Monday, December 3, 2012

December's Agenda

Finals start this week, so things will probably be hectic until around the 14th.  My only final is Friday morning, but I've got a new lab manual to edit and send to the publisher by then.  All of which means that posting here is going to be sporadic.  I may post for two or three days straight, then not have anything new for a week or more.  'Tis the season.

Here's what I've got lined up as far as novels go.  The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones is first up, followed by The Dead of Winter by Lee Collins.  After that, it will be two science fiction novels, The Creative Fire by Brenda Cooper and Apollo's Outcasts by Allen Steele. I'll post those reviews over at Futures Past and Present.  There are a couple of forthcoming novels I've committed to review, plus 3 from Angry Robot that I had intended to review in August before moving threw my schedule into chaos.  Those will probably wait until January since none of the forthcoming titles have release dates before then.

I want to spend the rest of December getting caught up on stuff I've had on the shelf for a while that I haven't been able to get to:  some sword and sorcery, a few historical novels and collections, a lot of space opera, and some Henry Kuttner I've been wanting to either read or reread.  Plus some noir, and The Bones of the Old Ones, the sequel to The Desert of Souls.  I doubt I'll be able to read all of that in the few weeks I'll have, but I'm going to try.  Of course, I'll review some short fiction, too.

I'm not going to accept requests for reviews, nor will I be asking for many review copies over the next couple of months.  I've mentioned a Sooper Seekrit Project a couple of times before.  There are actually two now.  I should be able to make one public by the end of the month; the other, I'm not sure when I can announce.  In both cases, these are things I've been invited to participate in, and I'm really excited about them.  There will be some changes here and at Futures Past and Present because of these projects, but I'll wait until I can announce the projects before I discuss how my personal blogs will change. 

5 comments:

  1. I admire all the reviews you can crank out - I feel overwhelmed with just my writer friends books and the ones I want to read, let alone all those others out there.

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  2. Thanks, David. It can be overwhelming. My son dropped soccer and picked up gymnastics and diving this fall, so my time constraints have tightened. I'm going to cut back on what I commit to review simply because it's becoming too much like work and not enough like fun at times. I'm going to focus more on what I want to read and review. Plus there's the whole aspect of reviewing cutting into my writing time. I'm hoping to increase my fiction output significantly this year, so there's going to be some tradeoffs.

    Charles, I'm looking forward to being able to reveal what it is. I'm also hoping the second one will work out, because it will be a blast.

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  3. Plan of attack is good. I still approach my to-be-read pile haphazardly. Then again, I avoid (mostly) committing to official reviews. Mostly it's to remind myself down-the-road what a certain book was like.

    Good luck life balancing and with the seekrit project!

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    1. Thanks. If both seekrit projects work out, then I'll need to have a mechanism in place to do some random reading.

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