The July 4th holiday, AKA Independence Day, is fast  approaching, which means for me that the summer is half over.  I’ve done a bit of traveling but that’s about to stop for the most part.

I’ll be teaching a class the second summer term, which starts on Tuesday.  It’s at 8:00 a.m.  That’s early, but that’s okay.  I’m tanned, I’m rested, I’m ready.  What that means is I’ll have a lot less free time on my hands.

Current projects are to finish Bradley Beaulieu’s new novel, Twelve Kings in Sharakhai.  I’ll do that in a bit and try to get the review up tomorrow night.  (Spoiler:  It’s awesome.)

I’ve not done a BAF post in a while, but I’ll start on the next book this weekend.  I’m going to try to read the short fiction that’s up for the Hugo that I’d not already read when the ballot was announced.  Ditto for the Gemmell Awards.  I won’t be able to finish everything on the Gemmell ballot before the deadline, but I’ll at least get a couple of books out of the way.

I was accepted into the Ace Roc Stars program earlier this year.  What that basically means is that i get advanced copies of most of the upcoming books by either Ace or Roc.  The first batch of titles didn’t have much that interested me, but the second batch is a gold mine.  The first volume in Jim Butcher’s new series, the second Lizzie Borden novel by Cheri Priest, a couple of new fantasy novels and the first volumes in some space opera series.

In addition I”ll be trying to read as much fantasy, science fiction, and crime as possible.  I want to read as many of the Shamus Award nominees as I can.  Anyway, that’s what’s going on with reviewing and blogging.  Writing I’ll discuss in another post once i have some things in better shape.