Kelly McCullough's Blog, page 45

Saturday Meteorite Blogging

These colorful images are of thin slices of meteorites viewed through a polarizing microscope. Part of the group classified as HED meteorites for their mineral content (Howardite, Eucrite, Diogenite), they likely fell to Earth from 4 Vesta, the mainbelt asteroid currently being explored by NASA's Dawn spacecraft. Why are they thought to be from Vesta? Because the HED meteorites have visible and infrared spectra that match the spectrum of that small world. The hypothesis of their origin on Vesta is also consistent with data from Dawn's ongoing observations. Excavated by impacts, the diogenites shown here would have originated deep within the crust of Vesta. Similar rocks are also found in the lower crust of planet Earth. A sample scale is indicated by the white bars, each 2 millimeters long.

Friday Cat Blogging

Beached! But sun… But beached! But sun…



I can has suuuuun.



Nap attack.



Yes, my precious…

Launch Neurosis

I am now deeply into the "nobody is even going to see that this book exists, and that means no one will buy it phase," of Broken Blade launch neurosis.

My version of launch neurosis is funny, actually, because I'm not generally susceptible to the more common imposter syndrome variation. I don't find myself thinking, "what if if nobody told me the books sucks?" Or, "people who read this are going to hate it." Or, "I'm not a real writer."

That's in part because I don't mind that some of the people who read it won't like it. There are any number of perfectly excellent books that I don't like. And it's in part due to the fact that I am confident that I have written the best book I could. I'm proud of Broken Blade, and I think that it will do well if it finds its market.

But I do find myself absolutely terrified that no one will notice the book and that it will sink without a trace before the people who might have really liked it will find it. It's really all about locus of control. I can, more or less, control how good of a book I write. I can't control how people will react to the book, and I'm okay with that. But I feel that there should be some way to make sure that people know the books exists, and the fact that there's actually very little I can do on that front drives me nuts.

Sunday Star Blogging

For reasons unknown, star V838 Mon's outer surface suddenly greatly expanded with the result that it became the brightest star in the entire Milky Way Galaxy in January 2002. Then, just as suddenly, it faded. A stellar flash like this has never been seen before. It's true that supernovae and novae expel matter out into space. But while the V838 Mon flash appears to expel material into space, what is seen here is actually an outwardly moving light echo of the bright flash. In a light echo, light from the flash is reflected by successively more distant rings in the ambient interstellar dust that already surrounded the star. V838 Mon lies about 20,000 light years away toward the constellation of Monoceros the unicorn. In this Hubble Space Telescope image from February 2004, the light echo is about six light years in diameter.

Friday Cat Blogging

Duuuuude…



Lean down here so I can smack you



Bliiinded by liiiiiight



Crazy eyes? What crazy eyes?



I can kill you with my mind.



Anyone see a bunch of reindeer go by?

Broken Blade Launch Day!

I wrote a new book. Okay, I wrote it a year ago, and I've written two more since, but today is the day it gets shoved out of the nest and has to fly on its own. It's called Broken Blade, and its got assassins and sorcerers and swordfights and something very like zombies and all manner of cool stuff. It's also got two sequels already written. One, Bared Blade, is available for preorder at this very moment, and the other, Crossed Blades, goes off to my editor sometime in the next 72 hours. Look at the cover, isn't it shiny?



I really don't have a lot more to say about the book at this point in time. Once it's printed and bound and all of those things, a book more or less has to speak for itself and I'm going to let it, though you can hear me talking about a variety of things with Anton Strout at his latest Once and Future podcast, recorded on Sunday.

The commercial stuff: You can order Broken Blade directly from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Indiebound (various independents) should you be so inclined, and preordering Bared Blade at places like Barnes and Noble or Amazon is as easy as clicking.

If you're viewing this on November 29th, and you happen to be in the Minneapolis/St Paul area, I'll be reading bits of the book at the Har Mar Barnes and Noble tonight at 7:00, as well as making a few other appearances later in the week.

Broken Blade, meet world. World, meet book.

Catch of the Day

"I began writing in order to arrive into the company of those whose company meant more to me than any other: the world of the books I'd found on shelves and begun to assemble on my own, and the people who'd written them, and the readers who cared as much as I did, if those existed."
—Jonathan Lethem

Friday Cat Blogging (the usual suspects)

If you turn the heat down, I will cut you.



The yellow face, it burns us!



Warm, yet still retaining an air of mystery. I win.



Could you baste the other side, I'm about to turn over.

RIP Anne McCaffery

I just read that Anne McCaffery has died.

I never met her, not really. I did get my Pern books autographed when she last came to Uncle Hugo's, but we probably only exchanged the usual, "How do you spell that?"

But the book I presented her to sign was dog eared, worn almost to tatters with rereading and so deeply, deeply loved.

Pern was my first fandom, before that word was really in usage, and certainly before I knew what it meant. I read the Dragonrider books over and over to the point that I had passages memorized. I wrote fan fic, drew fan art, and spent a large portion of my waking hours imagining myself as F'lar or F'nor or Robinton, the Harpermaster of Pern. I talked friends into reading the books so I could talk to them about it. One of my best friends even bought me a wine glass with a blue stem, because it was just like Robinton's. I used to put cinnamon in my coffee so I could pretend it was klah. I never did, but I desperately wanted to join those cool people in the weyr BBSs.

Anne McCaffery's world captured me in a way no others had before, and few would afterwards.

Broken Blade Book Launch Events

So, I have a new book coming out a week from Tuesday, Broken Blade. The first chapter can be found here.

It can be bought at all the usual places, of course, but if you want to get a signed copy, you might want to come to one of the events I'll be having in November and December.

1st up: Launch day reading and signing at the Barnes and Noble in Har Mar Mall in Roseville (St Paul) MN. 7:00 pm, Tuesday November 29th.

2nd: I'll be signing and chatting with whoever shows up at Uncle Hugo's science fiction book store in Minneapolis, MN. 1:00 pm Saturday December 3rd.

3rd: I'll be signing, maybe reading, and chatting with whoever shows up at Bookends on Main in Menomonie, WI. 5:00 pm Thursday December 8th.

4th: I'll be signing and chatting with whoever shows up at Dreamhaven Books in Minneapolis, MN. 2:00 pm Saturday December 11th. This will be one of the last events at the book store before they become primarily on online book seller.