Has anyone else ever managed to get a paper-cut on the eyeball?

Well, we're still here. Old Unkillable had her 92nd birthday two days ago. We bought her a small air-conditioning unit and her flat is no longer an oven. This has probably extended her life at least another ten years past our original projection, which means she'll check out when I'm 92.

We still miss Miss Kitty Calgary, Queen of the Cats. Every now and then, I see her in one of her favourite places. It's a trick of the light combined with wishful thinking. Chris and I both miss having kitteh energy in the house but we are going to wait till September, when I come back from the Chicago worldcon. I won't be traveling after that.

I've written some stories, and some have appeared: "In Plain Sight" in The Future Is Japanese edted by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washinton from Haikasoru; a reprint of "She's Not There" in Obsession, edited by Paula Guran from Prime Books, and another original in Stephen Jones's Zombie Apocalypse! Fightback from Robinson, coming soon. And of course, Synners will reappear in August as a Science Fiction Masterworks title from Orion/Gollancz, also available electronically in any eBook format you like, courtesy of the SF Gateway program. All my other novels are available electronically, most from SF Gateway, Dervish Is Digital by way of Macmillan.

My thanks to every publisher I have ever had, for putting me in print in the first place and/or for bringing me back into print, on paper or in pixels.

As part of my ongoing effort to stay current, I've figured out Pinterest, which is fun, not too complicated, and fits my major requirement: i.e., I can use it with my iPad (which, as you'll know if you've seen me lately, is semi-permanently attached to me).

Time to go to work. I have a Bluetooth keyboard; works great but if I spill a tumbler of gin (or anything else) on it, it doesn't cost a fortune to get another one. Is this a great time to be alive or what?

As usual, I hope the sheer intensity of this update has not caused anyone to run screaming into the streets

Today we remember those who have fallen in the service of our country.

If you have any memories of friends or relatives who have given everything for us, we'd be honored if you choose to share them.

This entry was originally posted at http://filkertom.dreamwidth.org/1524623.html. You may comment there or here, although LJ tends to have a livelier conversation at this time.

Happy Memorial Day. My book, War Paint: Tattoo Culture and the Armed Forces is out today. You can buy it from Amazon (pay no mind to that "4 to 6 weeks" - it's shipping now) or look for it in your local bookstore (special prize to the first person to send me a photo of it "in the wild").

A few years back I found myself looking at one of those ribbons on the back of a car that said "support our troops" and wondered what I could do to actually "support our troops" rather than just putting a magnet on my car. Soon after I met a WWII veteran with a tattoo of a paratrooper on his arm and I asked him about it. For the next two hours he told me about parachuting into France on D-Day, being wounded at the Battle of the Bulge, getting tattooed in Scotland while drunk -- I realized that nobody had asked him about it before and that we were losing these stories, so many of which had a significance so personal you may not be able to tell just looking at them, you had to ask.

War Paint is a collection of portraits and stories, there are also closeups of tattoos if you're interested in closeups of tattoos.




Click to read Nick's story


Thanks to everybody in uniform and especially the people overseas away from their families, in harms way, whether in uniform or not. Come home safe. And thanks to my publisher, Schiffer Books who saw something here. Happy Memorial Day.


And, in case you missed it, here's the talk I did at Franklin & Marshall college on War Paint. There's a long wonderfully flattering introduction, student Ann Leffel talks briefly about her tattoo photography project and I start about 12 minutes in. And I do answer the question "why should you thank a soldier if you're against the war?" which is something someone brought up here a few weeks ago.

Stories in Ink: Capturing the Art of Tattoos from Franklin & Marshall College on Vimeo.

I'd love it if you'd share with your friends.

Add me: [LiveJournal] [Facebook] [Twitter] [Google+] [Tumblr]

Had a lovely time at Anime North with dear besties nimori, moon_child02, and new-awesome friend A. (a/k/a Peanut). Stayed up late, squeed like mad things, cursed the SHI (Shitty Hotel Internet) which would not allow us to load more than thirty seconds of any YouTube video, did creative cosplay, and came away with swag including hand-made Kuroshitsuji notepaper, multi creepy-hot guy bookmarks (Undertaker, Alucard, Count of Monte Cristo), Sherlock keychains, fandom slogan pins ("The cake is a lie. A tasty, tasty lie"), green tea Kit Kats, and a set of chibi Avengers pins--all power to the girl who expected there would be a demand for those, and stayed up four nights running, she said, to get those ready for the convention. She was pretty much the only Avengers art swag vendor there and she was swarmed.

And I got a nice tutorial on how to make a tumblr. So I might get around to doing that just to track all the art and gifs that have crowded my monitor for the past three weeks.

On a sad note, leni_jess. Oh, my. For those who haven't heard, she passed away. I had the privilege of meeting this fun, funny, classy lady at at least two HP conventions. She was a wonderful fandom friend, and talented as hell, too--Resolution remains one of my favorite HP fics ever. She was as squeeful over fandom as any thirteen-year-old, and I hope I'm like her the whole duration of my life.

I don't usually post anything newsworthy on my LJ, but the Olympic torch passed through town just over an hour ago. I am completely underwhelmed by the whole Olympics hooha, but as it was only 5 minutes walk away and I had nothing better to do, I toddled along to watch it go by.

It was difficult to get good shots because the torch-bearer was hemmed in by support vehicles. Also, after a long procession of sponsored vehicles,whose purpose was rather difficult to define, the actual torch went by in what seemed like seconds.

However, everyone was in a good mood. The sun shone and it was a happy occasion.





Unfortunately, the bright sunshine made it look rather as though the runner had come out in his pyjamas!



[Cross-posted from Dreamwidth by way of a backup http://heleninwales.dreamwidth.org/44919.html. If you want to leave a comment, please use whichever site you find most convenient. Comments so far: .]

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