My current novel project has a large portion set in 1865 India. At the moment the characters are in Madras (Chennai), and a tumultuous event happens near the original train station built in 1856. Now I've seen photos of the station, in both a dilapidated and restored state, so I know what it looks like, but the perspective in the photos didn't tell me if the train ran through the middle of the station, or alongside it. So I jumped on Google Earth, and in a few seconds I'd zoomed in on the station and could see the path of the tracks, how far the station is from the beach, and other nifty details.

I've used Google Earth many times before, to look at my house, to look at a friend's house, to look at houses for sale, so I should have been inured to the gee whiz aspect. But somehow, looking at a specific building on the other side of the Earth with just a few clicks left me completely astounded.

I finally joined Twitter, mainly so I could follow SRK, who joined two days ago. Oh sure, I've been reading the tweets of jaylake and ericreynolds and many more, but to get me to click the sign-up page, it took Shah Rukh Khan. What can I say, the guy's got charisma.

It'll be interesting to see how many followers he accumulates. He's recognizable to, conservatively, a billion people on this planet. For some of his fans there'll be an access-to-technology issue, but it should be no problem for him to accrue the two million followers that Lance Armstrong has, or even the three million that Barack Obama has.

It remains to be seen what I will use Twitter for, but for now, I'm just having fun reading.

Tonight I was privileged to participate in the Portland launch of Footprints from Hadley Rille Books, along with my co-authors bjcooperand C.E.Grayson. It was held at the Beaverton branch of the iconic Powell's Bookstore. Peter Honigstock, the SF section head of the Cedar Hill's Powells, provided a well-organized and author friendly venue. Peter's dedication and passion for the genre is obvious, and the reason why so many fine SF related events take place at this location.

The three of us each read a portion of our stories, leaving the rest for the readers to discover, followed by a wide-ranging Q and A. We covered the visceral thrill of watching the moon landing to concepts in creating non-human characters to the beginnings of commercial spacecraft. The audience appeared to enjoy themselves, and there were many copies of Footprints in hand for us to sign at the end.

All in all a great evening, and now we pass the baton to the folks in S.F. for the next Footprints opening event!