David D. LevineScience Fiction Author

The floor guys arrived this morning at 8am. Carpets have been taken up and the revealed floors look great!

We will be spending much of this week out of the house, at a B&B nearby, due to noise and fumes.

Also, I will be working on Grimm today and tomorrow. I am a stand-in this time, not an extra, which will be a new experience for me. I probably will not wind up on television this time, but I bet I will spend a lot more time on-set than I ever did as an extra.

On Friday, PDX GEAR Con, Portland’s steampunk convention, begins. I will be on a bunch of programming Friday and Saturday, and I’ll post my schedule as soon as it’s finalized.

Somewhere in there I will try to get in at least 500 words of writing a day. It will not be easy…

Digital Rapture: The Singularity Anthology, which includes my story “Firewall,” is out! To celebrate, publisher Tachyon Press is having a contest: write a Singularity haiku and you could win a free lunch! http://tachyonpublications.blogspot.com/2012/08/come-singularity-there-will-be-such.html

Sunday’s episode of Leverage, “The First Contact Job,” was the first episode of this series that Kate and I worked as extras, and we both actually appeared on screen! We played “members of the science media” in the press conference at the end of the show. Kate’s in several shots, and I appear briefly walking in front of Timothy Hutton.

It was a very long day of shooting, with a lot of waiting and quite a bit of confusion. (“Why are you standing there?” “The other guy told me to.” “Well, go somewhere else!”) But the episode was directed by Jonathan Frakes and features a lot of science fiction movie references (including a character called Will Riker). I’m very pleased to be in this one.

Immediately after watching Leverage on Sunday night (we watched it as it aired, of course) we headed down to the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry to watch Curiosity land on Mars. We had hoped to rendezvous there with Jay Lake, but as we were somewhat late they told us the planetarium was full (even though Jay was saving us seats) and we had to watch from the auditorium next door. A standing-room-only crowd of 900-1000 people gasped and cheered as each milestone was successfully passed… it was an awesome geekly experience. The only thing that could have been improved was that the simulation OMSI showed on a second screen, using NASA’s “Eyes on the Solar System” app, was about four minutes ahead of reality, so we saw simulated Curiosity touch down well before the actual moment. On the other hand, once that happened we could give our full attention to the real telemetry data and not be distracted by the shinier simulation.

The other major news at home is that we have decided, rather suddenly, that it is time to pull up our over-20-year-old wall-to-wall carpet and have the hardwood floors beneath refinished. This is a bit of a gamble, as we don’t know what shape they’re in (the carpet was there when we moved in). The refinishers arrive on Monday.

In order to make this happen, we have to pull every stick of furniture out of the living room, dining room, and parlor (guest and TV room), which means that we are spending this week boxing up all the books, CDs, DVDs, and other stuff from those three rooms. We’ll be renting a container, and all that stuff will be in it (on the street in front of the house) for a week. Also during that week we will have to move to a hotel for a few days because of fumes. It’s a big hassle, but I’m sure we’ll like the result.

This is also an opportunity to reconsider and get rid of Stuff. We’ve reduced our collection of LPs by about one-third, we’re getting rid of all our VHS tapes, and I’ve sold off my LaserDisc player and collection of disks. And we plan to take our CDs out of the jewel boxes and place them in sleeves (probably these), reducing the storage space requirements substantially. (Though most of our music is online, getting rid of the CDs completely is not under consideration.) A few books and papers are going away as well.

We’re also going to lose the LP, cassette, VHS, and DVD players and replace the existing tuner and speakers with a Blu-Ray surround sound setup (any recommendations?). The entertainment center we were given by the previous owners of the house will be replaced by something more suited to the flat-screen era. We’re keeping the TV, for now — it’s only a few years old — though with the new entertainment center we’ll now have room for a bigger one.

Finally, may I direct your attention to the Tome of Ideas for Writers and Roleplayers Kickstarter campaign. If funded, this will be a color illustrated book of writing and story prompts from over twenty professional authors including Elizabeth Bear, Seanan McGuire, Kevin J. Anderson, and me! If you’d like to see this happen, go over there and kick in a few bucks.

My story “Floaters” has been published at Buzzy Mag! Read it for free here: http://buzzymag.com/floaters-by-david-levine/

So I’m at the airport heading to San Jose, where I will appear tonight as a speaker at Singularity University at NASA Ames (Moffett Field) in California. I’ll be participating in a panel discussion with Pat Murphy (in person) and David Brin, Greg Benford, and Greg Bear (via video conference), talking about the feedback loop between science and science fiction. Whee!

This all came together in the last couple of days when one of the scheduled speakers had to back out at the last minute. It’s a quick one-day visit crammed in between the SFWA reading in Portland and the SFWA reading in Seattle, and it’s really quite insane for me to be doing this, but Singularity U is paying for it and it’s such an honor to be invited that I couldn’t say no.

I will be heading home tomorrow afternoon (Wednesday 7/18), but there is a possibility I might be able to do lunch tomorrow with some Bay Area friends. Drop me an email if you’d like to get involved.

Again, whee!

This is just a quick reminder that SFWA’s Pacific Northwest Reading Series is having its next events in the coming week!

On Monday, in Portland, we’ll have New York Times best-selling author Daniel H. Wilson, along with Rhiannon Held, whose urban fantasy novel Silver just came out last month, and Isaac Marion, author of Warm Bodies. Wrigley-Cross Books will be on hand again selling books and all the authors will be available to sign.

When: Monday, July 16, 2012, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: McMenamins Kennedy School, 5736 N.E. 33rd Ave. Portland, OR 97211

On Thursday, in the Seattle area, we’ll have local favorite Louise Marley, along with Rhiannon Held and Isaac Marion. The University Bookstore will be selling books and all the authors will be available to sign.

When: Thursday, July 19, 2012, 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM
Where: Wild Rover Restaurant and Pub, 111 Central Way, Kirkland, WA 98033

Both events are free and open to the public.

I hope you can join us! It should be a lot of fun.

See http://www.sfwa.org/for-readers/sfwa-northwest-reading-series/ for more information and to RSVP (not required, but encouraged).