When you want sff news…

….without having to wade through all the blogging trivia, take a look at what is happening over at Emerald City.

Cheryl Morgan has had the intelligent idea of an author-contributing blog (in fact, not just authors but others in the industry - editors, publicists, agents, bookstore owners and the like) where they can make their own announcements about story/book sales, book launches, signing tours and similar. Sort of like a group blog, but covering a much wider group of people and confined to news items and announcements.

Take a look here.

And my thanks to Cheryl for hosting the site and for all the work she has put into it. I shall certainly be announcing my own publication dates and sales up there when the time comes.
If you are involved in sff and want to participate, email Cheryl. If you are a reader, then make the announcement blog one of your regular stops.

On the home front:
My husband is off in the Endau-Rompin National Park down in Johor state (southern Peninsular Malaysia) with a group of mycologists on a fungi study trip. And if you don't think fungi are interesting, look at the photo, taken on one of our trips to the lost valley of Borneo, the Maliau Basin.

I remember the park in the early days, before accommodation was built and we camped out under canvas, on rough cots. No walls, just a mossie net. I remember being kept awake half the night by a frogmouth sitting on the pole of our "roof". And I remember waking up in the morning for some dawn birding and smelling the unmistakable stink of tiger (imagine dirty tomcat x 100) just metres from where I had been sleeping at the end of the row...