Walking for Dementia

 My wife and I will be doing the Memory Walk in Cardiff in support of Alzheimer's Society on September 18th. We'll be thinking of several loved ones but in particular my much-missed grandmother who was taken from us in 2009 after a long battle with Alzheimer's. This horrible, horrible disease must be stopped.

Should anyone like to support us, here's a Just Giving page at the link below.

https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/cardiffmw22-josettesanchez-reynolds

Please, no pressure - we know how tight money is at the moment. And love and best wishes to all have been touched by this disease. We'll be thinking of you as well.

Read for Pixels, a Reddit AMA and an interview for ProWritingAid.

 A few things to mention for the coming week or so:

The Pixel Project is - quoting from their website - "... a complete virtual, volunteer-led global 501(c)3 nonprofit organisation whose mission is to raise awareness, funds and volunteer power for the cause to end violence against women through campaigns, initiatives, projects, and programmes at the intersection of social media, new technologies, and popular culture/the Arts."

One of the activities of the project is the Read For Pixels campaign, a series of Youtube sessions with authors who support the initiative. This year I am one of those authors, along with Alan Baxter, Bracken MacLeod, Carol Goodman, Daniel H. Wilson, Jenn Lyons, Kathryn Purdie, Namina Forna, Nghi Vo, Rin Chupeco, Romina Garber, and Tim Lebbon. 

Again quoting from the website: "each livestream YouTube session will feature one author reading from one of their books and discussing women and girls in their books, why they support ending violence against women, and women in the media, geek culture, and popular culture. Each session will also include a live moderated Q&A segment for fans and book lovers. The sessions will take place on weekends throughout September 2022."

I'm doing my session on Sunday September 4th at 3.30pm UK time. Here's a link which will become active when the event goes live:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsrS-BOuxv8

For much more information, hop on over to the Pixel Project website:

https://www.thepixelproject.net/

In association with that, I'm also doing a Reddit AMA over on r/Fantasy on August 31st. It's already listed in the sidebar over that Reddit page. Because of the inevitable time difference, Ill be doing the AMA over 24 hours so there will be ample time to get questions in and stand a good chance of an answer. It's over on r/Fantasy because that's the established venue for these events.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/

Unrelated to the above, I'm doing an online interview for ProWrtingAid as part of their Science Fiction Writers' Week. Many other writers are also involved. My slot is on Monday August 29th at 10.00 AM EDT/3.00PM UK. You do have to register.

https://prowritingaid.com/sci-fi-week/sign-up

Things To Do In Deimos When You're Dead

 My Asimov's story of the title above, my first in that magazine for more than twenty years, should be hitting the bookstores soon. I'm delighted!

Here's a link to the magazine:

https://www.asimovs.com/

And you can check out an excerpt of the piece here. It's a pretty long excerpt, but there's still a lot more of the story to come.

https://www.asimovs.com/current-issue/story-excerpt2/

It's a totally standalone piece, by the way, not related to anything else I've done.

The same goes for a couple of other stories I've just sold. "Banish" will appear in the forthcoming Titan anthology The Multiverse, edited by Preston Grassman, and "Detonation Boulevard" will appear on Tot online via Jonathan Strahan. Both stories won't be out until 2023 (gulp!), so doubtless I'll post more about them nearer publication.

Back to the Asimov's piece now. The title is a blatant rip-off of "Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead" by the inestimable and much-missed Warren Zevon. So by way of gratitude, let's have some Warren.

Possible issue with Kindle formatting on US edition of Eversion.

 I've seen a note on Amazon.com from a Mr Zimmerman stating that there appears to be a formatting issue with dialogue quotes in the US Kindle edition of Eversion. I'm not in a position to replicate the fault myself, but I've raised it with my US publishing team so hopefully there will be a resolution. If anyone else has seen the error, it might be worth mentioning it here. Thanks.

Linda Hoover featuring Fagen and Becker

 Linda Hoover recorded an album with Fagen, Becker and Gary Katz just before the formation of Steely Dan. It's been unreleased for fifty years, but is now available. I consider myself something of a Dan head and I knew nothing of this. It sounds brill.

Full story via The Guardian:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/jul/07/linda-hoover-on-her-great-lost-lp-with-steely-dan-i-mean-to-shine

My Kate Bush moment

 Kate Bush is having a moment, and it's a wonderful thing. I first heard "Running up that Hill" in the late summer of 1985. I was nineteen and preparing to go to university (I'd missed a year due to failing my exams the previous time). I already liked KB so anticipation was high for her new material. Although it really wasn't that long compared to the gaps between releases now, it seemed an age since her last album, the gloriously bonkers The Dreaming. I was upstairs in my bedroom listening to Radio 1 when they played her new single for the first time and I knew instantly, from the first few bars, that it was fantastic. The drums, the weird textures, reminded me of Peter Gabriel. Later that year my sister got the album on cassette and I was able to borrow it and listen on my Walkman. It's still a wonderful LP, and "Running up that Hill" has never not sounded brilliant, one of those incredibly rare songs that just never stops being fresh and exciting every time you hear it.

My absolute introduction to KB goes back much earlier than that, though. It was March 1978. I was in the backseat of mum and dad's car, driving to Swansea. My sister would have been next to me. "Wuthering Heights" came on the radio, and I (like millions of others) was enraptured. But somewhere along the line I got my wires crossed. At that point I hadn't seen a photo of Kate Bush, and yet due to some misheard or misunderstood comment on the radio, I got it into my head, temporarily, that the woman singing the song was the same one who played Princess Leia in Star Wars. So, for a very short while, my mental image of Kate Bush was essentially Carrie Fisher with the big ear buns. I know, it makes no sense at all, but when you're twelve, you accept stuff like this. I should also mention that the reason for being in the backseat of the car was this: it was my birthday and we were off to see Star Wars for the very first time.

Down the Steely Aja/Gaucho outtake rabbit hole:

 How good is this? I mean, seriously. They rejected this?