It finally did rain yesterday, but not very much. We did have a cold front come in, and now it's only in the low 80s. (Our cold fronts are a different definition of "cold.")

My cat Bella (no, she's not named after Bella from Twilight. She's seventeen years old, so my Bella came first) is (see parenthetical comment) seventeen years old. At sixteen, she went from being normal and healthy and still playing to losing weight even though she's still eating, not cleaning herself. The vet did a bunch of tests, and it's not thyroid, kidney disease, or anything else we can do something about. Seventeen is not actually old for one of my cats. Harry lived to be over nineteen, and Kate was twenty-four when she died.

At this point, Bella is still Bella, but does get a little confused at times. Example:

Cat: "Gah, a human!"

Me: "It's me."

Cat: "So it is. Where have you been? You left me alone, and I'm old and everything."

Me: "You've been sleeping on my arm for the last hour."

Cat: "Is that what this is? Right, I thought it looked familiar."

So that's what's going on now. We're thinking seriously about getting a kitten, because Tasha (who is only about four) needs more kitty interaction and is not getting it from Bella.


links:

Happy Agent Anniversary to Jennifer Jackson! Happy Agent Anniversary to me! And free books to a good home! It's my agent's anniversary and she's having a contest for free books, including The Cloud Roads!

Book View Cafe is having a grand opening celebration with a discount and chances to win a free ebook.

Juliet E. McKenna: "Turns & Chances" and the twists that brought everything together... A new Einarinn novella, available as an ebook.

Cherie Priest: How to Tell a True Ghost Story

NYT Arts Beat: Before He Was Green Lantern, He Had a Boyfriend On Wednesday, comic book fans who pick up issue No. 2 of “Earth 2,” published by DC Comics, will meet the company’s latest gay hero.

Really, really hoping for rain here today. Anything to stave off the firey death weather. Also, I've been feeling a bit sick off and on, and I'm hoping that will go away too. And I desperately want time to finish reading The Killing Moon by N.K. Jemisin.

Where I'll be:

June 9, 2012.
I'll be giving a questions and answers talk on publishing and on SF/F at the Larry J. Ringer Public Library, 1:30pm in College Station, Texas.

June 22-24, 2012.
I'll be at ApolloCon, in Houston, Texas.

July 27-29, 2012.
I'll be at ArmadilloCon, in Austin, Texas.

August 30-September 3, 2012.
I'll be at ChiCon 7, the World Science Fiction Convention, in Chicago, Illinois.

links:

Black Gate: A Wiscon Reading Report: The Best in Upcoming Fantasy by John O'Neill

NYT: An Ancient Civilization, Upended by Climate Change

Michelle Sagara: Please don't tell me how I should feel oppressed, thanks

Lane Robins: Rereads are Hell Lane reminds me how much I hate Ngaio Marsh.

The book giveaway winners were: curtana, donaithnen, and julieandrews!

Thanks to everyone who entered!

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SF/F artist and children's book illustrator Leo Dillon has passed away. Illustration has lost another giant. Leo Dillon, husband and life-long collaborator of Diane Dillon, passed away on May 26th. Together they created a remarkable array children's books and book covers.



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Book Rec:

Casket of Souls by Lynn Flewelling is out now!
The Nightrunners are back in this gripping novel full of Lynn Flewelling’s trademark action, intrigue, and richly imagined characters.

More than the dissolute noblemen they appear to be, Alec and Seregil are skillful spies, dedicated to serving queen and country. But when they stumble across evidence of a plot pitting Queen Phoria against Princess Klia, the two Nightrunners will find their loyalties torn as never before. Even at the best of times, the royal court at Rhíminee is a serpents’ nest of intrigue, but with the war against Plenimar going badly, treason simmers just below the surface.


SF Signal: [GUEST POST] Writing About Race in Science Fiction and Fantasy (Part 1 of a Roundtable Interview)
A Roundtable Interview with David Anthony Durham, Aliette de Bodard, Adrian Tchaikovsky, and Ken Liu

It's been a very lazy weekend, but I really need to get back to work today.

Question from Twitter from @mgarcialogan:

I really enjoyed City of Bones, do you plan to ever turn that into a series? Or write a sequel?

At this point, I don't think so. I did have a sequel planned in 1996 but moved to a new publisher and it never got written. (City of Bones was my second novel, and it came out in 1995 from Tor. It's been out of print probably since the late 90s, until I reprinted it myself in ebook in 2007.)

Couple of reviews:

Black Gate: Charlene Brusso Reviews The Cloud Roads

Janicu's Book Blog: The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells

A neat link:

Neil DeGrasse Tyson: The Leonard Lopate Show: Survival Kit: If you were stranded on a desert island, what ten things do you want with you? This is an audio file.

Giveaway:

For the people who are at home today, or just on the internet today: comment on this post to enter a drawing for a signed copy of The Serpent Sea, the sequel to The Cloud Roads. I'll give away at least three copies, depending on the number of entries, and you have until tomorrow at about this time to enter. Entrants from outside the US are fine.

This is one of those weekends where everyone is off at a con having fun without us. I did see Men in Black III and enjoyed it a bunch. It was a huge lot of fun. It made a nice antidote for The Woman in Black which we rented and watched Friday night, and which was a very well-made, gorgeously filmed movie which I disliked so intensely it upset my stomach.

Question answers:

Brennan Griffin asked
Gate of Gods trilogy
Do you have any plans to re-visit the Ile-Rien world? You may have addressed this somewhere else, but I thought that Gate of Gods did not get nearly the shelf-space it deserved, and I'd definitely like to see more.

Not to say that I'm not enjoying your Cloud Roads sequence! And I quite liked the Wheel of the Infinite as well.

Thank you! The third book in the trilogy, The Gate of Gods, definitely did not show up in most bookstores and I've talked to many people who read the first two books (The Wizard Hunters and The Ships of Air) and never saw the third. The first two books didn't sell as well as the publisher wanted, so they didn't put much effort into getting the third out there. Technically, they are all three still in print, but you have to order them online. They are available as ebooks, too.

I did originally start a prequel novel about Giliead and Ilias, but the publisher wasn't interested in it, so I just turned it into a series of short stories which were eventually published by Black Gate Magazine. (Three of them are on my web site now: Holy Places, Houses of the Dead, and Reflections. There's one more that hasn't been published yet.) At this point, it's been so long I kind of doubt whether I would ever go back to that world. I haven't completely ruled it out, though.


desertport asked I have been wondering this for a little while: What is the ultimate fate of the Ravenna? Does she end up a museum or sink fantastically? Something else?

I always imagined her becoming a floating museum, kind of like the Queen Mary, but more honored and better maintained.


If anyone has anymore questions (about my books or about writing or publishing in general or about what I'm doing today (hint: it's boring)) go ahead and ask.

Yesterday at around 6:30 in the morning there was a giant boom, followed by more giant booms. A 17-story building (an old Ramada Inn built in the 60s) had been demolished by implosion a couple of miles away from our house. It was a crappy building almost from the beginning (they had to close the top two floors not long after it was opened because they were structurally unsound) and no one liked it, so this was a big occasion in town. Here's a link to a blog with a video clip of the implosion.

In garden news, our tomatoes are out of control:



( garden pictures )

Question answer:

tex_maam asked Just one question: what do you think there desperately needs to be more of on the bookshelves?

To clarify: we all know that great characters and riveting stories are always in high demand, but like, for example... what kinds of protagonists do you feel are under-represented on the shelves? What kinds of settings or story ideas have you wanted to read about and not found much of?

In some ways this is always kind of a hard question to answer, because the SF/F genre is so large and our views of it tend to be so limited and so subjective. We see the books we read, the books our friends talk about online, and the rest tend to fade into the background. (This is how you get people confidently asserting that women don't write fantasy, or that all fantasy is a young beardy guy with a sword fighting orcs and dragons in faux England. People say that because those are the books they read and the books they pay attention to and the books they see mentioned and reviewed. They assume nothing else exists.)

That's why surveys like this I have numbers! Stats on LGBT Young Adult Books Published in the U.S. – Updated 9/15/11 with actual hard figures are important. I also think thematic lists are helpful. (Which is one of the reasons we did the List of Non-European Fantasy by Women Writers -- when you know you want to read more of certain types of fantasy, it's helpful to see lists of what's already out there.)

I know I want more settings that are not based on western Europe, more stories that use non-Western mythology and folklore and historical events, more characters who aren't white, more characters who are LGBT. I also want characters who are older women, in their 40s or 50s, and I want more books that are blends of science fiction and fantasy, like I grew up reading. I know there are already books out there that have those elements and characters, but I want more. I want more weird stuff, too.

The Cloud Roads is on this list at Kirkus Reviews of Top 10 Fantasy Novels by Female Authors Yay!

From yesterday:

I'm in Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who The sister book to the 2011 Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords. My essay is "Donna Noble Saves the Universe" about Donna's differences from the other companions, and basically being an older woman who is also a hero.

And I did the All About Books meme questions on the Strange Chemistry Blog.

Question answer:

misslynx asked:

1. I've heard a number of people talking about getting stuck in the "murky middle" of a story where it feels like you're losing your way, or at least like things are getting a bit out of control, and it's hard to see how you're going to rein it in and push it toward an ending. So I already know it's not just me.... But I'm still not sure how to get out of it. Do you ever find yourself hitting this point with your books? Any advice on how best to push through it, when it's starting to feel like trying to nail jello to a wall?

If your enthusiasm for the book is flagging in the middle, then you may have structural problems. Generally I feel that if the book is not exciting for me, it's not going to be exciting for the reader, either. You may want to get some feedback from a few trusted beta readers and try to see if something's wrong, if you need to add some plot complication or make other changes or cut out some plot complication that just isn't working.

If it's just a fatigue or concentration problem, feedback (especially good feedback) can also help rekindle your interest in the book. And sometimes, you just have to force yourself to push through. (This is basically why agents and publishers don't want to look at unfinished novels from first authors -- some people have great ideas but aren't able to get through the middle and finish.)

2. I know fantasy as a genre is famous for spawning some really long novels, but how long is too long? Especially for a first novel? How worried should I be that I'm closing in 100,000 words and am nowhere near finished with the story?

Fantasy novels for adults can generally be longer, but 100,000 words and not near the end may be a problem. The Raksura books have all been between 120,000 and 135,000 words. It really depends on the book and the publisher, though. I'm sure The Name of the Wind is quite a bit longer than 135,000 words, for example.

I'm in this anthology, which is now up for preorder: Chicks Unravel Time: Women Journey Through Every Season of Doctor Who

The sister book to the 2011 Hugo Award-winning Chicks Dig Time Lords...

In Chicks Unravel Time, editors Deborah Stanish (Whedonistas) and L.M. Myles bring together a host of award-winning female writers, media professionals and scientists to examine each season of new and classicDoctor Who from their unique perspectives.

Diana Gabaldon discusses how Jamie McCrimmon inspired her best-selling Outlander series, and Barbara Hambly (Benjamin January Mysteries) examines the delicate balance of rebooting a TV show. Seanan McGuire (Toby Daye series) reveals the power and pain of waiting in Series 5, and Una McCormack (The King's Dragon) argues that Sylvester McCoy's final year of Doctor Who is the show's best season ever.

Other contributors include Juliet E. McKenna (Einarrin series), Tansy Rayner Roberts (Power and Majesty), Sarah Lotz (The Mall), Martha Wells (The Cloud Roads), Joan Frances Turner (Dust), Rachel Swirsky ("Fields of Gold") and Aliette de Bodard (Obsidian and Blood series).

I am answering the All About Books meme questions on the Strange Chemistry Blog.


First two questions from yesterday:

princejvstin asked: An easy one: For you, what were/are the challenges, joys and differences in writing YA versus adult genre fiction

It really wasn't any different at all. YA is generally for anyone over twelve, and the only difference between Emilie and the Hollow World and my other books is that the protagonist is younger, around fifteen or sixteen or so. I basically just wrote the kind of book I like to read, which is what I always do.

curtana asked: I'm curious how you go about writing a novel - which I know is a big question :) Do you prefer to outline first, or do you write and find out what happens as you go along? Do you have the whole story more or less worked out in your head when you start? Do you know the ending first and then figure out how to get there later? Do you build the setting first, or think up characters, or plot? Do you make a million notes before you start writing?

I generally know who I want the main character to be and what the world will be like. For me, those are two elements that are dependent on each other. If I come up with the protagonist first, the world has to be the kind of place that would have created that person. If I come up with the world first, that's going to define the protagonist to a large extent. Usually, I come up with both elements at the same time.

I don't outline, but I do tend to know at least the first turning point in the plot, and also where I want the book to end in general. I pretty much make everything up as I go along, and research as I need to while I'm writing. A lot of writers do outline and work everything out in advance, but you basically have to figure out what works for you. Any process that ends with a finished story is the right process.

I'll do the next two questions tomorrow. If you have anymore questions, feel free to leave them in the comments of this post so I can keep track of them and answer them in order.

Questions: Ask me questions in the comments of this post, about writing in general, about publishing in general, about my books, about whatever, and I'll try to make some coherent answers, either here or in a later post.


Good news: Emilie and the Hollow World is now scheduled for May 2013 instead of August 2013!

Bad news: Two parts of my childhood died this month: Jean Craighead George, author of ‘My Side of the Mountain’ and ‘Julie of the Wolves,’ dies at 92 and Donna Summer.

If you're new here and missed it: I have a free short story, a prequel to The Cloud Roads on my web site: Adaptation. It's the story of how Chime turned into a warrior.

Other short stories set in the Three Worlds on my site are: The Almost Last Voyage of the Wind-ship Escarpment, which is about a different set of characters, and The Forest Boy, which is another prequel, about Moon as a young boy. And there's Three Worlds Compendium with extras, fan art, resources for fanfic writers, etc.

links:

If you haven't seen it yet: List of Non-European Fantasy by Women Writers

Locus Online: 2012 SF&F Translation Award Finalists

Kickstarter: Crossed Genres Publications: over a year of indie publishing

Kate Elliott: World Building: The Map Is Not The Territory

There's a thing going around about a self-published author who posted a very self-aggrandizing giant-ego comment on a big fantasy book discussion forum and then started a fight with the moderators and other commenters. I'm not going to link to it, because I feel that about 50% of the time when someone does that, they are doing it deliberately knowing that starting an internet hatestorm is fabulous advertising for their books. People link to the fight on book discussion blogs everywhere, people leave tons of 1-star reviews on Amazon for their books (which doesn't do any good since Amazon pays more attention to total number of reviews than the star rating) and inevitably, people buy their books to see for themselves how bad they are, and their sales skyrocket. So I just don't link, because I don't want to give someone who does that even more free advertising, especially knowing that that may be exactly what they want.

So instead, here's a link to author Alex Bledsoe's interview with filmmaker Sterlin Harjo
Sterlin Harjo is an Oklahoma filmmaker with two extraordinary feature films under his belt. His first, Four Sheets to the Wind, is about a young man struggling to connect to the world after the loss of his father; Barking Water tells of two elderly lovers on a last road trip. Both are set against the background of Oklahoma Native Americans (Harjo belongs to the Seminole and Creek Nations), but they’re not special-interest films at all; they’re universal stories about feelings that we all have, against a unique and vivid cultural background.

And Congrats to the Nebula award winners!

I cleaned out my office last night and got rid of old dead computer stuff and reorganized. I ended up with five bags for the charity story and a couple for trash and recycling. I also got some baseboards painted in the dining room that I've been meaning to do. A productive weekend so far. Let's see if I can keep it up today.

Went to see Dark Shadows last night and it was okay. The funny bits were funny, but the story didn't hang together very well. The movie starts with Victoria Winters as the main character, and is creepy and quirky and scary, and the woman playing her is excellent. Even though the Collins house is daunting and weird and haunted, it's clear that she's somewhat weird herself and can take it. Then it shifts to Barnabas (Johnny Depp) as the main character, and it's more funny, but it loses some of that neat gothic feel and story flow. It would have been better to stay with Victoria's perspective and tell Barnabas' story through her eyes.

links for Sunday:

Atlas Obscura: Chaukhandi Tombs

The Oatmeal: Why Nikola Tesla was the Greatest Geek Who Ever Lived

For steampunk fans: Galveston Historical Society Store pocket sextants, compasses, other cool stuff.

Book rec: The Emperor's Knife by Mazarkis Williams PW says: "A riveting and intense debut ... compelling characterizations will keep fans of grim fantasy entirely enthralled"

Katharine Kimbriel: Book Review - The Serpent Sea by Martha Wells

N.K. Jemisin just linked to this on Twitter: Kate Hart: Uncovering YA Covers: 2011
Last year, I started a series of infographics about YA book covers, mostly as a tongue-in-cheek reaction to the Wall Street Journal's "Darkness in YA" controversy. But the further I got into compiling statistics, the more alarmed I became at the covers' monochrome approach to models. All total, I found 224 white girls-- and only nine of any other race or ethnicity.

Yesterday I took the day off and went with a friend to the Antique Rose Emporium, which is about a twenty-five minute drive from our house. It's a large plant nursery/garden site out in the country which is really gorgeous. Then we drove on into Brenham and had a very good lunch at a neat little place on the square (homemade bread, nom nom nom) and looked into the stores for a while. Then came back home and stopped on campus to walk around so she could see what had changed and we could check out the newly remodeled student center.

So here are photos, all of the Rose Emporium

First, a kitty:

This is Tasha



( more photos )

If you missed it yesterday, I had great news: I sold two new YA fantasies to Strange Chemistry Books.

Last night there was much celebrating involving chocolate cake.

Also, The Siren Depths is now up for preorder at Barnes and Noble and Amazon US, and they both have the preorder price now.

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Links I have been meaning to post and got way behind on:

* N.K. Jemisin: Why There's No Tipjar
For as long as I’m traditionally published, I’m not planning to do a tipjar. I really appreciate the thought, but thing is — you are contributing by checking out books from the library. The more lends and reservations a library gets for a particular book, the more books that library will purchase. And if it gets checked out a lot, they might prominently display it somewhere, which will (hopefully) earn me more long-term readers.

You can also fill out a request card for your local public library, and ask that they get books they don't have yet.

* Black Gate: C.S.E. Cooney’s How to Flirt in Faerieland & Other Wild Rhymes On Sale

* Sense of Wonder: Interview with Verbena C.W., editor of Liu Cixin in English

* XOJane: CeCe McDonald, the Girl Who Lived (And Why There is No Justice for Transgender Women of Color)

* Cynthia Leitich Smith: Video: "Bookloose" by Dowell Middle School (McKinney, Texas) in support of continued funding for their school library. This was really cute.

* Salon: Whitewashing, a history From "Tiffany's" to "Khan," we look at Hollywood's illustrious tradition of casting white actors in non-white roles by Aasif Mandvi

* Air & Space Smithsonian: The Weird World of Folk Aviators With his whimsical sculptures, Gregory Bryant celebrates early ideas about winged flight.

* Kate Elliott: Guest Post: Decolonizing as an SF Writer By Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
As I write this, I am thinking of a young writer somewhere in the world who comes from a country just like mine. I write reflecting on the process of decolonization that I am going through as I consider history. This look back may be painful and I may have to face unhappy truths, but still it is important. I need to understand the source of the pain, to accept it, embrace it and find healing so I can reclaim what is mine and become the writer that I want to be.

I have great news to announce: I sold 2 YA novels to Strange Chemistry! http://strangechemistrybooks.com/2012/05/15/announcing-martha-wells/

The first book is Emilie and the Hollow World, to be published in August 2013, with a sequel to follow in Spring 2014. It’s a steampunkish fantasy adventure, set in a secondary world.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I started writing Emilie in July 2009 when my husband was facing a lay off and The Cloud Roads had been on submission for about a year and still hadn’t sold. I finished it around December 2009, and it started out on its submission adventure around the summer of 2010, so it’s had a long road too. And I’m so so happy that it found a home with Strange Chemistry!

And I want to thank my agent Jennifer Jackson (Arcaedia) for believing in me and my crazy books.

In short, WOOHOO!!!!!

The Siren Depths, the third Books of the Raksura, (set after The Cloud Roads and The Serpent Sea) is up for preorder at Amazon.

The preorder price isn't there yet, and there's no hurry since the book does not come out until December, but I thought I'd let people know. (Yes, there will be an ebook but it won't be out until December when the trade paperback comes out.)

It will eventually be available for online ordering at Barnes and Noble, Powell's, Mysterious Galaxy, The Tattered Cover, Books-a-Million, Book Depository.com (free shipping worldwide), Waterstones UK, Book Depository.uk, Whitcoulls NZ, Amazon UK, Amazon.ca, Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, or look for it it at an independent book store in the US through IndieBound, and in December it will be available in person at bookstores.

The ebook will be at Baen Webscription eBook (DRM free), Barnes & Noble NookBook, Books-a-Million, Amazon US Kindle, Kobo, Waterstones UK, Whitcoulls NZ, Kindle UK, Kindle Germany, Kindle France, Kindle Spain, Kindle Italy.

I'll post when I see more preorder options show up, but to celebrate, I thought I'd go ahead and post the first chapter as a teaser, and it is here.

And there is fan art, short stories, and missing scenes here at the Three Worlds Compendium.

This turned into a busy weekend, that actually started on Thursday. One of our goddaughters graduated from the university this weekend (with two degrees, one in Wildlife and Fisheries Science and one in Zoology) so there was a lot of partying.

I went to a graduation reception at the Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collection on Thursday afternoon, then we went out to dinner and the family came over. (To use our iron to decorate her mortar board hat for the graduation ceremony.) Then Friday a friend got off work early so we went to lunch and caught another showing of The Avengers, despite me getting the time and the theater wrong. We saw the 3D version this time, which was okay, but it does make me realize even more that I like the 2D format better.

There are multiple graduations for the university because there are so many graduates. We went to the one on Saturday morning which worked out really well because the son of two of our oldest friends in town was also graduating then. The whole thing was over three hours long, and that was without a speaker, since the speeches and all that were done at a ceremony on Thursday night that we didn't go to. The University president said he had already shaken 4000 hands, and alternative greetings like fist bumps and hugs were welcome. (And they still had one more graduation ceremony to do after that one.)

But it was very cool watching them graduate. (At one point Troyce commented about this being the only reason he'd sit in a cramped seat for over two hours for something that didn't involve Nick Fury.) The mortar board decorations were great. We saw ones with the Batman logo, a double helix, some blinking LEDs, and "please hire me" in glitter paint.

I also picked the first batch of green tomatoes from our garden last week, and made fried green tomatoes, and they were nummy.

Saw the Avengers last night and loved it! And I managed to see it without being spoiled, yay! Which is pretty amazing, considering I've already been spoiled for movies like Star Trek which are still being filmed.

A friend who is staying with us while she works in town arrived just in time to get flung into the car and we took off to the theater to meet two more friends. The 6:15 show was a little crowded for a Tuesday night, especially a Tuesday night in this town during finals week. But when we got out, there were lines all across the lobby, and ticket-buying lines across the parking lot. And it's a pretty big parking lot.

links:

BBC News: Lack of contact with nature 'increasing allergies'

John Hodgeman THAT IS ALL: a reblogged tumblr essay on Tony Stark and Bruce Banner SPOILERS

Better World Books for each book you buy, they donate one to someone in need. (my books are here)

Aliette de Bodard: SFF as metaphor: aliens, vampires, foreigners and immigrants

If you haven't checked it out yet, see the list of fantasy with non-European settings by women writers 106 writers on the list so far.

We had a huge storm last night, with a long power failure, and there have been storms in Austin and all around us in the past couple of days. This is actually a good thing, because it puts off the chance of wildfires again. Last year, we were surrounded by fires, with hundreds of acres of pine forest and hundreds of homes burned down. But last year it also stopped raining around early February, and this year we're still getting these storms now.

I'm hoping for a summer where I don't get up every morning and check the fire map to see who we know might lose their house today and watch all the frantic pleas for horse trailers and help moving livestock on Twitter.

I got a new laptop on Friday, and it's very nice. I had gotten used to how overheated the old one was, so it's a great to have one that isn't flirting with the possibility of giving me second-degree burns. It's a MacBook, so we didn't have to reinstall anything, just migrated the contents from the old MacBook. (You hook them up together and the new one clones itself from the old one.) I did have to get a new mail program, but that was it.

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lillian13 who makes gorgeous jewelry has a couple of pieces up on the ebay site that is raising money for Spider Robinson's daughter's cancer treatment here. Her pieces are the friendship pendant and the double-sided pendant.