A picture is worth a thousand words

The new president-elect is all about image so he knows exactly what kind of message he's sending with this Christmas tweet pic. Scares the bejezus out of me. Because really, nothing says "Happy Holidays" like a raised fist. And I love (not) that he felt compelled to add "President-elect" to his name, as if we don't know who he is.

Water Taxi in a River of Vampire Fish

I love it when I'm looking for something particular and then something completely unexpected pops up on my radar. I was following a link to a set of sci-fi romantic adventures and on a whim decided to see what was on offer in the freebie Kindle store today. (Because it's never too late to get myself a Christmas present.) I saw this book and went, "squee." A drowned New York. A sinister plot. And two bonus stories. My kind of read. You can find it free yourself here. And if you do download it, let me know what you think of it!

Poetry inspired by Shakespeare

Destination Shakespeare is a book of 24 poems published by Vancouver-based Misfit Press. You can see an animation of one of the poems here (just click on the book cover). I wish I'd known about this book before Christmas because I know a few people who would have loved to find it in their stocking (including ME).

I'm old enough to remember the last arms race

I was just a little girl when the US and Russia went eye to eye and toe to toe in Cuba. I remember sitting on our living room couch next to my mother as she watched John F. Kennedy's speech to the nation during those terrible days in October. (My father wasn't home. A career Army officer, he was "on alert" and getting ready, if need be, to be deployed.)

I didn't really understand what was going on so I asked my mother. "The president's telling us we're going to war," my mother said. I was terrified. The word "war" was still pretty abstract to me but I understood that if we went to war, it meant my father would be fighting it. In this Strangelovian world Americans now find ourselves in, I am more frightened now than I have been in decades.

Donald Trump is going to kill us all. It is no consolation at all knowing that Trump Tower and the White House are both at Ground Zero and no matter what nuclear horror follows the apocalypse he is threatening to unleash, he won't be around to profit by it.

Stephen King...

I couldn't have said it better myself. But then, I can rarely say anything better than Stephen King.

Cory Booker's Book Club

This is what he has to stay about it:

This past summer we read Just Mercy, a powerful memoir about our criminal justice system written by human rights attorney—and one of my heroes—Bryan Stevenson. It was an honor having Bryan join us for a live video chat to discuss his book and answer many of your questions. I look forward to having many similar discussions this year.

To kick off our 2017 Book Club, we’ve chosen a must-read book that takes a hard look at the human impact on our environment. Elizabeth Kolbert’s Pulitzer-prize winner, The Sixth Extinction, has been recommended to me by so many people I’ve lost count. And as we head into a year when we’ll need to fight even harder for a more sustainable future, it’s an especially important read—I hope you’ll join me and open this book right away.

Here's where you can sign up for it.

A new series for a new year

Thanks to cover designer Daniel Weiss of the Book Cover Designer, I have a shiny new cover for my new series of SF books that will be coming out next year. I have another book already planned, Data Witch, and the two covers look like a set. (My designer is still working on Data Witch.)

The two covers were my Christmas present to me and thanks to a holiday sale, I snagged both for less than $100. I have about thirty on my "wish list," so I suspect that a little more of my Christmas cash will go to the site. (I have been a remarkably good girl this year, although I didn't write nearly as much as I wanted to.) Daniel gave me three different options on where to put my by-line but I think I like this one best.