Public Service Announcement I:: The writing workshop known as Reconstruction still has spaces available. Oz Drummond has a blog post with all the info here. The short version: Your stuff could get critiqued by Jack McDevitt, Mark Van Name, Steve Miller, Mary Robinette Kowal, Lawrence Schoen, Matthew Rotundo, Tom Doyle or Carl Frederick.
PSA II: Buy art to help Terri Windling: Terri Windling has reduced prices on her art so she can raise money to help with a family member’s medical expenses. Here’s info on the Big Painting Sale, and here’s her Etsy store. Buy now, buy hard, buy often.
Gone to the Dogs: I mentioned the pit bull who lives across the road in a passing way some time ago, generating much chatter. He tends to get tied up out on the porch of his home, and sings his woe for hours, usually in the midafternoon. Anyway, I caught him in mid-song a few weeks ago.
It took me a few days to identify the source of his peculiar strangled yowling, and I confess my initial reaction was relief that it a) wasn’t a baby and b) he didn’t live in the apartment directly below me. So–a few of you suggested I call someone, but I’m letting it sit. In the past I’ve called the SPCA about dogs who were in similar-but-vastly-worse conditions, only to end up sucked into a bureaucratic tangle that got the dog (or in one case the captured baby crow and its aggressive, freaked out parents) a frustrating-for-me pile of less than nothing. One of my cafe buds is their next door neighbor; I’ll ask him if he knows Pitty’s peeps.
In the meantime, he’s out there with a comfy blanket to sit on and a decent amount of slack in his leash, he’s not frying in inescapable direct sunlight, and he has water. There’s only been one occasion where he’s been out there longer than a couple hours in the afternoon. They didn’t have him out there this weekend, when it was ninety degrees out.
Jay Lake on the virtue of slowness in writing: Fast writing is not bad writing. But it’s not the best writing.
TOR.com’s Urban Fantasy Spotlight continues: “Olga,” by C.T. Adams is a crackin’ good ecofantasy, and there’s still time to win a bunch of very cool books if you comment within the contest thread by noon today!
