A Year in Pictures – Sravanabelagola Bell

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The main structure at Sravanabelagola centers on an enormous statue of Gommateshvara Bahubali, which stands in a courtyard that frankly seems too small for it. The inner edge of the portico ringing that space is surmounted by a series of splendid carvings, and I quite liked this angle, which silhouettes the dark bell against the warm colors of the stone.

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Posting makes the Internet go ’round

I’m not doing a giant blog tour like last year, but I have contrived to be in a few places around the Internet recently:

1) On the Tor/Forge blog, These Are a Few of My Favorite Dragons. Can you guess which ones I picked? (Before you click on the link to see, of course.)

2) On Tor.com — not to be confused with the Tor/Forge blog — I participated in a series called “That Was Awesome! Writers on Writing.” The point of the series is to talk about awesome moments in other people’s books, perfect little twists or amazing scenes that just blew you away. Head on over to see what I chose. (Many of you, I think, will not be surprised in the slightest . . . .)

3) On Lawrence M. Schoen’s site, another post series, this one with the ominous title of “Eating Authors,” and the much less ominous theme of “writers talk about the fabulous meals they’ve had.” I chose to discuss the kaiseki meal Starlady took us to in Kyoto. Eight tiny courses of phenomenally good Japanese food, enough to make a gourmand weep for joy.

4) Okay, this one’s old, but I realized I’d forgotten to link to it when it first went up: Timing is the bane of existence” at SFNovelists. On the unexpected pitfalls of figuring out, not what will happen in your book, but when it will happen.

5) Not a link, but a reminder: I’ll be at FOGcon this weekend, and at Borderlands Books on Sunday at 7 p.m. I hope to see one or more of you there!

Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Supernatural Re-Watch: “Shadow” and payoff

“Shadow” is the sixteenth episode of Season 1, and it is the point at which I realized Eric Kripke had learned some valuable lessons from the mistakes of The X-Files.

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Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.

Books read, February 2014 (and some of January, too)

I remembered two of the books I read in January. A part of me is convinced that the reason I forgot to record them in the first place is because one of them is the book I thought would never end.

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Originally published at Swan Tower. You can comment here or there.