There's another brand new, original, never-before-published Wild Cards story up on Tor.com.
This one is by Walter Jon Williams. The star (well, she'd say she was, at least) is Pop Tart, last seen in INSIDE STRAIGHT and the first season of AMERICAN HERO. The art, of course, is by the amazing John Picacio.
Check it out at
http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/11/prompt-professional-pop
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The Writers Guild of America has just announced the nominees for its annual awards, and HBO and GAME OF THRONES are both well represented on the shortlists.
The writing staff of GAME OF THRONES season four (David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman, and me) scored another nomination for Best Dramatic Series. We'll be up against THE GOOD WIFE, HOUSE OF CARDS, TRUE DETECTIVE, and MAD MEN.
But that's not all. In the Episodic Drama category, my own season four episode, "The Lion and the Rose," was nominated. It will be competing against episodes from THE GOOD WIFE, RECTIFY, MAD MEN, and two strong BOARDWALK EMPIREs. Tough company indeed.
But I am thrilled by the nomination. The last time one of my scripts was nominated was 1987, when one of my TWILIGHT ZONE episodes was a finalist. (I lost to Harlan Ellison, with another TZ script). So it's very cool to make the shortlist.
For a full list of nominees, go to:
http://www.eonline.com/news/603528/game-of-thrones-orange-is-the-new-black-and-true-detective-lead-2015-wga-nominations
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Is he the answer? Hell, I don't know. But he's the only other quarterback on the roster besides Vick and Smith, and he sure can't be any worse than what Geno showed last night, or in that Buffalo game I attended when I was in New York. And if he has even half the guts and smarts and arm of his father, he might even win a few of these last games.
Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he'll lose them all. That would tell us something too. Then we'd know the Jets had no starting-calibre QBs on the roster, and we can try and draft that kid from Oregon next season.
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Tellgame Tales has released another trailer for their new GAME OF THRONES videogame, IRON FROM ICE.
Enjoy.
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It doesn't get much worse than that. Losing to the Niners and the Cowboys the past two weeks was bad, but at least they are good teams. Playoff contenders. Jacksonville… arrgh…
We lost two more offensive linemen as well. As Coughlin was already playing the third-stringers. No wonder Eli kept going down. If one more lineman had been injured, David Diehl would have needed to leave the broadcast booth to suit up.
Bad to worse to worst.
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Turkey Day is here again. (Where did that year go?)
Happy Thanksgiving to all my fans, friends, and family.
A day for fond memories. Including this one:
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Okay, last week's football proved beyond a doubt that life is miserable and full of pain.
The Jets snow-shifted game against Buffalo, in Detroit, was a disgrace. The whole team looked awful . No one more so than Michael Vick, whose once-famed elusiveness seems a thing of the past. Even worse than the drubbing was the fact that Vick was so wretched that Rex actually benched him for Geno Smith, and has announced that Geno will start again this week. Argh. A nightmare. Vick is done, and Geno is a bust. GIVE MATT SIMMS A START, I say. He cannot possibly be worse than Vick and Smith. It won't happen, I know, but it should. We need to find out if there is a NFL-calibre on the roster before next year's draft.
The Giants game was far more exciting, but in the end almost as painful, since Big Blue's wretched defense found a way to lose the game to the despised Cowboys after Eli had won it with a masterful fourth quarter drive. The Giants outplayed Dallas for most of the game, but still blew it at the end. Losing is always bad; losing to the Cowboys is worse than bad.
But there was one transcendent moment, one brief burst of joy to take from the weekend of despair. Ladies and gents, I give Odell Beckham Junior, and one of the greatest TD catches in NFL history.
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;… or maybe Menlo Park?
As it happens, I was out in that neck of the woods yesterday, with a couple free hours before heading to the airport to return to Santa Fe, so I did some surprise drop-in stock signings at three local bookstores.
Those of you in northern California, if you are looking for autographed copies of LOWBALL or THE ICE DRAGON or THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE or ROGUES or any of my Ice & Fire novels, hardcover or paperback, check out:
KEPLER'S BOOKS, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park
BARNES & NOBLE , 3600 Stevens Creek Blvd, San Jose
HICKLEBEE's, 1378 Lincoln Avenue, San Jose
You'll find signed copies of my books at all of them… while the supplies last.
(Which won't be long. Especially at Hicklebee's).
Would have loved to drop by some of the other great bookstores in the Bay Area as well, but we ran out of time.
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When Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman visited the Jean Cocteau Cinema in September, Amanda read a bit for us from her new book, THE ART OF ASKING. Sounded very cool…. unfortunately, we couldn't sell any copies, since the book had not yet been published. The only copy on site was the advance copy that Amanda was reading from.
But hey, the wait is over… the ART OF ASKING has now been published, as of 11/11, and should be available at your local bookstore, or from your favorite online bookseller (alas, we don't have any signed copies available at the Jean Cocteau, but we hope to remedy that the next time Amanda and Neil come to visit).
Amanda says:
" it's a book about….a lot of things. my marriage, my days as a weird street performer, my amazing band and label disaster,
my difficulties dealing with a best friend who's had cancer for the past three years; but that's all sort of a veil.
mostly it's an attempt to try to discover why all human beings (especially artists) has such a hard time asking for things.
i poured my heart into it. it's a really personal book.
it's also really FUNNY.
and sad.
it's a weird book.
but i'm really, really proud of it."
Everything you could want to know about ordering a copy can be found here: http://amandapalmer.net/
Happy reading. Happy asking.
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The last few months have passed in such a blur that I forgot to shout out the new Wild Cards story on Tor.com.
This one is by Carrie Vaughn, entitled "Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza." The illustration is by the amazing John Picacio.
An untold tale of Earth Witch in the aftermath of the events of the first Committee triad, "Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza" is all new and original, published here for the first time.
You can check it out at http://www.tor.com/stories/2014/10/nuestra-senora-de-la-esperanza-carrie-vaughn
Check out Carrie's other books as well.
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