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Open Road Media, which publishes several of my e-books, has announced a one-week reduction in price of Vacuum Flowers. Starting this October 18 and running through October 25, 2024, it will be available for $1.99. That's in the US only.

So if you're an e-book reader and have been curious about my novel... well, there you are.

And if you don't already know . . .

Vacuum Flowers is what used to be called a Grand Tour of the Solar System. Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark is operating off of stolen wetware and on the run from very dangerous people. She arrives in the inner system on a cometary orbit, which takes her through a great variety of human and post-human societies, including the most dangerous one of all--Earth.

That bit about the cometary orbit is not incidental. Comets enter the Inner System on either a hyperbolic or a parabolic orbit. The one is open, the other closed. I knew that the book would end with Rebel Elizabeth Mudlark standing in the stardocks with a coffin at her feet. But I didn't know if the person within the coffin would be alive or dead or if REM would someday return to the Inner System or was leaving it forever. I only decided that when I came to write the last page.

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Once again, one of my e-books will briefly be on sale! Vacuum Flowers will be available in the US for only $1.99. Here's the news from Open Road Media:

Hello,

We are pleased to let you know that the following ebook(s) will be featured in price promotions soon.

ISBN13	Title	Author	Promo Type	Country	Start Date	End Date	Promo Price
9781504036504	Vacuum Flowers	Swanwick, Michael	ORM - Portalist NL	US	2024-11-13	2024-11-13	$1.99

Open Road will promote the feature via social media. We hope you can share the deal with your network as well. You can subscribe to the newsletters at the links below so that you will get the direct link to the deal on the day that it appears.

Newsletter	Link
Early Bird Books	Subscribe Now
The Lineup	Subscribe Now
The Portalist	Subscribe Now
Murder & Mayhem	Subscribe Now
A Love So True	Subscribe Now
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Please let us know if you have any questions. We are thrilled to be part of this promotion; hope you are too!

Best,
The Open Road Editorial Team

And because you've probably wondered . . .

I've been asked this many times, but the answer is no: I don't have a nude drawing of Gardner Dozois hanging in my living room. It's in the upstairs hallway. Anyway, he's wearing a sheet, so much of him is covered.

Robert Walters posed Gardner as the evil genius Jonaman for one of the illos (back when SF magazines had illustrations) that went with the serialization of Vacuum Flowers in Asimov's, way back when.

It's not the sightliest picture. But it is treasured.

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I started cutting scraps of fabric to make hexie flowers on September 1, 2015. After 9 months of labor, I have just finished stitching the 733rd flower!  I'll do the math for you... That's 5,131 hexies. They are small ones, 3/4 inch per side. The finished flowers measure just under 4" in diameter.


To give you an idea, this is what 44 hexie flowers look like. In case you don't know, for each hexie, the fabric is cut, and then basted over a paper, hexagon-shaped form. The hexies are then hand-stitched together to make the flowers. It takes about 1 hour to make one hexie flower, start-to-finish; thus 44 hours to make the batch above. Click the photo to see better detail of this process, which is called English paper piecing.


And here are all 733 hexie flowers! Each flower is a different fabric. Although a few of the flower petal fabrics were also used for flower centers, I'm certain that there are over 1,000 different fabrics used in these flowers.

What's next? Well, I'm going to build a design wall using sound-proofing foam-board covered with a king-sized flannel sheet. I haven't quite figured out how to make it yet.

When the design wall is ready, I'll get out my hexie flowers and start to "paint" with them. Who knows what will emerge? Not me. I only have a vague idea that I might want to try "painting" an abstract view of our island shoreline.

When the "painting" process is finished, I'll stitch the flowers together in small groups, and then stitch the groups together. The result, hopefully in my lifetime, will be a queen-sized, non-traditional style, hexie quilt!

Thanks to everybody who shared scraps of fabric for me to use!

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For those interested, here is a link to a "time study" and photos of my previous hexie quilt, Mama's Garden!

 

It All Started with Hexie-lust!

Getting Hooked on Crochet

Original Crochet-Along, Frida's Flowers

Bored with making 6 identical flowers - Colors calling us!

Designing Our Afghans

Entering at the San Juan County Fair

Within the vast musical landscape, songs dedicated to flowers have blossomed as lyrical tributes to the natural wonders that captivate and inspire. The countless compositions celebrating the beauty and symbolism of flowers highlight their enduring allure and universal appeal. In this article, we embark on a detailed exploration of the world of songs about flowers, ... Read more

The post Songs About Flowers: Exploring The Vast Melodic Garden appeared first on Star Two.

Smithsonian magazine commissioned Drew Gardner for a project that connects Black Americans today to their lost ancestry. Read about Gardner’s project and process, as well as more details about the subjects of this incredible series here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/descendants-black-civil-war-heroes-wear-heritage-pride-180983397/ Video produced by Sierra Theobald. Special thanks to Drew Gardner Additional credits: Emma MacBeath, WikiTree US Black Heritage project; Ottawa Goodman, research and coordinator; Sam Dole, Penumbra Foundation; Elizabeth Zuck, set design; Calvin Osbourne, props and costume; Angela Huff, hair and make up; Diego Huerta, Lexia Krebs, behind-the-scenes filming; background prints by Fujifilm USA

Scientists have known for centuries that sunflowers wobble in seemingly random ways as they grow – but it seems that those movements actually optimise how much light each plant gets

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Praised as the most beautiful countryside in China, the unique view of shaiqiu can only be found in Huangling village where baskets of colorful harvest bask in the sunshine.

Bathe “Avalon” “Avalon” is a song about wanting to be somewhere else. You can go a few different directions with that idea – like, you could focus on conveying discomfort, dissatisfaction, a burning desire to get out of your current setting. The R&B duo Bathe opted for evoking the place they’d rather be. The music […]

As Diwali, the festival of lights is round the corner, everyone from adults to children are pretty excited to light diyas and burst firecrackers. After all that's what Diwali celebrations are all about having a jolly good time with family and

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The time has come for men to stop and smell the roses. And wear them, while they are at it

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[New York] : Criterion Collection, [2014]

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The NPAs on block were part of YES Bank’s legacy bad loan portfolio.

Gardening: Welcome the sturdy anthuriums and be assured of splashes of colour

Britain is blooming mad. And it shows. The writer visited London this summer and describes its garden policy

How do you give your rooms a feminine touch without being too girly?

Ginger lilies offer everything you would want in a flower — a great presence, fragrance, and they can last real long in a vase.

Actress-turned-politician Roja recently received a court notice for violating Novel Coronavirus lockdown rules. On April 21, Roja inaugurated a drinking water tap in Nagari. Her supporters welcomed the actress by standing in a row and throwing flowers at her feet as

Children with disabilities blossom through a community-based rehabilitation programme and teach the women who work with them about unconditional love.

Every year for the past 20, Rosa Maria Fuenzalida has visited her mother's grave on Mother's Day without fail in the central Chilean city of Curico.

Master of lying in wait for an ambush

Lalitha Sridhar presents excerpts from an audience interaction with Naomi Ackerman after a performance of Flowers aren't enough, an acclaimed solo play on domestic violence, at Chennai.

In the capital, Santiago, where the largest cemeteries ordinarily attract tens of thousands of visitors with associated road closures and chaotic scenes, the national federation of cemetery workers this week urged people to stay away.

Roses, carnations and lilies are today among the most popular flowers people use to express sympathy and condolence. The simple act of sending flowers to […]

The post Funeral flowers in the Stone Age: Q&A with Smithsonian anthropologist Reuven Yeshurun appeared first on Smithsonian Insider.

Pollination of intensively farmed, flowering crops could affect the pollination of wild plants in neighbouring fields, according to a study by German researchers. In their one-year study, they found fewer bees visited wild plants that are close to oilseed rape fields, although the longer-term picture is less clear. The researchers warn that increasing cultivation of biofuel crops could possibly reduce wild flower populations.

Falling levels of insect pollination are causing declining yields of important agricultural crops. However, new research from South Africa now indicates that planting small patches of native flowers in agricultural fields can be a profitable and sustainable method of increasing pollination and yield.

The pollination benefits of planting field margins with wildflowers can outweigh the costs of set-up and maintenance, a new study suggests. On US blueberry farms wildflower strips resulted in double the number of wild bees on adjacent crops and significantly increased yield, the researchers found.

Agri-environment schemes (AES) have been implemented throughout Europe to mitigate against the negative effects of agricultural intensification. Although these schemes have shown positive effects on the abundance and richness of certain species and taxa, the impact of AES on reproduction of target species at the local and landscape scale is poorly understood. This large-scale study looked for the effect of selected AE measures on bumblebee reproduction. Results indicate that bumblebee reproduction is significantly higher on sown flower patches when compared to conventional management. Although the increase is most pronounced at the plot scale, higher reproduction was found in landscapes surrounding larger sown plots (at least one hectare) compared to smaller sown plots.

Those taking their government-approved daily walk have been warned not to pick wildflowers - or risk facing an eye-watering £5,000 fine.

From rare orchids to a flower that lives for just a few hours, these blooms are the pick of the crop.

The vernal equinox marks a shift in seasons, and nothing says that better than flowers bursting into bloom.

Chris Burley and Ei Ei Khin have an ambitious goal: Grow 1 million wildflowers to help threatened honeybee populations.

New guidelines limiting mowing along roadside strips help create wildlife corridors in the UK.

Researchers in the U.K. hope that prettying up fields with strips of wildflowers will attract pest-munching bugs.

Which flowers are the most environmentally friendly option: Organic, local, fair trade or silk?

Paul Dillinger at Levi Strauss wants you to rethink the way you take care of your clothes — and he’s got a really good point.

For Japanese artist Baku Maeda, honoring the natural world means whipping out some scissors and cutting plants up into pixel-like square bits.

These 9 edible flowers will boost your cold beverage game.

You can hang, press and even microwave a variety of flowers and keep them for years.

The USDA wants Americans to "Know Their Farmers, Know Their Flowers."