Byrt’s weekly blog ramble (10/29)

Our weekly trundle through the Tweetverse and Blogosphere

<–BLOGGY INTERESTING

– the Jungle Red writers point out a sweet story in NYC that all started with reading

– After Glenn Beck took umbrage at Machine of Death‘s success, the Machine of Death blog posted this hilarious reply

Machine of Death is an indy published collection of sci-fi short stories from Ryan North, David Malki and Matthew Bennardo – it beat out Beck’s latest book for the #1 spot on Tuesday

– The Mad Hatter asked a dozen authors to tell us what steampunk is…

Interview with amazing cover artist Don de Santos (he creates the Mercy Thompson covers, among many others)

AUTHOR TALK –>

Maggie Stiefvater, on how she somehow ended up agreeing to give a speech for NASA

– A Jennifer Rardin interview, completed before she passed away

Elizabeth Moon on the WisCon controversy

<–WEB READS

Peek at The Greyfriar, steampunky vampire goodness from Clay and Susan Griffith, coming Nov 2

– Peek at chapter one of Towers of Midnight by Robert Jordan and Brian Sanderson, out next week

Read the first hundred pages of Cross Fire, James Patterson‘s upcoming Alex Cross book

– Cool peek at the Steampunk Bible, coming 2011 from Jeff VanderMeer and S.J. Chambers