And with January drawn to a close, so too has this year’s Sci-Fi Experience 2014. It was my first year participating and I had quite a lot of fun, even when I managed to mess up my schedule rather, er, spectacularly and life/things conspired to wreck my confidence in talking about books. I have, by now, kind of managed with two of the books I read this month. (Out of ten. And one of them was written by a friend and it is awesome, even subtracting bias from my reaction, so it doesn’t count.)

Anyway! This is going to be a joyous post rather than a sad one! I spent most of the two these past two months discussing science fiction games as these are the way I experienced most of my science fiction when I was little and, so, science fiction as a whole has a strong tie to non-book media, especially games. (Given the amount of technology inherent in the lot of them, this amuses me and it feels fitting.)

Looking back at my initial post I had a few reading goals in mind. I mostly failed at them because I forgot when, exactly, the vintage scifi month was held. This is because I am brilliant with dates. I had 19 books in my initial pool. I read a grand total of 12 of them, which I don’t think is too shabby. I did add the novelette Fallen and the book Mindline. The latter was predicted, the former… not so much. (But I loved Primordia so much.) I had a lot of fun spending so much time in science fiction, though with the amount of fantasy I read I did end up feeling a little unbalanced partway through January. (So I went off and read something other than science fiction.) You’ll also notice that January is when I started to drop the ball on posting about the experience, which leaves me sad. I had a lot of fun and I’ll certainly be participating again if time permits.

So that leaves me with a round-up of all the posts I made. But first! A small note:

Thank you, Carl, for hosting the Sci-Fi Experience again this year! I hope you’ve had masses and masses of fun with it! <3 See you next year! (Unless someone I know invents a time machine and I’ll go back in time to join earlier challenges as well, in which case “See you in the past!” ^_~)

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February 2nd is Lungleavin’ Day! You are cordially invited to attend virtually at this address.

As I write this, I’ve just had a particularly stressful day. (No, I don’t want to talk about it.) I’ve started dealing with something I’ve put off dealing with (and would have preferred to keep on not dealing with until after I’d dealt with the #%^&%&* teeth). I felt it was fitting to bring that up, given the kind of post this is.

I don’t do a lot of promotions on my blog for a number reasons, but mostly because I’m slow and end up feeling guilty about mentioning X and not Y. So, in a way, this post itself is a small part in what this day is about. And because I’m being particularly cryptic, I’ll (briefly) hand over the commentary to Cameron Von St. James who graciously allowed me to share what he wrote me in an email about LLD.

Eight years ago, my wife Heather was diagnosed with mesothelioma; a rare cancer that kills most people within 2 years of diagnosis. She had just given birth to our daughter Lily, and was only given 15 months to live. After a life saving surgery that included the removal of her left lung, LungLeavin’ Day was born. This will be the 8th year that we celebrate!

The purpose of LungLeavin’ Day is to encourage others to face their fears! Each year, we gather around a fire in our backyard with our friends and family, write our biggest fears on a plate and smash them into the fire. We celebrate for those who are no longer with us, for those who continue to fight, for those who are currently going through a tough time in their life, and most importantly, we celebrate life!

This year, we are asking bloggers to participate and spread the word about LungLeavin’ Day. We created an interactive page http://www.mesothelioma.com/heather/lungleavinday/ that tells the full story of our special day.

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