Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 245
May 19, 2011
On the road again: Portland, day 4
My big daytime treat today was a stop at a grocery store to pick up and consume a delicious Ruby Jewel ice cream sandwich. At one level, I'm sad that these amazing combinations of cookies and ice creams aren't available in my area. At another, though, I'm glad, because I fear I would all too often give in to their temptation.
Dinner took us to Andina, which is the first Peruvian restaurant I've visited. I've heard many good things about it, so I was quite curious to see if the food lived up to the praise.
It did. We sampled several small plates and one entree; all were very good. The dishes mixed traditional Peruvian recipes with local ingredients and modern techniques. One striking example was a traditional pot-pie deconstructed so that the meat, egg, greens, and pastry were all separate items on the plate, with pork cheeks rather than the original "whatever was on hand" as the meat. It was lovely. I will definitely go back there, and I recommend it.
Tomorrow morning, I have to get up well before the crack of dawn to head to the airport and begin the long trek home. Here's hoping for uneventful flights!
Dinner took us to Andina, which is the first Peruvian restaurant I've visited. I've heard many good things about it, so I was quite curious to see if the food lived up to the praise.
It did. We sampled several small plates and one entree; all were very good. The dishes mixed traditional Peruvian recipes with local ingredients and modern techniques. One striking example was a traditional pot-pie deconstructed so that the meat, egg, greens, and pastry were all separate items on the plate, with pork cheeks rather than the original "whatever was on hand" as the meat. It was lovely. I will definitely go back there, and I recommend it.
Tomorrow morning, I have to get up well before the crack of dawn to head to the airport and begin the long trek home. Here's hoping for uneventful flights!
May 18, 2011
On the road again: Portland, day 3
Much work today, none of which I can discuss. As usual.
Dinner took us to Gabriel Rucker's newer restaurant, Little Bird, for my second visit there. I made my meal from appetizers and sides, and every dish I sampled was excellent. Though I still prefer Le Pigeon to Little Bird, I do love them both, and walking into either one makes me smile and feel a little better. If you live in this area or visit it, you owe it to yourself to check out both of them.
The weather here has been mercurial, one minute sunny, the next gray, but the temperature has stayed beautifully brisk. In two months, as I sweat in the North Carolina summer heat, I will be wishing for this climate.
Now, though, it's my time to grab a very few hours of sleep before resuming work.
Dinner took us to Gabriel Rucker's newer restaurant, Little Bird, for my second visit there. I made my meal from appetizers and sides, and every dish I sampled was excellent. Though I still prefer Le Pigeon to Little Bird, I do love them both, and walking into either one makes me smile and feel a little better. If you live in this area or visit it, you owe it to yourself to check out both of them.
The weather here has been mercurial, one minute sunny, the next gray, but the temperature has stayed beautifully brisk. In two months, as I sweat in the North Carolina summer heat, I will be wishing for this climate.
Now, though, it's my time to grab a very few hours of sleep before resuming work.
May 17, 2011
On the road again: Portland, day 2
Client meetings are confidential, and they were my mission today, so I can't talk at all about work (as usual).
The oddest moment of the day came courtesy of the hotel. Have you ever wondered what the true price of intimacy was? Well, this hotel can help, because right in each room it sells the...
(As always, click on a photo for a larger image of it.)
Yes, the Intimacy Kit. Should you wonder just how the hotel defines intimacy, simply flip over the tin.
The lack of symmetry bothers me a bit--two condoms, two towelettes, but only one tube of lube--but I have to assume the intimacy makers know what they're doing and have made sure it was a capacious lube tube.
I'm also a little disturbed that a wine opener costs more than an intimacy kit, but perhaps that says more about the hotel's target demographics than about the true value of either wine or intimacy.
Tonight's dinner took us to Pok Pok, a Thai place whose chef, Andy Ricker, just won the James Beard award for Best Chef Northwest. Almost all of the dishes were new to me, so I stuck to mild spicing (one Thai chili per dish) and house specialities. I quite liked my boar collar and chicken dishes, but both were definitely spicy enough that I was thankful for the abundant supply of tasty stick rice. The food didn't knock my socks off the way the meal at Le Pigeon did last night, but it was very good, and I will go back at some point.
The oddest moment of the day came courtesy of the hotel. Have you ever wondered what the true price of intimacy was? Well, this hotel can help, because right in each room it sells the...
(As always, click on a photo for a larger image of it.)Yes, the Intimacy Kit. Should you wonder just how the hotel defines intimacy, simply flip over the tin.
The lack of symmetry bothers me a bit--two condoms, two towelettes, but only one tube of lube--but I have to assume the intimacy makers know what they're doing and have made sure it was a capacious lube tube.
I'm also a little disturbed that a wine opener costs more than an intimacy kit, but perhaps that says more about the hotel's target demographics than about the true value of either wine or intimacy.
Tonight's dinner took us to Pok Pok, a Thai place whose chef, Andy Ricker, just won the James Beard award for Best Chef Northwest. Almost all of the dishes were new to me, so I stuck to mild spicing (one Thai chili per dish) and house specialities. I quite liked my boar collar and chicken dishes, but both were definitely spicy enough that I was thankful for the abundant supply of tasty stick rice. The food didn't knock my socks off the way the meal at Le Pigeon did last night, but it was very good, and I will go back at some point.
May 16, 2011
On the road again: Portland, day 1
Saturday night, I went to bed at 5:30 a.m., which is a fine time and doesn't bother me at all. This morning, I had to get up at 5:30, and that sucked. Having only two and a half hours of restless sleep didn't help, but man, I hate early morning flights.
RDU airport provided an exercise in self-control to the hundreds and hundreds of people winding in snakelike queues through the TSA system. Our RDU terminal recently added a new airline and a lot of gates, but it didn't look like the security folks had planned accordingly. Everyone stayed nice despite the pressure, and the lines plodded steadily forward, so it could have been worse. That said, I was not in the best of humors by the time I reached the end of the process.
No upgrades were to be mine today, but at least I had been able to book exit-row seats, so I had leg room, if no space for my shoulders. The first flight provided bandwidth, which was nice; the second, alas, did not.
The three-hour layover in DFW let me catch up on email at the Admirals' Club and grab a salad and a delicious Red Mango parfait for lunch. I am definitely a fan of that place.
The second flight was long but uneventful and even arrived early.
The usual travel transit milestones followed, and then much work.
At the recent Beard awards, chef Gabriel Rucker garnered the Rising Star award. That's not, though, why we ate dinner at Le Pigeon. We dined there because it's one of my favorite restaurants in the world. Period. I've been going there for years. If I lived in Portland, I'd probably eat there a couple of times a month, maybe more. I love its vibe, the fierce dedication of everyone on the line, the clear passion for doing the work--and, of course, the brilliant food.
Rucker wasn't on the line tonight, but John (whose last name I am embarrassed to admit I do not know) and his team were in superb form. I tried the cold foie with fried oyster on top, and it worked amazingly well. My main was a pork chop on a bed of smashed peas mixed with house-made creme-fraiche and several seasonings, and it was magnificent. I would happily eat a bowl of those peas any time. Between the two, in a slow spell John made us a surprise: a vegetarian version (so all of us could share it) of the gnocchi dish with asparagus and light sauces. It captured spring perfectly.
If you have any reason to be in Portland, you simply must eat at Le Pigeon.
I've now been up 22 hours on well under three hours of sleep, and some work remains, so I'm going to get to it and hope to crash soon. I very much hope for a less demanding day tomorrow.
RDU airport provided an exercise in self-control to the hundreds and hundreds of people winding in snakelike queues through the TSA system. Our RDU terminal recently added a new airline and a lot of gates, but it didn't look like the security folks had planned accordingly. Everyone stayed nice despite the pressure, and the lines plodded steadily forward, so it could have been worse. That said, I was not in the best of humors by the time I reached the end of the process.
No upgrades were to be mine today, but at least I had been able to book exit-row seats, so I had leg room, if no space for my shoulders. The first flight provided bandwidth, which was nice; the second, alas, did not.
The three-hour layover in DFW let me catch up on email at the Admirals' Club and grab a salad and a delicious Red Mango parfait for lunch. I am definitely a fan of that place.
The second flight was long but uneventful and even arrived early.
The usual travel transit milestones followed, and then much work.
At the recent Beard awards, chef Gabriel Rucker garnered the Rising Star award. That's not, though, why we ate dinner at Le Pigeon. We dined there because it's one of my favorite restaurants in the world. Period. I've been going there for years. If I lived in Portland, I'd probably eat there a couple of times a month, maybe more. I love its vibe, the fierce dedication of everyone on the line, the clear passion for doing the work--and, of course, the brilliant food.
Rucker wasn't on the line tonight, but John (whose last name I am embarrassed to admit I do not know) and his team were in superb form. I tried the cold foie with fried oyster on top, and it worked amazingly well. My main was a pork chop on a bed of smashed peas mixed with house-made creme-fraiche and several seasonings, and it was magnificent. I would happily eat a bowl of those peas any time. Between the two, in a slow spell John made us a surprise: a vegetarian version (so all of us could share it) of the gnocchi dish with asparagus and light sauces. It captured spring perfectly.
If you have any reason to be in Portland, you simply must eat at Le Pigeon.
I've now been up 22 hours on well under three hours of sleep, and some work remains, so I'm going to get to it and hope to crash soon. I very much hope for a less demanding day tomorrow.
May 15, 2011
Priest
I know what you're thinking: why on Earth did I go to a movie with a less than 20% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes? For starters,
* Maggie Q doing her sexy fight thing
* Vampires living in a post-apocalypse desert
* Messed-up priests clinging to useless rituals from an earlier world
* Paul Bettany reprising his role as a deadly pale religious dude
* Maggie Q
If only I had known that Maggie Q was on screen for only about half an hour.
Priest is another of those movies that marches through its formulaic plot with all the silly determination and originality of Dennis Kucinich making another run at the presidency--but with none of his humor. There was never a second when you didn't know what would happen next.
I'm willing to live with that weakness, however, if a film's style or dialog or characters make up for the plot's shortcomings. The trailer for Priest gave me hope that at least its appearance might do just that, and at times it did. I was happiest when it was mixing a Planet of the Apes empty city vibe with Sergio Leone dusty desert shots. That bad guy Karl Urban dressed just like Clint Eastwood in a Leone film was another plus.
Unfortunately, we didn't get enough of those moments. The dialog was simply one cliche after another, and the characterization was dull.
Now here's the messed-up part: Despite all of that, I had a pleasant enough time. Good guys on silly motorcycles in a dusty future killed eyeless vampires. Maggie Q looked as hot as she does. Karl Urban chomped the scenery.
I can't honestly recommend you head to your local megaplex for Priest, but if you're a stone SF fan and have some free time, you've probably done worse. I sure have.
* Maggie Q doing her sexy fight thing
* Vampires living in a post-apocalypse desert
* Messed-up priests clinging to useless rituals from an earlier world
* Paul Bettany reprising his role as a deadly pale religious dude
* Maggie Q
If only I had known that Maggie Q was on screen for only about half an hour.
Priest is another of those movies that marches through its formulaic plot with all the silly determination and originality of Dennis Kucinich making another run at the presidency--but with none of his humor. There was never a second when you didn't know what would happen next.
I'm willing to live with that weakness, however, if a film's style or dialog or characters make up for the plot's shortcomings. The trailer for Priest gave me hope that at least its appearance might do just that, and at times it did. I was happiest when it was mixing a Planet of the Apes empty city vibe with Sergio Leone dusty desert shots. That bad guy Karl Urban dressed just like Clint Eastwood in a Leone film was another plus.
Unfortunately, we didn't get enough of those moments. The dialog was simply one cliche after another, and the characterization was dull.
Now here's the messed-up part: Despite all of that, I had a pleasant enough time. Good guys on silly motorcycles in a dusty future killed eyeless vampires. Maggie Q looked as hot as she does. Karl Urban chomped the scenery.
I can't honestly recommend you head to your local megaplex for Priest, but if you're a stone SF fan and have some free time, you've probably done worse. I sure have.
May 14, 2011
Want to vote in a book poll? Children No More is nominated
The good folks at Fourth Day Universe contacted me the other day to let me know that they were hosting a poll-driven awards process for a bunch of different genre titles and that they had nominated Children No More for the Best Military SF of 2010. You can see the poll and the many different award categories, which run the gamut from YA to graphic novel to fantasy to SF, by going here.
I mention this for several reasons. First, it's great to see folks who care enough about books that they are reading and reviewing a great many of them and even starting awards for them. It's also neat, of course, to be nominated--as is, by the way, my friend David Drake's What Distant Deeps for the Best Space Opera. Finally, if you were in the mood to vote--for my book or any other title there--I wanted to be sure to let you know about this opportunity.
I mention this for several reasons. First, it's great to see folks who care enough about books that they are reading and reviewing a great many of them and even starting awards for them. It's also neat, of course, to be nominated--as is, by the way, my friend David Drake's What Distant Deeps for the Best Space Opera. Finally, if you were in the mood to vote--for my book or any other title there--I wanted to be sure to let you know about this opportunity.
May 13, 2011
The first public info about No Going Back
The path to a novel's publication is long and complex. Even as I am still several months from finishing No Going Back, Publisher Toni and the fine folks at Baen are busy doing all the behind-the-scenes work necessary to bring the book to market.
One of the items they create is what's known as the promo copy. This is a short bit of text that they use to tell both the sales force and ultimately readers about the book. As you might expect, the copy is supposed to interest and intrigue buyers, but it also has to help the understand within seconds what kind of book it is.
This copy goes on to form the basis for the material on the book that goes into a sales catalog. It appears in the online database of Simon & Schuster, the distributor. From there, it goes to booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It gets around.
With Publisher Toni's kind permission, I'm going to show it to you here. I am going with my latest version, which differs in a key way from the last one I saw. If the online one differs from this one, trust me, mine is right. (Publisher Toni's version, though, will appear in far more places.) This text tells more about the novel than I've ever told anyone publicly.
Enjoy.
One of the items they create is what's known as the promo copy. This is a short bit of text that they use to tell both the sales force and ultimately readers about the book. As you might expect, the copy is supposed to interest and intrigue buyers, but it also has to help the understand within seconds what kind of book it is.
This copy goes on to form the basis for the material on the book that goes into a sales catalog. It appears in the online database of Simon & Schuster, the distributor. From there, it goes to booksellers such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble. It gets around.
With Publisher Toni's kind permission, I'm going to show it to you here. I am going with my latest version, which differs in a key way from the last one I saw. If the online one differs from this one, trust me, mine is right. (Publisher Toni's version, though, will appear in far more places.) This text tells more about the novel than I've ever told anyone publicly.
Enjoy.
Promo copy for
No Going Back
Jon and Lobo are back–
and enemies on all sides are out to get them.
Haunted by memories of children he could not save, Jon Moore becomes so increasingly self-destructive that even his best friend, the hyper-intelligent Predator-Class Assault Vehicle, Lobo, is worried. So when Jon receives both a job offer and a message from a woman from his distant past, he and Lobo leap at the welcome diversions.
That the job is illegal is the least of their problems. They're happy to retrieve stolen artifacts from Jon's quarantined home world, and their fee is high even for a job so highly illegal.
The forces protecting their targets are formidable, and the assault team that's chasing them is even more dangerous–but Jon and Lobo are used to that.
The scientist Jon and Lobo need for the mission has an agenda of her own, but they've faced that problem before.
This time, though, the knowledge that they and the others seek spells doom for Jon.
Racing from planet to planet, Jon and Lobo come at last to a world so inhospitable that its statues and monuments outnumber its living inhabitants. Desperate and out of options, they encounter their deadliest challenges yet and must make life-changing decisions from which there truly is
No Going Back
May 12, 2011
What's been happening with my blog
Quite a few folks have written me this week to express their concern because of the odd things that have been happening with my blog. I wanted to let everyone know that I'm fine and to explain what's been going on.
Monday, no blog entry appeared. The culprit here was me: I just forgot to publish an entry I'd written. To remove the goof from the pages of history, I set that piece's date to Monday when I published it. It's handy to be able to control time!
Then, the weirdness started. Tuesday night, I ran into a Blogger maintenance period. Eventually, though, I was able to publish the entry I had written. Wednesday night, the same thing happened, and again I was finally able to get an entry to appear.
Thursday, Blogger went to hell. My Wednesday installment disappeared. Blogger was unavailable for many hours, and when it let me back into my blog this afternoon, I still couldn't change entries. You can read more about the outages all over the place, including here.
As best I can tell, this problem is now behind us. It certainly has me thinking, however, about moving to another platform. We'll see.
Meanwhile, you're getting this entry, which I started Thursday night, for that day. Friday's will follow almost immediately.
I think you'll like it.
Monday, no blog entry appeared. The culprit here was me: I just forgot to publish an entry I'd written. To remove the goof from the pages of history, I set that piece's date to Monday when I published it. It's handy to be able to control time!
Then, the weirdness started. Tuesday night, I ran into a Blogger maintenance period. Eventually, though, I was able to publish the entry I had written. Wednesday night, the same thing happened, and again I was finally able to get an entry to appear.
Thursday, Blogger went to hell. My Wednesday installment disappeared. Blogger was unavailable for many hours, and when it let me back into my blog this afternoon, I still couldn't change entries. You can read more about the outages all over the place, including here.
As best I can tell, this problem is now behind us. It certainly has me thinking, however, about moving to another platform. We'll see.
Meanwhile, you're getting this entry, which I started Thursday night, for that day. Friday's will follow almost immediately.
I think you'll like it.
May 11, 2011
Forthcoming fiction from me
A few folks have asked me to run down the fiction I've got coming, so here's the scoop on the next year.
July - the paperback of Children No More. Buy the book, and I'll donate my royalties from it to Falling Whistles to help rehabilitate and reintegrate children affected by war. Pop for the hardback, and I'll donate even more money to help those kids.
August - The Wild Side! This trade paperback original anthology features ten cool tales, including one of mine that introduces a new character, Diego Chan. I think you'll find him interesting.
April, 2012 - A new, never-before-published Jon and Lobo short story will appear for free--that's right, for the low low price of absolutely nothing--on Baen.com. Publisher Toni has sent me the contracts--you may get it for free, but she's paying me--and I will shortly sign and return them. No, I won't tell you what the story is about, but I will say that it's going to fit into the chronology of the J&L stories and it's going to be awesome!
May, 2012 - After almost two years, the fifth Jon and Lobo book, No Going Back, will appear in hardback. As usual, I won't tell you much of anything about it, but I will share with you the promo copy that Baen will be using. Not tonight, of course, but soon. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.
What I will say now is that in this book's case, the title is not an exaggeration. The events of this book rock Jon and Lobo's worlds.
July - the paperback of Children No More. Buy the book, and I'll donate my royalties from it to Falling Whistles to help rehabilitate and reintegrate children affected by war. Pop for the hardback, and I'll donate even more money to help those kids.
August - The Wild Side! This trade paperback original anthology features ten cool tales, including one of mine that introduces a new character, Diego Chan. I think you'll find him interesting.
April, 2012 - A new, never-before-published Jon and Lobo short story will appear for free--that's right, for the low low price of absolutely nothing--on Baen.com. Publisher Toni has sent me the contracts--you may get it for free, but she's paying me--and I will shortly sign and return them. No, I won't tell you what the story is about, but I will say that it's going to fit into the chronology of the J&L stories and it's going to be awesome!
May, 2012 - After almost two years, the fifth Jon and Lobo book, No Going Back, will appear in hardback. As usual, I won't tell you much of anything about it, but I will share with you the promo copy that Baen will be using. Not tonight, of course, but soon. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe.
What I will say now is that in this book's case, the title is not an exaggeration. The events of this book rock Jon and Lobo's worlds.
May 10, 2011
A little of what's in my car's CD player right now
Two should do nicely. Enjoy.
