Hippoi Athanatoi

Via Emerald City, we learned that Jim Kelly—author of many excellent stories, including the 2005 Hugo nominee "The Best Christmas Ever"—has been experimenting with self-publishing audio versions of a number of stories.

The latest word is that he’ll begin serializing a reading of his forthcoming novel, Burn, starting November 1st.

I promised that I was going to use this spot for discussing my Master’s thesis. My original idea was going to involve an examination of differing presentations of Faerie as they are used in Poul Anderson’s The Broken Sword and Lord Dunsany’s The King of Elfland’s Daughter. That didn’t quite work out, however.

Since today was a dressage lesson, I wasn’t too hopeful about being put on Murphy. However, luckily enough the group before (where he’s often ridden when he isn’t in our group) mine had a theory lesson. So, Murphy it was for me again. Or, “the spotted one”, as my instructor occasionally refers to him. Or maybe “splotchy” is a better translation in this case, as he doesn’t have the pretties of patterns. But I love him still.

Opera, on the heels of its registration give away to celebrate the 10th years of the browser’s existence, has now made the program free from here on out. its a fine, small, fast browser which users looking to try something new, or those saddled with older, slower computers, should consider taking a look at.

As we’re on our second round of watching Buffy (we were snared by the addiction rather late, in fact only last year) at the moment, Buffy the Vampire Slayer - The Chosen Collection looks terribly tempting. One of these 40-disc, seasons 1-7 collections was put out in the UK already, but that one a) was limited and sold out quickly and b) didn’t have any extra bonus material, as this one does. Looks like the perfect way to get a full collection of Buffy goodness.

Today’s lesson was to be a jumping lesson, and I hoped that this would ensure that I would be put on Murphy, as he is usually used for jumping lessons (a few of the other horses, such as Malupin and Sammy, aren’t used due to old injuries). Much to my delight, I was right.

Today, the harness racing track near Gothenburg was holding on of its big yearly races (Åby’s Stora Pris), and as the weather was quite nice, my father and I decided it would be fun to lose some money that way.

Note: If SWOFA or WORA means nothing to you, then the following entry will make no sense, so just skip it. Or if you’re really, really curious, ask me. Commenting is enabled, but moderated.

No Murphy for me today, instead I was put on the other small horse in the stables, Malupin. He’s a nice-looking crossbreed who grew just a centimeter or two too tall to be a pricey competition pony, and so ended up at a riding school instead. Which, given some of his physical problems turns out to have been just as well.

After we returned from the WorldCon, I finally managed to squeeze in a week of reading (before getting back to work on this site, among other things) which resulted in me finishing two books by a pair of my favourite authors that had been sitting on my shelf (the books, that is) for far too long: Banewreaker by Jacqueline Carey and The Runes of the Earth by Stephen R. Donaldson.

Peter S. Beagle, author of such fine novels as A Fine and Private Place and Tamsin, is preparing to pursue legal avenues to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars due to him from the sales of DVDs and videotapes of The Last Unicorn. His business manager, Connor Cochran, has called on fans to help through various means, from direct donation to letter writing campaigns to just spreading the word. Read more about the situation here.

A few quick hits, of free or very, very cheap stuff that I recommend taking a look at:

• Amazon Shorts is a new initiative by Amazon, providing original short stories and essays by a number of fine authors for the low price of $0.49 each. Notable among them are Robin Hobb’s "The Inheritance" a short story set in Bingtown, an essay by Gardner Dozois explaining how he puts together his award-winning Year’s Best SF anthologies, and an essay by Robert Silverberg discussing how he went about creating his Roma Eterna series of alternate history stories. There’s much more besides that, and I’m looking forward to seeing what other authors and material they introduce.
• Kelly Link—who recently won a Hugo for her story "The Faery Handbag"—has made her first story collection, Stranger Things Happen,  available for download. Her stories are sometimes quirky, often amusing, and always interesting. Give it a try.
• Finally, Neil Gaiman has put up a long excerpt from the audio book of his forthcoming novel, Anansi Boy, read by comedian and actor Lenny Henry. Henry’s reading—and the story he’s reading—are both very funny, and worth giving a try. I think this one’s on my to-buy list. More information, and the link to the mp3, can be found at Neil’s journal.

As part of her update for September, Jacqueline Carey has put up a synopsis of the forthcoming novel about Imriel, Kushiel’s Scion. She also notes that the publication date, at least for the time being, is set to June 2006. Much too far away, if you ask me, especially after reading that little teaser.

Not too much to say about today’s lesson, since it turned out to be the once-per-semester obligatory trail ride. Not what I had hoped for.

For those looking out to try a different browser, the friendly Norwegians behind Opera are now giving away registration codes for the software as part of a celebration of their 10th anniversary. I used to use Opera back in the day, and as far as I know it has remained a fairly small, fast, and feature-filled browser particularly well-suited to those with older, slower computers.