No Middle Name

Another free ebook from Tor finished. This one is the first in one of those high-fantasy epic series that never seem to finish, just spawn off trilogies and trilogies of sequels. " Lord of the Isles " by David Drake reads a bit like someone wrote down their Dungeons and Dragons campaign. It is episodic, divided into Books with no discernible scheme, because fantasy epics have to be partitioned into roman-numeralled books. The characters are all highly competent, powerful people that do the Right Thing because they were all brought up as Simple Country Folk and had no inkling of their Destiny. Despite the clichés the book is well-written, entertaining enough to keep me reading to the end. It is the novel equivalent of Torchwood : you know it's crap, but you keep watching because it's easy and there's always the chance of it having a couple of good bits in it. I don't think I'll bother looking for the rest of the series, but at least it didn't annoy ...

Latvian Liverwurst Originally uploaded by No Middle Name This weekend's old-skool meat product: Latvian Liverwurst. Made from saturated fat and the broken hearts of lonely puppies. I spread it on toast with lots of melted butter. Brown bread toast, so that's healthy. It tastes a lot like a smooth, peppery paté. Lots of flavour, as is to be expected from something that is almost 50% fat. It's fat that makes things taste nice. I can thank my mum for introducing me to all these marvellous animal by-products. She used to eat cold black pudding, and loved a bit of tongue. Erm. Cow's tongue. To eat. I haven't gone quite that far down the road yet, but it won't be long before I'm tucking in to a plate of tripe and urging the kids to suck the marrow from the bones of a koala, because that's the best bit.

Act now to buy a piece of history . Quick, before they put the blue plaque up advertising the fact that I spent most of my childhood in this house (apart from a brief 3-year sojourn educating the pygmies in darkest Llandwrog ). Once that sign goes up, the price will skyrocket, mark my words.

Ellen: Can we have foxtail and playstation? Me: It's Foxtel . Ellen: Yep, foxtail and playstation. When can we have them? Me: I don't know, they cost a lot of money. Why do you want them? Ellen: So I can find out if I like them. What is foxtail? Me: It's more telly channels. Ellen: For kids? Me: Some of them, yes. Ellen: Like in the hotels? Me: Yes, that's right. Ellen: How much is playstation? Me: About $300. Ellen: Hmm. We need to be rich. Are we rich? Me: No. Ellen: Can we have foxtail and playstation when we're rich? Me: I promise you can have foxtel and a playstation if we ever get rich. Ellen: How do you get to be rich? Me: If I knew that, we'd be rich. Ellen: What if you went to the circus and did the bestest trick ever and you had a hat and people put lots of money in it? That would work. Me: I'll get right to work on that. I can remember saying much the same things about our family getting a Soda Stream when we were rich, when I was little. It just...

Small Beer Press are continuing with their Creative Commons sharing, caring, hugfest by releasing Maureen McHugh's short story collection Mothers and Other Monsters as a free download (in various formats). Here's hoping it translates into sales for them. The idea is that people will come for the free stuff, and get enticed into buying other things - or at the very least, Maureen McHugh or John Kessel will get added to the reader's mental list of "Authors I Like" and the next time they're in a bookshop wanting to launder some money they'll pick up one of their other books. So, support Small Beer - they publish some great stuff. If you're not tempted by the free things (why not? you got a problem with "free"?), buy Howard Waldrop's short story collection, Howard Who? . It is fudging awesome.

mutt hutt Originally uploaded by No Middle Name more strange things visible from our office. this is a giant dog kennel with "Mutt Hutt" written on it.

Scalzi is offering a short story of his as a shareware download.