Gillian, my partner-in-Beastly-crime, has a new book coming up. It's her latest academic work, published by Peter Lang, titled "History and Fiction. Writers, their Research, Worlds and Stories".

The book looks at how writers understand and use history in their fiction, including world building. It focusses on genre fiction, so if you've always been wondering how history might influence science fiction novels... here's a book for you.

I'm all excited for her, and I especially like how the cover turned out...



...because I had a hand in it. As in I made the photo. And the Most Patient Husband of Them All also had a hand in it, even more literally, as it is his hand you can see doing the colouring. Which means he got to be a cover model, though he never planned on it!

Assorted links for you on this Friday - and hooray, weekend is almost upon us!

First of all, a post about how little changes can have rather large effects overall, sometimes without us noticing it at first: How a lamp took away my reading, and a box brought it back.

For those of you who dcrochet and like peacocks, here's a pattern to crochet a peacock feather appliqué.

Discarding Images has a picture of a very fluffy cat.

And finally, I found an online bookstore that might be an alternative to the Big River (and, as they bought them, bookdepository): wordery.com. They are located in the UK, ship world-wide with free delivery, and I can feel the urge to buy a book or two coming up, just so I can check them out.

Jim Hines has posted a long article about the Puppies in 2016, linked to the upcoming Hugo nominations. It looks like there might be less of a kerfuffle and less nastiness this year in the nominations and the voting - at least I hope so. In case you can nominate, or are just interested in current sf/f lit that is eligible, you can take a look at Hugo Recommendations, or jump right to the huge spreadsheet list of eligible nominees here.

In case you don't care about that stuff at all - here are links to cats doing Extreme Napping, and tiny cats sleeping, also thanks to Jim Hines. Our little cat does some napping at the moment, too, but it's not as spectacular...



Speaking of spectacular, though - there's been a mammoth find (literally!) that points towards a much earlier human activity in Arctic zones than previously thought. This also could include earlier human presence in North America.

Over at Ossamenta there are links to several opportunities - bursaries for attending the Association for Environmental Archaeology on the Orkneys, their research grant, plus a fully funded PhD in York about Mesolithic bone tools. Check out the blog post to learn more.

Today, you are getting all kinds of cool stuff!

First of all, for all of you who read German, one of my friends has written a book called "Von der Badewanne ins Haifischbecken - ein Survival Guide für junge Designer".

The cat approves of Jan's book, too!

 If you are working in a creative job, or think about working in a creative job, or know somebody, this book is a wonderful read and really, really helpful. (I finally got to realise that some of my issues are completely normal, and not due to my being not good enough, or whatever.) You can buy it directly from the publisher, as print version or as ebook.

More German: when I was in Hallstatt for the last NESAT conference, we were treated to a tour though the famous salt mines and got to see the archaeological digs in there. We were also shown a tool replica, and Hans Reschreiter (who gave us the tour) explained that they hadn't yet found out how to use this tool efficiently. Apparently someone could show them how in the meantime - as this Austrian article tells. Hooray! (For those of you who don't do German: the picks have a weird geometry, and a visiting palaeobotany researcher was reminded of a kind of scythes from his home in South Russia. The things are used with a motion coming from the hip, not the arms or shoulders.)


That's it with the German stuff for now. Time for some screenshots - you're getting a sneak preview of my new website design!

Peek at the main page

A peek at the new shop page.

More of the shop!

Let me know what you think of it - I'd be delighted to have some feedback!