b.rox

A photo of mine is featured in the new book, Signs of Life. It’s this one, taken on September 25, 2005 just a few blocks from my home in Mid-City New Orleans:

Profits from the sale of the book go to Common Ground Relief and Hands On Network.

I just got my copy of Katrina-ku: Storm Poems, a compilation of haiku poetry about you-know-what, to which I contributed a little technical assistance.

It’s a beautiful little book, quite sad but also quite funny. Get your copy — they’re cheap!

“So you are tired of your life, young man! All the more reason have you to live. Anyone can die. A murderer has moral force enough to jeer at his hangman. It is very easy to draw the last breath. It can be accomplished successfully by a child or a warrior. One pang of far [...]

And in a wild and sudden dance
We mocked at Time and Fate and Chance
– William Butler Yeats, The Wanderings of Oisin

Lately I’ve been posting about my personal experiences post-Katrina. I haven’t written much about the “big picture.” But if you care about me and Xy I hope you are also interested in the larger issues at stake.
Here are two glimpes of that bigger picture.

Last night we went to a book reading. Seems a guy named [...]

For over four years I’ve been attending monthly meetings of the Octavia Books Science Fiction Club. I was there at the first meeting in the summer of 2001 and I’ve never missed a meeting since.
Until today, for our first meeting post-Katrina. And even so, I was kind of halfway there. I had a virtual [...]

Today the Octavia Books Science Fiction Club discussed our 50th book — Altered Carbon by Richard K. Morgan.

Actually, only two members of said club have been there to discuss all 50 books — Scott and yours truly.
It was a great discussion. Afterwards we had lunch Ethiopian-style at Addis Deli and Grocery.

The Xavier University Bookstore is selling copies of the new Harry Potter book — two days early. This could be trouble, like what happened in New York and the even more ridiculous goings-on in British Columbia.
Disclaimer: I only know about this because our Administrative Assistant, Michelle, is a Harry Potter freak.

Seems like there’s always something in the morning paper to make my blood boil.
This morning it was a story about a legislator from Slidell who wants to get “gay books” out of the children’s section.
The book that sparked this particular episode is King and King, which seems to have provoked a federal legislator to propose [...]

This is kind of gross, so don’t read just before dinner.
This morning I entered the men’s room near my office to find the toilet was backed up. I flushed it and it started overflowing. So I asked Michelle to call maintenance, and then headed downstairs to use the men’s room on the fourth floor. The [...]

We went to see a musical duo called One Ring Zero at my favorite bookstore. It seemed like everyone we knew was there, including Ben Hearst — turns out his brother Michael is one of the guys in the band.
The music was awesome. They perform quirky pop ditties with lyrics written expressly for them [...]

It’s my turn to pick books for the Octavia Science Fiction Reading Club. That means I have to pick three novels on a theme, and I have done so. My theme: “Identity Crisis 77″ — science fiction novels dealing with issues of identity which were all written in 1977. My books:

The Ophiuchi Hotline by John [...]

I’m sure by now, anyone who cares has seen this article: “A Whitewashed Earthsea - How the Sci Fi Channel wrecked my books” by Ursula K. Le Guin. But there’s the link in case you missed it.
I read A Wizard of Earthsea to Xy this summer, in anticipation of the miniseries. Yet somehow I overlooked [...]

I did it! I finished my novel.
It’s not the 50,000 words required by NanoWriMo. It’s only 21,469 words. So it’s not actually long enough to be what most people would consider a novel. More like a novella.
Oh, yes, it is a steaming pile of crap. But it’s mine, all mine. I made that crap. Me.
And [...]

I’m at 15,508 words. The month is more than half over. Ideally I should be over 25,000 words at this point. I seem to be averaging about a thousand words a day, and at that rate I’ll never make 50,000 by the 30th. Oh well. I’m taking today off. Maybe I’ll write 10,000 words. I’d [...]

I’ve been working on this novel for seven days now, and I’ve written 7,402 words. They’re not necessarily good words, but NaNoWriMo is about quantity, not quality. I try to remind myself: “That’s what second drafts are for.” The idea here is to turn off the internal editor and write furiously. I have a hard [...]

I think I’m going to participate in the National Novel Writing Month. I’m going to try to write a novel in thirty days. I don’t know if I can, but I like reading novels, so I’d like to try writing one.
I started writing a novel back during the summer of 2001. The working title was [...]

Here’s some things that happened over the last few days:
Got drenched to the skin on the way to work Friday morning. It rained real hard and it rained for a real long time. They cancelled Jazz Fest for the first time in thirteen years! I brought a change of clothes with me [...]

Title: The Uplift War
Author: David Brin
Published: 1987
I would never recommend The Uplift War to my friends who are skeptical about science fiction. It has too many conventions peculiar to the genre. There are aliens of many races, psychic powers, galactic empires, robots, ray guns and spaceships that travel faster than light. It’s all a bit [...]