Edward Willett's Blog, page 72

Electronic galley of Song of the Sword available to reviewers

I now have an electronic version of Song of the Sword, Book 1 in The Shards of Excalibur, my new YA fantasy coming out this fall from Lobster Press, available to send to any bona fide book reviewers (for online sites or print) interested in reading and reviewing the novel leading up to its October release.

If you review books and you'd like a copy, send me an email or just leave a comment on this post.

The grills of summer

We've had at least one nice day so far this spring, and based on previous years (although, of course, as they say about RRSPs, past performance is no guarantee of future results) we may get at least one more before first frost this fall, so there's just a possibility a few people may break out their barbecues for some outdoor cooking in the near future.

In the U.S., the Memorial Day weekend at the end of May is seen as prime barbecuing time, which is probably why LiveScience, one of the...

Things I Found in My Mother-in-Law's House: The 1912 Postcard

It's been a while since I did this, but I'd like to resume occasionally posting "Things I Found in My Mother-in-Law's House," which I STILL hope to turn into a book at some point.

Mostly I'll post things I can scan. Like this 1912 postcard, which was sent to Sam Goodfellow a few days after the Regina Cyclone, the devastating tornado that killed 28 people, injured hundreds, left 2,500 homeless and destroyed or damaged 500 buildings. It remains Canada's worst tornado disaster. The postcard...

Here's the cover art for Song of the Sword

I'm pleased to finally be able to show off the cover art for my upcoming YA fantasy, Song of the Sword, Book 1 of five-book series The Shards of Excalibur, coming out in mid-October from Lobster Press.

The art work is by Allen Douglas, and I like it a lot.

Here's the blurb from the Amazon.ca page (where you can already pre-order the book…and where, obviously, some people have, because it has a remarkably high rating for not actually being in print yet):

Before the Lady called her, Ariane's life...

A treatment for Ebola?

A few years ago I wrote several books for Enslow Publishers in New Jersey for a series called Diseases and People. I covered meningitis, arthritis, hemophilia…and Ebola. My most recent book for Enslow, Disease-Hunting Scientist, also talks about Ebola, and some of the scientists who travel to the sites of outbreaks to help with containment efforts.

Ask someone on the street to name a particularly deadly disease, and there's a good chance he'll say "Ebola." Yet of the diseases I wrote about...

The winners of the 2010 Prix Aurora Awards

The 2010 Prix Aurora Awards for the best Canadian science fiction and fantasy of 2009 were handed out tonight at KeyCon in Winnipeg. My Terra Insegura was nominated for best novel in English, but didn't win (although all the nominees did receive very nice stainless steel mini-Aurora pins, which were much appreciated!). Instead, the best novel in English award went to Robert J. Sawyer's Wake (and well-deserved it is).

Here are this year's nominees and winners. I've arranged the list with the...

Ball lightning

Now that we're finally starting to see some hot weather, it won't be long before we begin to see something else: thunderstorms and lightning (very, very frightening me! Galileo, Galileo…sorry, just a little Queen flashback).

It's the lightning, of course, that makes thunderstorms thunder. If I may quote myself from a previous column, lightning "is a massive but short-lived electrical discharge in the atmosphere, usually several kilometres long.

"Lightning arises because of a charge separation ...

The laser at 50

You know you've been writing a column a long time when the 50th anniversary of a major scientific discovery comes along and you realize you wrote a column celebrating its 30th anniversary.

But that's exactly what's happening this month. Next week (Saturday, May 15, to be precise) marks the 50th anniversary of the invention of the laser. And what follows is (with some slight revisions) the column I wrote to celebrate its 30 anniversary back in 1990. (But it's OK: I promise not to trot it out...

A nice blog review of Lost in Translation

Mass-market paperbacks have a short shelf life, but that doesn't mean people aren't still reading them long after they're hard to find in a bookstore. Case in point: a nice new review of my first book for DAW, Lost in Translation, just popped up at Scott's Corner, a blog I was hitherto unaware of, but now, of course, can't recommend highly enough!

The eponymous Scott has nice things to say:

This was a great book, headed by two well drawn characters. The book alternates POV chapters between...

First issue of Fine Lifestyles Saskatoon is now out!

It's not online yet (though it will be before long), but the first issue of Fine Lifestyles Saskatoon, which I edit along with Fine Lifestyles Regina, is now out. As you can see, it features Mayor Don Atchison and his wife Mardele on the cover, and runs to just over 190 pages of full-colour, glossy goodness.

I'm already working on the next issues of both.