This post is as much a marker for me as anything else; the sign of a lot of (sometimes deeply annoying) work finished, and a return to more normal operations…

Well, a little weird. Ireland is on COVID-19 lockdown (and will be for the next couple/few weeks, it looks like), and our next grocery delivery isn’t until nearly the middle…

(Appearing here because his own site is down for restructuring at the moment.) Himself says: This is a “what was available in the house” reduction from my main goulash recipe,…

With the COVID-19 pandemic spreading itself about, it seemed like a good idea to give people a local status report of what’s going on with us over here. The short…

Every now and then, in the work surrounding the slow retooling of the EuropeanCuisines.com website, I wind up doing some casual detective work to try to find the source of…

(Caption: “Be like our hard-working staff! Wash your hands.”) So last night I looked at the state of the world and thought to myself, “It may be that some people…

I’ve been using Planetside Software’s Terragen program/app for cover work and concept art for a long while, with varying levels of success. (Mostly having to do more with my own…

(“…as we say in Middle-Earth.”) So I was setting up some promo art for an ebook sale that’s going to be offered on Tumblr only. Nothing fancy. The Ebooks Direct “office”.…

A lot of you will know that 2019 was kind of a busy year for me. Unquestionably one of the most fun things to happen during the year was CrossingsCon,…

Some time back I noticed that some people who use Twitter and have a fair number of followers have put up guides to the ways they use the platform, and…

So it’s that time of year when nominations open up for the World Science Fiction Society’s Hugo Awards, and it turns out that this year, once again, work of mine…

Using the vestigial English term “cracknel” to define this common snack food format of the Middle Kingdoms may at first seem a strange choice, considering the weird peripatetic course the…

In 2009 I was asked to participate in the 365 Days of Astronomy science podcasting project, and they asked me what I’d like to talk about. I thought about that…

So lately I’ve been working on what ought to be (REALLY ought to be, this is running later than it should have) the last 20,000 words or so of the…

From the ask box at my Tumblr: How did you get into writing Star Trek novels? Are there any considerations you have to keep in mind when working with someone…

When you live in the deep countryside in Ireland, you get used to coexisting with the wildlife. This coexistence can take many strange forms: bats in the bedroom, sheep in…

I love Ludwig Bemelmans for many reasons that usually have more to do with writing and his challenging career arc than with food (more details here). But this post’s about…

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably know that for the past couple of months I’ve been working (on and off) on the business of updating old legacy pen-and-ink…

So here it is, for everybody interested! Please note that what you see here are only those public events where I’m either part of the program item proper, or expected…

I had an ask-box message from AislinnSiofra on my Tumblr a while back pointing out that both Peter and I have sometimes mentioned making these dishes on our blogs, but…

(This comes to you via the as yet incomplete Young Wizards 30-Day OTP collection. The song in question came up in our local pub’s playlist just now, and I couldn’t…

It’s here at last! The weekend of  CrossingsCon 2019.  I’m so excited! (Or as excited as you can be while you’re packing.) The pleasure’s compounded by the fact that this…

(Since in the wake of TOTF2: The Landlady people have already started noodging at me for a MK cookbook, I guess I’m going to have to start making notes. Might…

I was cleaning out my Gmail account a bit earlier today (because stuff does get piled up in there over time) and came across something… unusual. Long long ago, before…