Peter Adam Salomon Keyboard & Camera:

As I am in the midst of a move, with exceedingly spotty internet access (the ‘free’ hotel wifi is, apparently, ‘free’ because it’s non-existent) I’m hard-pressed enough to do everything associated with the move. So blogging will be light, at least until I reach Atlanta this weekend.

Thanks for stopping by!

For all the background information on John Scalzi please feel free to spend some quality Wikipedia time with his ‘generally accurate’ Wikipage. Suffice it to say, after numerous best selling science fiction novels, a couple years as President of the Science Fiction Writer’s Association, a number of non-fiction books, and well over a decade doing Whatever he feels like on his popular website, John Scalzi needs that Wikipedia page.

His latest novel, REDSHIRTS, will be available starting next week.

From the Amazon book description:

Ensign Andrew Dahl has just been assigned to the Universal Union Capital Ship Intrepid, flagship of the Universal Union since the year 2456. It’s a prestige posting, and Andrew is thrilled all the more to be assigned to the ship’s Xenobiology laboratory.

Life couldn’t be better…until Andrew begins to pick up on the fact that (1) every Away Mission involves some kind of lethal confrontation with alien forces, (2) the ship’s captain, its chief science officer, and the handsome Lieutenant Kerensky always survive these confrontations, and (3) at least one low-ranked crew member is, sadly, always killed. 

Not surprisingly, a great deal of energy below decks is expended on avoiding, at all costs, being assigned to an Away Mission. Then Andrew stumbles on information that completely transforms his and his colleagues’ understanding of what the starship Intrepid really is…and offers them a crazy, high-risk chance to save their own lives.

To help celebrate the release of REDSHIRTS, John was gracious enough to answer some questions for me.

PAS: What did you want to be when you grew up?  Are you there yet?

Big announcement, of sorts…a short ‘photo tour’ of HENRY FRANKS has now been added to the main site! The tour has some wonderfully evocative pictures taken by Jon Cohen and some appropriate accompanying text taken from the book. Just a little taste of HENRY FRANKS, I hope you enjoy!

Click HERE to go right to the Photo Tour page! Just click on the photos to take the tour.

Materialistic Visions

waves rushing over my soul
no more emotions
to confuse me
materialistic visions of an unrealistic goal
sun and moon in a collage of sorts
love turns itself into a multi-foliate flower…

if a star should fall on this night
enter your eyes and travel your soul
leaving footprints in your memories
and premature dreams…

could you catch it or would you join its fall?

Box Office Mojo is one of my favorite ‘trivial’ sites on the web. The authoritative compilation of every movie box office stat you might need to know, BOM is a must peruse type of site that is just informative as hell. My own personal favorite part is the section where they break movie box office out by genre, particularly movie musicals. 1) It’s fascinating to look through and 2) it’s amazing to see titles that I’ve never heard of and can now add to the queue of things to watch. For instance, in absolutely last place on the Musicals box office list is a movie from THIS year that I’d never heard of: I Kissed A Vampire. Which is apparently a musical. Released in March and so far has earned a grand total of $1,794 in 11 weeks of release. Yes, really. Good for last place, #75 on the list. Which also qualifies it for #66 on the Vampire genre list, #617 in the ‘Last 365 Days’ list and #11,259 in the ‘All Time Domestic’ list. As I said, fascinating.

For the sake of trivia:

As we prepare to leave New Orleans, the last minute rush to see and do everything continues apace.

This was made a little easier by free tickets to the National World War II Museum, which was just wonderful to visit on Memorial Day Weekend yesterday with Andy. It was his first day of summer vacation and we had a blast! Saw the Beyond All Boundaries movie with Tom Hanks et al that was an emotional WOW factor of about infinity. They really did a great job with that movie and theater. Since we got there so early we had great seats and got to tour the museum when it was fairly empty before TONS of school tours showed up closer to noon. By then we were almost done.

Perhaps the absolute highlight of the visit was spending about ten minutes talking to this very special man:

World War II Veteran Bill Springer

This smiling NINETY-FOUR year old man was a co-pilot flying bombing missions over Germany during the war and he shared some of those stories with Andy and me. It was a distinct honor and pleasure to shake this man’s hand.

There’s a third level, you can sort of see part of the railing to it on the far right in the picture above. Andy and I both wanted a better view of all the planes hanging from the ceiling. What neither of us took into account as we blithely walked up the stairs was that apparently he inherited my dislike of heights. And, let me tell you, despite how sturdy and well-made everything is, it was still a very anxiety-ridden climb up those stairs, made even worse by the fact that trying to take pictures over the railing was a little terrifying.

But worth it

These dogs are showing up all over the city. My favorite had been a Starry Night one that I'll eventually post pictures of. But I LOVE this one!

There are certain songs that scream at the top of their neon day-glo teased hair lungs that they represent (complete with fist pumps) the 80s. Perhaps no song can claim that mantle more than You Spin Me Round (Like A Record), though to be fair Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go would be in the conversation as well.

For me, Love & Pride by King is that song. Sure You Spin Me Round is pure pop joy wrapped up in a dance beat you can’t help but tap your toes to and Wake Me is a goofy anthem for the decade but Love & Pride is just something special. Those ‘ahs’ in the middle, the unending repetition of the bass line, the sweetness and lightness of the whole thing. It’s a big cake decorated in sparkles for the decade.

Granted, he is not sparkling as much as Pete Burns of Dead Or Alive...

Well, it is NBA Playoffs time, and even though I’m not really an NBA fan The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh was one of those so-bad-it’s-good type movies that middle school HBO played non-stop on those days I was home pretending to be sick. Because, really, putting together a professional basketball team based on their astrological sign makes perfect late 70s sense. But the best thing about the movie is the classic disco soundtrack…

Sometimes I’m lazier than usual. This is one of those times. The bio for Colin Galbraith is filled with writing credits so in the interest of my overall laziness this Wednesday morning, I’m just linking to his ‘real’ bio.

In short, Colin’s been writing and publishing for the past decade plus from his home base in Scotland, with stories set all over the world. For me, his prolific output is the perfect equal for his complete embrace of modern technology and it’s uses for the new publishing paradigm being assembled around us piece by piece. He’s always been at the forefront of what is possible and what is next for the literary world. To celebrate the release of  his latest ‘crime novella’ GREENER IS THE GRASS, Colin stopped by to answer some questions.

PAS: What did you want to be when you grew up? Are you there yet?

CG: I wanted to be a few things at different stages of growing up:

- I wanted to be a journalist for a long time, because I enjoyed English at shool and I often wrote poems and scripts and it was the only way I thought you could make a living and write at the same time. I used to be able to write the script of Star Wars and The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy off by heart.

- I wanted to be an architect after spending a week in an architect’s office on a work placement scheme. They guy who mentored me designed several key landmarks around Glasgow, so I thought it would be quite a cool thing to do.

- I wanted to be a cowboy. But I was much younger then and the nearest I got to that was watching Spaghetti Westerns on the TV. I still do.

PAS: If you could talk to the 15-year-old Colin for five minutes, what would you tell yourself?

CG: At 15 I was still a cheeky young bugger (nothing’s changed) so I’d have to watch what I was saying. If I could get him to sit still for five minutes let alone fifteen, I would tell him this:

- Maybe going away from home to university and doing a creative writing course would be something to consider … what do you think?

- Don’t wait until your 20s before you shave your head for the first time. You’ve always wanted to and you never regretted it.

- Don’t be so loyal to those you suspect have stabbed you in the back – your assumptions are correct.

PAS: With Greener Is The Grass you take the reader to a Greek island, what brought the story about and will we see more foreign locations in future stories?

CG: Greener is the Grass was one of those stories sourced from a real-life event that happened. The book opens with an earthquake that actually happened while I was holidaying on the Greek island of Rhodes a few years ago. It was an amazing thing to witness and I always knew I would use it somewhere.

Later that same holiday, a young girl went missing from the poolside bar one evening. After a quick search she was found (playing with the game machines in the hotel), but being a crime writer, I assumed the worst and decided it made a good premise for a story.

To top it all off, that same holiday again, I got involved socially with the holiday reps that ran the evening and daytime entertainment. I found myself in a position to be able to delve into their world in depth, although it did lead to me having to perform YMCA on stage one night, which involved ripping off my sailors outfit and prancing around with my bottom on display to 200 German tourists.

The book was more or less written in my head by the time I left for Scotland.

Will I use more foreign locations? Only if the story demands it to be honest. My new paranormal book, BACCARA BURNING, which will be out later in 2012 hopefully, starts off in Sorrento. Other than that, I have no solid plans just now.

For more on Colin, visit his website, Twitter, or Facebook.

So, I have a number of  ’Google Alerts’ set up to let me know if something of interest to me is posted somewhere online. This helps me keep up to date on things as diverse as Alphaville to mentions of my book that I might know about. And that’s where things just got really strange.

First off, this has nothing whatsoever to do with my book.

With that out of the way…we continue…

I’ve long known that there are well over a hundred people on Facebook with the name Henry Franks. It’s not an uncommon name. I’ve often wondered if I shouldn’t contact them all just to let them know ‘hey, there’s a book out using your name as the title: GO BUY IT’ (hint, hint…see what I did there?).

So, the Google Alert for “Henry Franks” often has ignorable hits. Today’s alert would have been just as ignorable. Except for the fact that it’s (not kidding here) from the official Tumblr of actor Robert Pattinson. Why? I have no idea. He’s talking about Adventureland and apparently someone named Henry Franks was involved somehow. Stranger things have happened, no?

Very weird google alert…