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We were woken at 4 a.m. by a series of explosions.

At first, I thought I had dreamed them — a particularly unpleasant dream I was having about a military coup kicking off here in the US with the support of half the population.

Then I heard another. And another. Definitely while awake. Flashing back to my dream now. Not a pleasant way to wake up — adrenaline.

Went to the window and could see the column of black smoke, under-lit by a roaring column of fire, barely a half mile away. Another explosion, throwing flaming bits high into the air.

The dream was further away now, but my writer-brain started churning up a zombie apocalypse, featuring a truck loaded with Experimental Stuff that explodes on the highway, and the smoke which poisons those nearby, raising them as zombies… Seemed perfect accompaniment to the conflagration at 4 in the morning.

The sirens began. Soon the fire was gone, and the smoke turning to the ash-grey that indicates that water had entered the equation.

Found out this morning that it was a semi that had caught fire on the turnpike. No fatalities.

Still no idea of what it was carrying, though.

My friend , author of The Lies of Locke Lamora and Red Seas Under Red Skies, has begun posting a new novel, in the planetary romance/sword-n-planet genre, for free on his website while he continues work on his main series.

The novel, Queen of the Iron Sands is a gender reversal of the typical Barsoomian model — in this adventure, the protagonist is a woman, a WWII WASP pilot, transported to the Red Planet to engage in swashbuckling adventure. The novel will be appearing in weekly installments.

Click the link below to visit the novel’s page on Scott’s site.

For all the coolness of the industry’s largest convention, the coolest thing for me was getting the opportunity to shake the hand of Howard Tayler, creator of the Schlock Mercenary web comic, who was at the Margaret Weis Productions booth.

I don’t read his comic (which was the focus of his booth presence), but, as I told him, his keynote address at the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference was an epiphany for me, and has completely changed the direction of where my company is headed.

He seemed genuinely thrilled to have someone thank him for that keynote, rather than his webcomic efforts.

Here’s the video of the keynote. Watch it.