I think the links are breeding...

The trouble with having little spiders that wander around the Internet looking for reviews is that I wind up with a lot of reviews. And once I have them, I want to post them, because that is how my brain is wired. And then? Then I drown in a sea of links.

Travels Through Iest has chosen Feed as a favorite read of 2010. To quote, "Feed is a zombie apocalypse novel mixed with political thriller. It sounds insane and it kind of is, but it's well written, cleverly realised with a remarkably believable future world." Go team insanity!

Oh, hey, and the Word Zombie also chose Feed as a favorite read of 2010. To quote, "This is that rare combination of a great story, that also happens to be a great zombie story." Hooray!

Vampires and Tofu (another great blog name!) has posted a review of Feed, and says, "Feed is a wonderful story of zombies, social commentary, politics, religion and the struggle to hold onto the ideals of a nation. It is intelligent and heartbreaking and don't be surprised if you find yourself shedding a tear when you read it." This works for me.

To give you an idea of how long it's taking me to clear the link lists these days, here's a Halloween plug for Feed from Pretty In Dayton, who says, "Primarily, this was just a fun read. But it is the first book that I have read that centered on zombies that made me cry. Yes I'm a sap, but I don't usually cry when reading books. I enjoyed the characters very much. And you know, since it's a zombie book, people die. Apparently this book is to be a series (Newsflesh). I can't wait to read what comes next!" And I can't wait for you to read it.

And here's an SFReader Forum review of Feed, which says, "I'd strongly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys zombies, political thrillers, or anything along those lines from the fiction section. It reminds me most strongly of Stephen King's novels, although it is not a rip-off of any of Stephen King's books."

Any review roundup that ends with a Stephen King comparison is a good review roundup from my perspective. Later!

Highlights of Arisia, part two.

Welcome to the second, and hopefully final, portion of my not-a-con-report for Arisia. I really did have a wonderful time in Boston, snow and all, and I'm definitely going to be going back. Eventually. After I've had the opportunity to take a nice nap, and maybe watch a whole lot of really, really dumb television. Anyway, here are the summarized highlights (and lowlights), for your amusement and edification.

My candy corn hat! The Agent knows me too, too well, it seems, and when the time came to give me the last piece of my holiday gift, she led me to the dealer's hall and purchased me a felt candy corn hat from one of the local vendors. Yes. I now have a hat that looks like a piece of candy corn. TREMBLE WITH FEAR, MERE MORTALS. I wore this hat to almost every serious panel I had during the weekend, and proclaimed proudly that wearing it provided that I was a professional. I never said what kind of professional.

The Mad Science song circle! I didn't make it to very many filk events this year, sadly, because I was busy with other programming and also wound up spending most of Sunday vilely ill (more on this in a moment). But the Mad Science circle was awesome, and Ben Newman sprung a positively wicked new science parody on me. It was a very cool circle, and I'm so very glad I got to go.

Alice and Josh! My life is better when it contains large quantities of Alice, and since I had to leave my beloved Maine Coon in California, I supplemented diet of Alice with a local fan and acquaintance of mine from this blog. She and her husband took me to dinner, where I ate, unsurprisingly, shepherd's pie, and then she and I sat and talked for like an hour and a half while he ran off to a panel. It was a really nice, relaxing way to spend an evening, and I had a wonderful time. Since they didn't run screaming, I assume they did, too.

Meeting Toni! My friend Toni lives near Boston, and was able to come out to the convention on Saturday, transforming herself from "my Internet-only friend Toni" to "my friend Toni, whom I have met in real life." She brought her husband, who was witty and fun to talk to, and I brought Diana, who was witty and fun to talk to and bought me chicken fingers. There were exchanges of books and hugs, and life was very good. It's nice to have people transform from words on a screen into actual humans. It makes me happy.

The Guest Breakfast! Arisia had a special breakfast event on Sunday, where people could buy tickets to have a special, intimate breakfast with the Guests of Honor and Special Guests. Each of us had a table of our very own. Sadly for me, someone at the next table over was wearing a mango-based perfume, and the breakfast went rapidly from "yum yum, free fruit" to "quietly excusing myself, walking to the bathroom, vomiting copiously, and walking back to my table to resume being entertaining." I would become progressively sicker for most of the day. It was so much fun. My poor roommates had to deal with my basically being a creepy dead girl from a horror movie. How I try their patience.

Cat and Seanan strike back! Cat and I are getting pretty good at our urban fantasy girl version of "An Evening With Kevin Smith." Every time it happens, the crowd gets a little bigger, the questions get a little smoother, and our comfort levels get a little higher, which leads to, you know, more swearing, more craziness, and more references to Lord Byron's penis. It's a victory for everybody! This installment of the Cat-and-Seanan Show was pure hammered awesome, and we only had to decline one question, which is possibly a record. More impressively, I wasn't even able to walk without throwing up an hour before the panel. So this is what I do for love.

Better Off Ted! Diana and Cat introduced me to this show, and Cat's Netflicks account allowed us to wallow in it each night before bed. I now require the box sets. And maybe a meat blob.

Post-antibiotic science fiction gone wild! My final panel was on Monday morning, and was all about post-antibiotic science fiction. It turned into "Seanan defends her thesis on causative agents for the Black Death" for about twenty minutes, which seemed to be fun for everyone, if a little more mentally rigorous than I had wanted to be that early in the morning on the last day of a convention. I recommended not licking things as a way to avoid infection. You're welcome.

Flying home! Actually, the flight was pretty lousy. But my cats made up for it.

See you next time!