My story, “A Face Worse than Death” is out in the anthology Probing Uranus from the Library of Science Fiction and Fantasy As you might guess from the cover, it’s humourous SF. And another of my stories, “Muddy Holes” will be in “People’s Friend Fiction Special No. 49 ” on sale July 14, 2011. As you might guess, that’s a gentle, mainstream story about archaeology in the Orkney Islands.
Today I formally graduated as a Starlight Guide. They held the ceremony at Palacio Salazar in Santa Cruz de la Palma. We had short speeches from the president of the Cabildo (the island government), the head of the Instituto de Astrofisica (the Institute of Astrophysics) and the head of the course, and then they called us up one by one and gave us our diplomas and ID cards. After the…
It’s El Paso’s main fiesta, The Sacred Heart (El Corazon Sagrado). Like Mazo and San José, they make archways and carpets, but they’re slightly different. In San José, they dye the salt, and then put the colours together to make the picture. In El Paso, they start by putting down white salt –kilos and kilos of it from the salt pans in the southern tip of the island. They carefully…
I got sucked into the internet and went to bed after midnight on Thursday. At 2 am Friday morning, I woke up with indigestion. Not typical down-in-the-guts indigestion, though. The pain was up under my ribs. So I got up and made a herb tea, hoping that would soothe it. Nope. In fact I was sick. Well, obviously I wasn’t going to be able to sleep, and there was no…