I don't usually read or post here in Literary, but I just wanted to point out this interview at Slashdot with Neal Stephenson. (As you might expect, it's rather long-winded.)

Thank you. Dear GOD, I love this bit:

The first time was a year or two after SNOW CRASH came out. I was doing a reading/signing at White Dwarf Books in Vancouver. Gibson stopped by to say hello and extended his hand as if to shake. But I remembered something Bruce Sterling had told me. For, at the time, Sterling and I had formed a pact to fight Gibson. Gibson had been regrown in a vat from scraps of DNA after Sterling had crashed an LNG tanker into Gibson's Stealth pleasure barge in the Straits of Juan de Fuca. During the regeneration process, telescoping Carbonite stilettos had been incorporated into Gibson's arms. Remembering this in the nick of time, I grabbed the signing table and flipped it up between us. Of course the Carbonite stilettos pierced it as if it were cork board, but this spoiled his aim long enough for me to whip my wakizashi out from between my shoulder blades and swing at his head. He deflected the blow with a force blast that sprained my wrist. The falling table knocked over a space heater and set fire to the store. Everyone else fled. Gibson and I dueled among blazing stacks of books for a while. Slowly I gained the upper hand, for, on defense, his Praying Mantis style was no match for my Flying Cloud technique. But I lost him behind a cloud of smoke. Then I had to get out of the place. The streets were crowded with his black-suited minions and I had to turn into a swarm of locusts and fly back to Seattle.

Lots of Crusie fans here, right? Here's a new interview with her:

[link]

Holy cow. Look at Lurlene McDaniel's bibliography.

Mother, Help Me Live

Sarah McGreggor has leukemia and needs a bone marrow transplant. It is at this critical moment that Sarah learns she was adopted. When the "One Last Wish" check arrives, Sarah decides to search for her birth mother--and a chance for life.

Look at Lurlene McDaniel's bibliography.

Good Christ, is that depressing. In a laugh-out-loud kind of way.

"I saw firsthand how chronic illness affects every aspect of a person's life," she has said. "I want kids to know that while people don't get to choose what life gives to them, they do get to choose how they respond."

But aw, anyway.

Ah, Lurlene MacDaniel. My youngest sister read vast quantities of her books during her early teens. She also ended up struggling with an eating disorder for several years. I do not believe that these facts are unrelated, although that may be because I'm a mean person.

I do not believe that these facts are unrelated, although that may be because I'm a mean person.

Did she play a lot of violent video games and end up killing someone? You may be on to something here.

Did she play a lot of violent video games and end up killing someone?

See, that just sounds much healthier to me.

My only criticism was that the plot feels quite rushed in places, and I would have liked to see more from the girl's viewpoint. But it's a darn good fluffy, funny vampire rea

(adds to list of books to find)

Ha! My mother met Lurlene McDaniels at a writing conference. Apparently she is extremely fond of mink.