For A Very Important Date

I'm late, wouldn't you know. Don't look so surprised! Why, it's the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and it begins... two days ago.

Damn it.

Well, Saturday I was busy taking over the world. Seriously: I've never been better at Risk than I was on that fine day. But alas, the time for global dominion is over. Today, it's all about Edinburgh.

There aren't many perks to living in Scotland. There are some incredible vistas to be seen around the Highlands and Islands; Irn Bru is everywhere; and there's the annual Fringe Festival, "the world's largest arts festival." Edinburgh, during the four weeks of the festival each year, undergoes a radical transformation - like Bumblebee or Anakin Skywalker - wherein each of the hundreds of venues is given a liberal sprinkling of plastic chairs and ordered, under pain of men in gravity-defying hats what look like distressed cats, to host a variety of performances. There's art, dance and exhibition. Enough nonsense to make you wish you'd never been born.

Gratefully, the Fringe also means a bunch of theatre and comedy, the likes of which Scotland won't see again till the festival returns next year. That's why the other half and I are off through to Edinburgh, is just a few short minutes. If all goes to plan, we'll see the Chinese State Circus do Mulan, some puppets doing some puppety things, and perhaps a man will be funny - one can only hope. All this... and ale. Oh yes: ale.

Enough ale for everyone, but alas, ale doesn't tend to post very well. In the interim, courtesy of Westeros - I really should sign up, shouldn't I? - Aidan just broke a bit of news about The Long Price Quartet author Daniel Abraham's next novel over on A Dribble of Ink, and given how excited the lovely Aidan (a man of wealth and taste) is about all this, The Dragon's Path has just jumped to near-enough the top of my Most Anticipated Novels of Next Year list.

I actually have that list.

Also, Tales of the Ketty Jay teller Chris Wooding has blogged about The Iron Jackal, book three of that space-trucker lark. Specifically, he's blogged about how The Iron Jackal will no longer be called The Iron Jackal, because... there's no Iron Jackal in it.

That should tide you over.

Never fear: we'll be getting back to all things fantasy and sci-fi tomorrow - one thing in particular, admittedly - but today... today, I'm all about the arts.

Wish me fun! :D