Just writing to let you know (and all your Iberian fans, via the blog) that
the History Channel over here in Portugal and Spain is showing a documentary
on superhero comics, featuring you, Frank Miller, Michael Chabon, Kevin
Smith, Stan Lee, and many others.
It's scheduled to rerun tomorrow, September 3, at midnight, 6am and finally
noon (GMT -- Spanish viewers should add one hour to these times).
Cheers,
Lu�s
--
Fantastic Metropolis: http://www.fantasticmetropolis.com/
Goblindegook: http://goblindegook.blogspot.com/
Will do.
The FAQ line hasn't been working properly since the Blaster worm hit the authorsontheweb server a couple of weeks ago, and it seems to have gone down again. This wouldn't normally cheer me up, but tonight only I suspect might be a good thing, because the Real Person Fiction/Slash Defense message deluge had just begun, much of it picking apart the two previous posters' opinions line by line, or explaining what RPS/RPF fiction was or wasn't, and explaining why it was a good thing. These weren't nasty messages at all -- they were nice, friendly, uniformly polite messages defending something that is either a hobby or an artform (depending on the correspondent), and requesting equal time for a right to reply and so forth.
And I'm not going to put them up because people have other places to have those conversations than here, and I'm not going to post any of the links people have sent in to show me just how good RPS can be, nor am I actually going to click on those links because sometimes ignorance really is bliss, and all that. (And this has less to do with prudery than with my own comfort levels. I can just about get my head around the concept of Crowley-Aziraphale slash, and would rather not read it thanks. Out beyond that, I don't actually want to know...)
...
Made large quantities of Salsa from the garden this evening. Would have made much more but an incredibly well-fed groundhog recently discovered the tomatoes, which meant that half of the ripe tomatoes were half-eaten on the plant. The groundhog's now got to the point of ignoring people, and mostly he just lolls around in the garden, eating half a tomato at a time. I actually chased him from the tomato patch this afternoon -- not because I thought I'd catch him, but because he obviously needed the exercise.
Anyway, the various tomatoes, garlics, herbs, onions, peppers sweet and peppers hot -- everything but the lime juice and the salt -- came from the garden, and tasted like a magical late summer once everything had been run through the food processor. (Made four salsas - mild, medium, evilly hot, and a very hot mango salsa for Lorraine.)
Also have finally perfected the World's Greatest Porridge recipe.
Copies of the US edition of DON'T PANIC arrived this morning, the hardback Douglas Adams book which was mostly written by me in 1987, and added onto in 1993 by Dave Dickson and more recently updated and overhauled by M.J. Simpson. It looks really classy and has a new foreword which was written (although not copy-edited or proofread) by me. It was written at great haste last month, when it was pointed out to me that the introduction and reminiscence of Douglas I'd done for the US edition of M. J. Simpson's book Hitchhiker (which I wrote in a hotel bed one morning in Italy on tour, listening to accordion music from the street) had not actually, magically, covered both books...
This Onion article is wonderful: I'll thank you, Grygor, to discontinue forthwith your practice of referring to the works contained in my collection of sequential-art erotica as "dirty comics." And someone at the Onion certainly knows his or her cool-but-dirty comics.
...
I don't know if this has sent a hundred times over yet...there seems to be a problem with the mailer...but I'll ask again anyway...There seemed to be some disagreement as to whether or not you would actually be signing stuff at the Charlotte, NC Novello Festival...So do you know yet if you will be reading AND signing, or if it will just be a reading? As much as I would love to see you read, I don't know if I could make the drive (from Atlanta) if I can't have the chance to meet you...Thanks as always for your blog and everything you do for your fans!
Sorry about the mailer -- but at least yours got through.
At Book Expo America I was introduced to a Charlotte bookseller who said he'd be organising or hosting my signing -- so that certainly increases the chances of there being a signing. There's a bit more info up at http://www.novellofestival.net/archiveguest.asp?id=160 along with an e-mail interview, but the only thing it lists is the evening with me...
(Personally, I'd rather spend a couple of hours in a comfy seat, watching someone read and talk and answer questions, than stand in a line for several hours to get less than a minute with them. It's more personal.)