Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Chaos & Clarkesworld Books

Work has been extremely busy, as is often the case just before a holiday. Life has been busy with family and friend-related engagements every weekend in between work on the new house.

In the midst of all this chaos, I'm thankful for great books like John Marco's newest, The Sword of Angels, to take me away and still engage my thoughts and stimulate my imagination. I finished it up a couple of days ago and I'm finalizing my review, which will be posted in a couple of days. As my sidebar indicates, I'm smack-dab in the middle of the thoughtful and cool collection edited by Gardner Dozois, Galileo's Children.

I've mentioned before the great online FSF bookstore, Clarkesworld Books, run by Neil Clarke. He has a wonderful selection of 'Zines, signed books, used books and small press books you just can't find in Barnes and Noble or Borders. Every so often, Neil runs a contest and the one he's starting up is pretty cool. Tobias Buckell, a writer whose short stories I've enjoyed will see his debut novel, Crystal Rain, publish with Tor (not that you would know from perusing Tor's Web site) in January/February of 2006. If you preorder a signed copy, you win a chance to be a character in one of his future novels. Again, as I've said, Neil is a fellow NJ-guy, so I always try to support the locals, especially when the product/services offered are superior to the big competition. Regardless of whether or not you are going to get Buckell's novel, Clarkesworld offers a plentitude of books.

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