Karen Traviss sent me this link. It’s moving stuff. I’ve been over to France several times on battlefield tours, and the thing I’ve found while walking among the fallen in the war cemeteries that dot the countryside is an overwhelming sense of sadness – obviously at the loss of life, but also that so many soldiers’ remain unaccounted for. I’m heartened that at least 252 in this case have been found.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8216639.stm

A former French naval officer has a neat trick on how to make your getaway. He does look quite matronly with all the padding.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1208471/French-007-tells-great-escape-Dubai-wearing-wetsuit-burka.html?ITO=1490

…to tape to my back because I FINALLY got the green light to start running again yesterday. I truly don’t know which was worse – the pain of the injuries or the excruciating waiting for them to heal. Now my biggest challenge is to start out slow and easy. I really don’t do slow and easy. I think I suffer from restless spirit syndrome. I’m fidgeting as I write this. The strange paradox is, however, that I sometimes also procrastinate.

I did ask the doctor about the Nike 10k race coming up the end of October and it looks like I’ll be cleared for that as long as I stay healthy. So something to look forward to. And in my immediate future I’m having breakfast with a friend which is a very nice way to start a Friday, especially this Friday.

Summer heat or not, I love a challenge. So, while reading manuscripts for work, a sexy thriller/mystery novel, and Len Deighton’s Berlin, I’ve been rereading (well, in an attempt to get my mind around the concepts) Etienne Klein’s Chronos, then switched to the revised and updated version of Hawking’s A Brief History Of Time. Now my synapses are firing so fast I swear I spotted a quantum singularity in my fridge just behind the loaf of whole wheat bread and a smidge to the left of the yogurt cups.

Big thanks to the nice folks at Simon & Schusters’ multimedia department for taping an interview with me. It’s now up on S&S’ website and you can view it here: http://authors.simonandschuster.com/Chris-Evans/46195026

In other publishing news, I hear C.C. Finlay (http://www.ccfinlay.com/) is hard at work on a new book, Richard Knaak (http://www.richardaknaak.com/INTRO.html) is coming out with a huge book in his Dragonrealm series on September 1, and Karen Traviss has said goodbye to the world of Star Wars in a blog post here http://karentraviss.typepad.com/blog/2009/08/end-of-one-era-start-of-another.html

I first met Karen at Michigan State University in the summer of 2000. We were attending the Clarion East SF/F Writers Workshop. You might recognize another name from that class, Gavin Grant, of Small Beer Press fame (http://smallbeerpress.com/). He’s now married to author, Kelly Kink (http://kellylink.net/ I think I met her there, then, too). I may have mentioned this before, but it was Gavin who told me Del Rey were looking for an editor for both SF and military. I got that job and the rest is a mystery, or something like that. I’m pretty sure I still owe him a beer or twenty for that. Anyway, before I start pulling out slides and showing you the cafeteria where we ate lunch, I bring this up because it’s been an amazing nine years from that summer to this.