Kelly McCullough's Blog, page 85

Whoot!

Ressurection Code is ready for pre-order on Amazon.com!!! The book won't be out until March 2011, but reserve your copy now here: http://www.amazon.com/Resurrection-Code-Lyda-Morehouse/dp/1935234099/

Whoot!

Astronomy Photo of the Day

Could life once have survived on Mars? Today, neither animal nor plant life from Earth could survive for very long on Mars because at least one key ingredient -- liquid water -- is essentially absent on the red planet's rusty surface. Although evidence from the martian rovers indicates that long ago Mars might once have had liquid water on its surface, that water might also have been too acidic for familiar life forms to thrive. Recently, however, a newly detailed analysis of an unusual...

The places that books hold in our lives

Thanks to Niccola Griffith, by way of Lisa Gold, come a collection of wonderful images which remind us that, for all this talk of words, we as writers wouldn't be anywhere without people to read them. Surf on over to Mr. McCurry's site -- he's captured some wonderful moments (parts I and II) that speak to how captivating books can be, no matter where or who you are (and the rest of his site is pretty stunning, too).

Overheard at Critique

1. "This is a FORESHADOWING zombie."

2. "God Awful Stuff on a Stick" (tm)

3. "I'm shooting for this great redemptive moment when XX runs her sister through with a sword..."

4. "I'm really sorry. Sounds like you got my Muse accidentally."

Friday Cat Blogging

I knew I should have sprung for the battery powered cat!



You're on speakerphone, now tell me a bedtime story.



Blasé cat is unimpressed.




Cat, now available in solid or liquid!



There are two cats in this picture, really.

Smart Things

Ace/Roc editor Jessica Wade talking about what an editor does.

Jim Hines on the forthcoming "death" of print publishing. Yeah, I don't think print's on its way out any time soon either though, as with Jim I expect e-publishing to make up a much larger percentage of the market going forward than it does now.

Lilith Saintcrow on how to go about getting published.

Alyx Dellamonica on being compelled to write. File under can't not, and leaking weirdness.

Foreign Cover Art

I just got the cover art for the British edition for Many Bloody Returns, in which my short story about Sebastian and Garnet, "Fire and Ice and Linguine for Two," appears.It's not much to look at, but, hey, I'll be appearing in ENGLISH. Whoot!

And below we have Dead Sexy's German edition, which became BEISS NOCH EINMAL MIT GEFUEHL....

... and Romancing the Dead, which became VAMPIR SEIN IST ALLES.

Astronomy Photo of the Day

What's the matter with this cluster of galaxies? To find out what forms matter takes in the Abell 1689 cluster requires not only deep images from telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope, but detailed computer modeling as well. To start, almost every fuzzy yellow patch in the above image is an entire galaxy. A close inspection, however, shows that many background galaxies are strangely magnified and distorted into long curving arcs by the gravitational lens deflections of the cluster...

Astronomy Photo of the Day

Is this one galaxy or two? This question came to light in 1950 when astronomer Art Hoag chanced upon this unusual extragalactic object. On the outside is a ring dominated by bright blue stars, while near the center lies a ball of much redder stars that are likely much older. Between the two is a gap that appears almost completely dark. How Hoag's Object formed remains unknown, although similar objects have now been identified and collectively labeled as a form of ring galaxy. Genesis...

Hanny and the Voorwerp Comic

Kelly here.

So, in addition to the new fantasy series I'm writing for Ace, The Chronicles of Aral Kingslayer, I've been working on a project for Galaxy Zoo and the Hubble Space Telescope with my astronomer friend Dr. Pamela Gay and a number of other fantastic folks. The project is a comic illustrating an amazingly nifty discovery in astronomy called Hanny's Voorwerp. It's all kinds of cool: scientific, artistic, literary, collaborative, and really worth checking out. For the broad stroke deta...