas presents to take advantage of the 25% offer they’ve got going… and then forgot to put the code in at the checkout. I’d previously tried to cancel Lulu orders due to similar misfortunes and had no joy, so I thought ‘Ugh, that’s done, I can’t cancel […]
Read More Baby, it’s cold outside
Ankaret Wells 