Fantasist's Scroll

Now, this strikes me as really interesting.

The estate of author of the Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Arthur Conan Doyle went up for sale recently. Mainly it was a lot of his story notes and personal papers. For a biographer, or publisher, it could be a really big deal to get, but it’s a fairly specialized area of interest.
What really struck me about the article on MSNBC was the “mysterious death” of one of the people associated with the sale. Apparently, he was quite an afficiando of all things Conan Doyle, and wanted the papers to stay together and available to the public for research. He was found strangled and surrounded by stuffed animals. The death, however, was ruled a suicide. Sounds like a Sherlockian mystery if I ever heard one!

Frankly, it doesn’t look good.

First of all, there was the brouhaha about pricing. Then, there was the whole issue of licenseing. Now, frankly, it’s a matter of simple existance.
People kept posting on their blogs to go look at this interview with Ben and Mena Trott, because it would explain so much about what’s happening with MovableType. Well, it did, at least to me:

Mena Trott: IT’s not going to scale. Movable Type will have to cease to exist in terms of development because it doesn’t pay its operational costs. And it will be interesting.

Hmm, that pretty well says it all, doesn’t it? Yes, that was actually Mena Trott in the aforementioned interview. Time to find a new blog system!

Sea ranch.

Call it what you will, but it’s still fish wrangling of some kind. According to this article on Wired News, it’s out there and, apparently, working. These kinds of aquaculture setups have been a staple of science-fiction for as long as I can remember. Harvesting the ocean’s bounty is definately a recurring theme. In any case, it seems to be a reality. A nice, healthy, hopefully profitable, reality.
Of course, this is the first of it’s kind, but it’s an idea who’s time has come. I mean, the ancient Hawai’ians were doing something like this on a smaller scale centuries ago, so it’s about time we caught up! Really, we have to learn to manage our resources so that they’re there for future generations. And, it looks like these folks are on the right track. So, eat your fish!

Not sure this is really a good thing…

I use MoveableType for this blog as well as the Fiction Blog on this site. I also use it on my other site and my wife uses it, too. So, we have a lot invested in this free software. But, I’m willing to pay for it. Especially if they’re adding features. And, there’s the rub. They’ve updated it, okay, and they added a comment registration feature, which is good, but that’s all they did. Well, they made changes to the API to make it easier to write plug-ins, but in the process, they may, or may not, have broken existing plug-ins. Now, that I’m not willing to pay for… On the other hand, what else is there? Nothing else seems to be as robust or extendable. At least, nothing that I’ve found yet. So, I have an e-mail in to them regarding my particular licensing issue, and we’ll see what they say. I may pay for the commercial version, based on the idea that this site will have commercial content, but we’ll have to wait and see…

UPDATE: Don’t panic! By commerical content, I mean that I might start selling things off the site, not that I’d start to charge for what is already here.

Online and free!

The Science Fiction Channel has a free fiction archive on their website. It has both “classics” and original ficition. You might recognize some of the authors, but I imagine that many will be new. At least, they were new to me. Of course, I’m reccomending it because I think the fiction is good, but I would expect that from SciFi.com.
The editor is Ellen Datlow who is an award winning writer and editor. She’s also a master (mistress?) of the short-story. And, of course, there are submission guidelines. So, if you’re feeling brave, you can submit your work.

Enjoy!

It’s nice to have a quality journal to write in.

I may not be an Oscar Wilde, who was famously in love with his own journal, but I do occasionally like to write in one. And, I have to tell you, I’ve scribbled in everything from cheap, spiral-notebooks to heavy, leather-esque tomes, but the best that I’ve ever seen is Moleskine. My mother got me one for Christmas one year and it was so beautiful that I was afraid to write in it. It’s bound with real leather and the paper feels, well, creamy. It takes ink like a dream from any pen. And, they have a built in book mark to mark where you stopped! Not to mention the elastic band to hold it closed and the pocket for small papers in the back cover. Really, these are superior journals. And, no, I don’t get a commission off this.
If you like writing in journals, you owe it to yourself to at least look at these. (You can buy them here.)

A great resource for writers.

So, I was going through my old bookmarks this weekend and found a link to The Internet Writing Journal. It’s an on-line resource for writers. It covers a lot of ground. They have a little bit of everything here: interviews with authors, book reviews, submission guidelines, and a whole lot more.
They have current articles and a fairly extensive archive. In the latest “issue” they have an interview with Victoria Strauss, an interview with Libba Bray, an article on choosing a writing teacher, an article on quirky but effective book launches, and an article on wrestling With rejection, not to mention the usual book reviews.

It’s an inspiring place to visit, so check it out.

Noticed a few changes?

Well, that’s because I’ve relocated, yet again. Apparently, my old web host thought that my scripts were killing their server. Oddly enough, they seemed to think they were okay when I asked them to test them and make sure there were no problems before I released them to the public. Funny how that works.
In any case, I’ve found a new home at Amzia.net. And, I’ll probably be a little scarce for the next week as I move my other domains over, too. Oh, and, should it turn out that the last folks were right, I’ll be modifying my scripts to slow them down. Actually, to make sure that they only run one at a time. Though, I have to admit, I doubt there’s really a problem. Unless, of course, the problem occured when they moved my account from a Unix server to a Windoze server. But, that’s an entry for my other blog.