Tobias S. Buckell's Blog, page 25

Audible launches the Xenowealth novels in Audiobook with all new narrators

Guys! Guys! Guys!

So I’ve been sitting on this news for… just about forever.

I pointed out on twitter while traveling that Hurricane Fever had been turned into an audiobook, which meant both Arctic Rising and Hurricane Fever were available to be listened to.

But today you can find the whole Xenowealth backlist now in audio, right before the Tor relaunch coming this January!

The Books!

If you don’t want to listen to me blather any more, here we go, click on a cover to go to the Audible page.

The cov...

How to Get Signed and Personalized Tobias S. Buckell Books for the Holidays, 2014

Winter’s coming! Which means we’ll soon be shopping for gifts for each other and doing our best, if we’re too far away from the equator, to keep coldwarm. And there’s nothing better than sitting inside a warm home with a book, right?

At John Scalzi’s excellent suggestion (he’s been doing this a few years), I’m teaming up with Jay & Mary’s Book Center, the closest independent bookseller to me, to offer signed and personalized books. You can get a great gift and support a independent book store,...

Cult Pop has a new interview with me up

Cult Pop, the Detroit area cable interview show about all things pop culture, has a new episode up with an interview by my and then Cherie Priest as well.

Double bonus awesome!

Cult Pop 61, This episode Jim Hall interviews two authors. First we caught up with science fiction writer Tobias Buckell at GenreCon in Livonia Michigan. They discuss his latest book, “Hurricane Fever”. Since he was from the Caribbean, he wanted to use that area as more than a backdrop to the story. He then reveals that...

May I draw your attention to the posts of Elizabeth Bear, Laura J. Mixon, and Rochita Loenen Ruiz?

So grateful 2 Laura Mixon 4 the love she's shown SFF ctty by tracking the damage done by requireshate/winterfox, etc http://t.co/4tCSnlwtzL

— Nalo Hopkinson (@Nalo_Hopkinson) November 6, 2014

Author Laura J. Mixon has spent time documenting carefully and with links the damage done by a person using several pseudonyms online with the intent of damaging writers, using the community of people who care about diversity as a shield and to recruit allies.

It’s a repeated his...

Seeing the Dinosaurs in Lima

I took the kids down with me to run some chores in Lima on Sunday, and to reward them took them to a dinosaur exhibit that was being advertised for that weekend only in the fairgrounds called “Discover the Dinosaurs.”

I knew it would be somewhat cheesy, but the girls love dinosaurs and I thought it would be fun.

$60 worth of fun? Ouch. The tickets were crazy expensive. And as we approached the door there were parents walking out cussing up a storm. $20/person is a lot of money for a family to s...

BusyContacts looks interesting for contacts management

I mentioned investigating CRM solutions to handle so many contacts a couple posts back. Good grief, man, on the desktop side the field is so. fucking. clunky. So much unintuitive software.

I know I no longer have the patience I did in my 20s for fiddling around with software, but there’s a certain level of ‘why can’t I…?’ that if I keep having to ask, I just uninstall and move on.

The reason is that most of the solutions are aimed at large teams and small companies (Highrise online, Daylite and...

I had no idea: Sweden’s deadly subs

This is a fairly fascinating tale of military leapfrogging:

Sweden Has A Sub That’s So Deadly The US Navy Hired It To Play Bad Guy: “We have been glued all week to the sub saga off the coast of Sweden, where six days in Swedish forces have only now called off their search for an elusive sub hiding in the waters off Stockholm. Yet what nobody has mentioned is just how deadly and capable Sweden’s own subs are, and there are few better weapons for catching a sub than another sub.”

(Via Jalopnik.)

I...

Why I’m investigating contact and sales management software to help my writing (tools are found in many places)

I was talking over the struggles I was having with tracking projects through various stages (novels, relaunches, foreign editions, self publishing, potential new Kickstarters) with a friend who runs a sales business, as well as bemoaning my horrible mess of notes about contacts (reviewers, publicists, people who have asked me to do remember to send them something when it becomes available years ago).

“You need a CRM tool,” he said.

“A what?”

He quickly introduced me to some overly complex tools...

A Bear: an original illustration by Calli

I don’t want to be every other parent that thinks they have the most artistic children in the world and foists that upon everyone. But ever since Cal showed me the cover of a ‘book’ that she made in class about bears (including the oh-so-precocious spelling of ‘hibrnat’ for hibernate) I’ve been mulling over just how good she’s gotten at drawing things in a short time.

I mean, it was just a few months ago that everything she drew was stick figures. Like, very, very basic stuff.

Now I have a bear...

I survived Tropical Storm Fay, but was flown back home to avoid Gonzalo

So while out in Bermuda, I flew in Emily and the kids for a surprise weekend hangout halfway through being Writer in Residence. I was excited, kids first plane trip, using passports, and seeing an island.

They were jazzed to arrive:

We went up to see Fort St. Catherine:

We swam at a nearby beach, and then had lunch above it:

Later went to the Dockyards to watch the sun set. We couldn’t get to the beach, there was a wedding happening. But someone checked, then escorted us up onto the walls so we c...