word from Cliff Burns

Email rec'd:
Gang:

Just a quick note to let you know that after years of labour and the requisite gray hairs, I've finally finished my occult thriller So Dark the Night and posted it on my blog.

Beautiful Desolation

I can finally say that after 20+ years of toiling in the trenches, I think I've come up with a novel that's fun, sexy, scary, hilarious and, gulp, commercial?  Is that possible?

Have a look when you have a free moment.  Let me know what you think--

Cliff

aol okay now

Now that I've changed my email in most of the places I regularly do business, I find that if I remember to click on "Standard Version" before trying to access my email, I can now open messages and even search older ones. So, the old email address persists.

word from humdrumming

Email rec'd:
The Washington Post calls him 'gloriously demented'.  Michael Moorcock considers him 'almost the sum of our planet's literature.' Whereas Brian Aldiss happily reports: 'Just beginning to read: saliva already forming on chin.'

Rhys Hughes is something of a genre unto himself and Humdrumming are proud to be publishing his latest book, The Less Lonely Planet:

A collection of inexplicably joined short stories and tales from Rhys Hughes, the author who is to convention what apricots are to armadillos. 32 tales about life, non-melodic sounds, cats, adventures, love, bread, circuses, pyramids, ducks, and more!

Since time immemorial, the planet Earth has revolved around the sun on its own, carrying one species of technically advanced hominids, a handful of basic urges, a dozen or so original plots. But a very slow collision with the rogue world Happenstance is about to change all that.

The two celestial bodies will fuse together into a single object, doubling the surface area, trebling the population, quadrupling the number of resonant archetypes, multiplying by a millionfold the virtues of hyperbole!

A less lonely Earth means more high adventure, more low morals, more medium rares. Oh yes!

The Less Lonely Planet is a 216mm x 138 PPC Hardcover (ie no Dust Jacket but fully illustrated boards, cover can be seen at http://www.humdrumming.co.uk/books/978-1-905532-52-0.html) and retails at just £14.99 ($30.00 or so).  The book doesn't normally come signed BUT as an extra incentive to assist you sell the book I can guarantee signed copies of all initial preorders. I will chain the mad Welshman to a pub table and force him to scribble in sufficient copies to meet demand (note: we are launching this title at a London pub on the 26th April and Rhys will sign them then with orders shipped immediately after).

Let me know how many you'd like me to put you down for.

Guy Adams
(On Behalf of Humdrumming)

email woes abate a bit

In my ongoing AOL saga I've figured out that if I click on Basic Version instead of stay in the Standard Version, I am now able to actually open email messages. However, I can't access older mail that supposedly I could store an unlimited number of pieces. Fortunately I keep copies of important mail elsewhere, so that shouldn't be a big problem. So, maybe I don't have to go through all the rigamarole of officially changing email. Certainly I will keep checking my AOL mail, but I have more and more gone to gmail, so that would actually be my preferred email account now.

my strong suspicion

Although I have no hard evidence to support it my strong suspicion is that the mailings I have been getting from Horror Newsletter (or whatever it is) have been the culprits in causing my AOL mail not to load properly. Hithertofor, I had been marking their mailings as "read" even without opening them, thinking that maybe they might have publishing information in their sendings that I might be able to use at some point in the future, but their emails do have a lot of graphics and links and whatnots that maybe run roughshod over ease of utility -- fancy dancing that trips all over itself. Indeed, just now I actually had access to my AOL inbox again. I took the opportunity to begin deleting ones I know I didn't want to keep. And, lo and behold, when I got to the Horror Newsletter, and checked its box for deletion and clicked OK, everything went blank again. Maybe a coincidence -- maybe not. I could blame AOL, but every other email I have been getting for quite a while now has been coming through just fine. I'm sure no expert, but I like things less razzle-dazzle and more simple. If you have something to sell, flash might oversell it, but you won't get any of the smart money -- just the stupid money. Maybe that's just what you want, but please don't involve me.

email change in progress

Changing my email contacts in all the places I can think of -- I was able to see the contents of my inbox recently, but not to open or delete any emails. AOL had been working out well of late, but not being able to open emails doesn't work for me.