Michele Lang

Lilith Saintcrow introduced me to the concept of feeding the Muse delicious bits to get high on.  This song is from the soundtrack of the excellent movie Inside Man…the video is long, but the music is addictive.

Cracktastic!  –     :-)

I found out about this from author MJ Rose:

 Today, fellow ITW author and a wonderful woman named Patry Francis has 300 bloggers blogging about her wonderful debut novel, THE LIAR’S DIARY.  300  individual authors and publishing related people, all at once.

 Patry was recently diagnosed with cancer and is unable to promote her own debut…writers from all over the world took up the cause and promoted the book on their blogs.  Wow.  The book sounds amazing, and check out Patry’s blog — the woman is a fantastic writer. 

 Don’t buy Patry’s book because you feel sorry for her — buy THE LIAR’S DIARY because from everything I’ve seen, it’s a wonderful read.  Kudos to everyone who supported Patry yesterday, and I hope she makes a quick and full recovery. 

I have a new baby so I don’t come out from under my mommy rock much these days, but even I can sense a dawning popular interest in the Singularity phenomenon. The term, first coined by SF author Vernor Vinge, refers to a hypothetical future state in which computers become smarter than the human mind, and people use computers to enhance their brain capacity – essentially creating Human 2.0.

Or, in a scarier scenario, the Singularity is where we get to “kiss our asses goodbye.” The new Terminator show, the Sarah Connor Chronicles, gets into the idea of a hard takeoff into Singularity, and a recent PBS special (first aired in 2006 by the BBC) also looked at the potential dangers of the rise of an unfriendly AI.

What I’ve always wondered is how to square the idea of uploading human consciousness with the concept of the human soul. Are we anything more than an incredibly complex electrochemical synaptic system? Can the ineffable mystery of something like love live on a computer interface? 

 These questions are the ones I explore in my March release, NETHERWOOD: in what I like to think of as a Singularity love story.

This is also the kind of stuff I think about while waiting on the carpool line or testing melons for ripeness at the supermarket. Yes, in the immortal words of Anne Lamott, my mind is a bad neighborhood where I try not to go alone.

~Michele

Appearances and Signings:

February 27, 2008
E-Publishing Seminar with Bianca D’Arc
Half Hollow Hills Public Library
7:30 p.m.

March 15, 2008
LIRW panel book signing
Barnes and Noble Bookstore
Huntington Station (Rte. 110)
1 p.m.

I-Con
April 4-6, 2008
State University at Stony Brook
Stony Brook, NY

Romantic Times Booklovers Convention
April 16-20, 2008
Pittsburgh, PA

Romance Writers of America Convention
July 30 – August 2, 2008
San Francisco, CA

I am in the process of scheduling other events, so stay tuned…

~Michele

Okay, here’s the obligatory “new to the blog” entry…

So, what do you think of my new web ‘do?? The amazing Patrick Teglia created a beautiful new look for my site, and it’s a fitting beginning for an exciting 2008. My book NETHERWOOD is coming out in March, and I am looking forward to this release so much.

So welcome, and blog on!

And as for the blog title…

NETHERWOOD is a story about the connections that people make through technology, or despite the limitations of technology. There’s a lot of techno woo-woo in it, and a lot of technosexy in it too. The following cheesy, fabu ’80s song played in my mind as I gunned through the first draft of this book…

here’s the ancient video — enjoy!