End-of-July roundup!

Some quick-hitting notes for the end of July:

• Tickets for tomorrow’s (Sunday) Raleigh Browncoats charity screening of Serenity (the Firefly movie) are SOLD OUT — they will not be available at the door, etc. Looking forward to seeing people out there! Come out and get in on the charity raffle, which will include issues 1-7 (the complete run… so far!) of Bull Spec.
• Local publisher Light Messages is publishing Siberian author Irina Lopatina’s fantasy novel White Raven: The Sword of Northern Ancestors on Monday, July 30. Until then, there’s still a 30% off pre-order offer.
• Also Monday (July 30) at 7 pm is another of the Duke Young Writers Camp readings at The Regulator Bookshop in Durham. While students’ work is all over the map, with one of the classes being “Phantasmagoria: Writing Strange Fiction” my guess is we’ll see at least one take on the fantastic.
• Wednesday, August 1, a local feature-length horror film, “Jiggly Baby 3″ will premiere at the Raleigh Grande Theatre at 7 pm. More info including a trailer: http://www.jigglybaby.com/
• Friday, August 3, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences is hosting a screening of three short films based on the late Ray Bradbury’s work. The event starts at 5, with the films starting at 7.
• And don’t forget that next weekend (August 4-5) is a huge weekend for speculative fiction in NC, with two major events: an absolutely start-studded “extravaganza” at Asheville’s Malaprop’s Bookstore Nathan Ballingrud, Tobias Buckell, Will Hindmarch, Naomi Novik, Karin Lowachee, and Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, moderated by Shared Worlds director Jeremy L.C. Jones) and Bull Spec’s own “summer literary speculative fiction festival” comprising a writers meet-and-greet on Saturday evening (e-mail Sam for details) and the reading and signing at Chapel Hill’s Flyleaf Books on Sunday from 2 to 4 with featured regional authors T.C. McCarthy and Michael J. Sullivan.