Well, I tried once more to read The Time Traveler's Wife but it leaves me bored. I find it ordinary in all respects.

Fortunately, I heard Alice Sebold interviewed on NPR, heard her read from her novel, and thought I could learn a few things from reading her work. Accordingly, I picked up The Lovely Bones. Started it yesterday and have not been disappointed in the least. Powerful stuff so far.

After that, it will be The Gone Away World, by Nick Harkaway, based on a recommendation from my friend Colin (aka haetmunky). Looking forward to that, since anything Colin calls a mindf*ck just has to be good.

The Crosscurrent galley contest will go on for another week. Please enter if you're interested.

I've gotten a fair amount of emails from readers of my Cale stories -- readers who've never read a Star Wars novel before -- asking me whether I think they will enjoy Crosscurrent. Answering this is awkward, but I'll do it anyway: If your enjoyment of my Cale stories did not depend on them being set in the Forgotten Realms, then I think you will enjoy Crosscurrent. I think it shares a lot of similarities with my Cale stories: the dark tone, the pacing, the characterization.

Likewise for the Star Wars fans who eventually read Crosscurrent. If you find yourself enjoying the tone, style, pacing, characterization, etc., of Crosscurrent, and if you're willing to try something with those same characteristics outside the EU, then I think you'll like my Cale stories. And if you want to try them for free, you can download Twilight Falling in its entirety right here.. Twilight Falling is the first book of The Erevis Cale Trilogy and is a good place to start with my Cale stories. While my writing has matured some since I wrote Twilight Falling in 2003, I still think it's a pretty decent reflection of my style. I hope you'll check it out.

Tired of playing the NPCs, tonight I set out in command of the Fox's Teeth on a Recon-in-Force mission that Randy and I had decided upon a few weeks ago. As Randy was still engaged in various performances, Nash was my teammate and Derek and Sara played the opposition.

Perhaps I should clarify that: I don't scream like a girl all the time. The title of this post should really be more along the lines of "The Tale of the Early-Morning Chai, In Which I Scream Like a Girl." There is chai in the story, and partaking of it led directly to me uttering a scream that could best be described as girl-like, or "girly" in the parlance.

Many years ago, my friend (and now brother-in-law) Sean K. Reynolds decided that he liked the chai tea served by our favorite local Indian restaurant so much that he wanted to make it at home. He asked them for the recipe, and, surprisingly, they gave it to him--presumably so that they could utilize their attached Indian grocery to sell him everything he needed. Hey, why not? They gave free refills on chai at the restaurant; but if he made it himself, he'd have to pay for every last drop. Shrewd people, them Indians.

After a couple of trial runs, Sean was ready to start brewing his chai on a regular basis. One morning, he showed up at Wizards with a rather large Thermos full of the stuff. He asked if I wanted any, but I initially turned him down. I had my 25-cent Mountain Dew from the vending machine right by my desk (which I still contend is why I eventually became diabetic; screw you very much, high-fructose corn syrup). Eventually, though, Sean wore me down, and even hustled off to the office kitchen to scrounge me up a mug to use.

And it was good chai; Sean did well. Of course, it eventually dawned on me that I was the only other person who'd taken Sean up on his chai offer. In case you're doing the math at home, that means that I had maybe 8 ounces of the stuff, while Sean sat and finished off about half a gallon of caffeine-laden Indian rocket fuel. As I say, it eventually dawned on me that Sean had drunk so much of it because he couldn't stop talking. Sean is normally given to long-winded, rambling tales (although, to his credit, he has gotten out of the habit of introducing backstories by way of the words "Well, 'mkay ..."), but today, he was in rare form. His usual witty remarks were just long strings of stream-of-consciousness gobbledigook. When I pointed it out, he realized just how much chai he had consumed, and recognized that it might actually be time to eat a little food.

But I digress. Neither Sean nor I screamed like a girl that day, and this is a story about me screaming like a girl. Sort of.

Sean took to making his chai for special occasions, and, a couple of years ago, made a big pot of it on Christmas day for his sister and their parents and me. My wife Keri (his sister) had had the chai before, but finally decided that she wanted the recipe (we were doing more cooking, and we quite enjoy tackling interesting recipes), so Sean finally gave us the recipe, and we started making it this year. Good stuff.

Last night, Keri decided that she was going to get out of bed a little early today and make some for our consumption. We spent the weekend baking cookies (see figure A) and have been dog-tired every since, so a little extra caffeine in the morning would be a good thing.

Figure A

So Keri did, in fact, get up early and make chai. And it was great! But, there was a bit left over that wouldn't fit in her Thermos, so we decided I'd have it when I finished my first cup. I kissed my wife goodbye as she left for work, then went in to tidy up the kitchen before a scheduled eye appointment this morning.

Now, I like to keep a tidy kitchen, so I usually clean up right after she leaves for work each day. Today, while cleaning up, I realized that I was bumping the handle of the pot with all the leftover chai in it, so I moved the pot to the back burner. Hey, I'm not about to knock over several ounces of scalding-hot liquid onto anything or anyone, myself first on that list, so, I thought, I was being wise.

I finished tidying, grabbed my still mostly-full mug, and headed up to my office to read my emails and such. When it got to be time to head to the optometrist's office, I went back downstairs, grabbed my coat, and prepared to head out.

Then I noticed the chai. "I should put the rest of that away," I thought to myself. "It's going to get cold--and, besides, it develops that nasty film on top if it sits too long. In fact, I should check and see if it already has that film."

At this point, I should mention that the "Low" setting on our range burners is virtually invisible. The difference between "Off" and "Low" is indistinguishable. I bring this up because I'd like to absolve myself, in advance, of the inevitable accusations of stupidity. I'll cop to carelessness, perhaps, but it was really just a failed perception check that brought about what happened next.

You see, when I moved the pot to the back burner, I didn't notice that the front burner was still on. And, not noticing it was still on, I thought nothing of putting the pot handle directly above the active burner.

In the time it took for me to pick up the pot by its searing-hot handle and give it a quick shake to see if there was any film on top of the chai, the damage was done. I dropped the pot back onto the stove, and, as you can imagine, then it was time for the girly scream.

I must, of course, defend my honor by pointing out a couple of things: Firstly, I had put the pot down (more or less voluntarily) when I realized how hot the handle was. So my resulting scream wasn't entirely involuntary, which means that I probably could have chosen not to scream at all. The fact of the matter was that I felt the scream welling up inside of me like so much sonic vomit, and made a conscious (if sudden) decision not to try to choke it back down. I let that scream out on purpose.

Secondly, your standard girlish scream usually has a much higher pitch than I can accomplish, and lasts quite a bit longer than, say, a whoop of exultation. Or a "golly, that's extraordinarily hot!" kind of outburst, which is what my scream turned into. That is, a girlish scream usually goes something like "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" or "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!", whereas mine came out more like "WHOOOOOOAAAAAAAAHAH!" So I can sort of claim that my version of the girly scream was just a somewhat higher-pitched version of a "YEOW!" Sort of.

I'm sure that what my neighbors heard, however, was the sound of a pig being ruthlessly slaughtered, or, perhaps a teenage girl being brutally murdered. But it was just me, screaming like a teenage girl being murdered, because I burned my hand.

And that's the story I'm telling the police, should they show up, for any reason whatsoever.

JD

Oddities of oddities, we saw the 10th episode of Flashforward before you folk in the States did. And now the show is on hiatus until March...

Wizards of the Coast have updated their online catalogue through to August 2010 with releases. I'm very pleased to see a number of adventures in the list. (Actually, Martin, if you run some D&D 4E for us this year, I'd love to actually play some 4e...)

A quick note to you procrastinators to say that if you want to order an autographed book and get it in time for Christmas, you need to let me know (instructions at the link) this week or it may not arrive by the 25th. Just sayin'.

Apparently you're supposed to kill orcs and take their stuff while you're high and naked. Noted for future reference. I'll take a moment to mention that that's a very different style of play from what I'm used to.

I'm just considering if I should make another order of BattleTech minis. Well, not if, but more "which Mechs do I need?". 

Why is this an annual event?

You know how a couple of days I was being annoyed that Middle Earth Quest was terribly expensive? Well, I now own a copy - and it's due to Good Games Ballarat getting it in (now the Australian dollar is better) and having a 15% off all boardgames sale. So, instead of costing $120-140, it only cost $95.

Perhaps you are interested in reading Crosscurrent before its release date? If so, I've got just the thing.

I'm holding a contest to win not one, not two, but three, count 'em, three, unbound, autographed (and personalized) print galleys of Crosscurrent.

To enter, just leave a comment to this blog entry (you'll need an LJ account, since the blog doesn't allow anonymous comments, but registration is easy, fast, and free) and I'll determine the three winners by random draw on Friday, December 18th.

The rules:

First, enter only once. International entrants welcome.

Second, enter anytime between now and 9:00AM EST December 18, 2009.

Third, enter only if you can pay me in advance (Paypal being preferred) the cost of shipping. Typically, shipping is about $7.00USD for domestic shipping, and anywhere between $12.00-$20.00 USD for international shipping.

Fourth, I'll post the names of the winners on December 18, 2009 and I'll then want the winners to contact me with their respective address at paulsvantekemp at yahoo dot com.

Fifth, enter only if you'll agree, on your honor, not to distribute the galley (either by copying or scanning) or discuss spoilers prior to the novel's release. You can discuss the novel before its release, but please resist spoilers until the release date. Again, on your honor. If this rule gets violated, I fear I won't be able to do this kind of contest with Star Wars books in the future.

Sixth, you do not talk about Fight Club.

Woo - the 3060 Technical Readout for BattleTech has been sent to me. That'll give me all the core TROs. :)

Since it's been mentioned at Starwars.com, I can confirm that I'll be writing a third Star Wars novel, this one a hardcover set in The Old Republic and connected to The Old Republic MMORPG ( to be clear, this Old Republic novel is NOT the sequel to Crosscurrent that I mentioned in another post; that sequel will be a mass market paperback and will not be set in The Old Republic time frame).

As the article states, this novel is in the very early stages so we're still working through details. I'll provide them when I have them and get the okay.