So this week I was reading Robopocalypse, by Daniel H. Wilson, a book about the aftermath of the impending robot/AI uprising, which maybe you’ve heard people worrying about lately.
Teaser Tuesday: “Robopocalypse”
Category: Writing
Another Change of Scene(ry)
So not long ago, I mentioned that I had decided to rework my morning schedule (doesn’t everyone have a morning schedule?) to do writing stuff on the weekends and blogging stuff on the weekdays. That kinda sorta worked, in that I did get some (though not enough) writing done on weekends, and I did manage to (almost) keep up with the blog posting and with the visiting; but overall, it wasn’t really working out all that well, at least for the writing part. What I really needed was for the day to be a little longer. And so I built this device to slow down the Earth’s rotation and … Oh, wait, I’m being told the device is not ready yet. Scratch that. What I actually did was start getting up a half-hour earlier. More coffee, anyone?
Continue reading “Another Change of Scene(ry)”Teaser Tuesday: “Redemption Ark” (Still!)
So this week I’ve had a couple of other (non-work-, non-writing-, non-cat-, and non-dog-related) projects keeping me a little busy, so once again it’s back-to-back Teaser Tuesdays! And it’s also still Redemption Ark, by Alastair Reynolds, on account of this is a pretty long book, although not nearly as long as some others I’ve read.
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday: “Redemption Ark” (Still!)”
Teaser Tuesday: “Redemption Ark”
So this week I was reading Redemption Ark, by Alastair Reynolds:
Random, Uh, Brochure: The Scott Meredith Literary Agency
So this week I beseeched the Gods of Randomness to tell me what to pull out of my vast trove of rejection letters, and they told me, Lo! Thou must pick the sixth item in the folder for the letter M! So that’s what I did. But it’s not a rejection letter. It’s not even a form letter. It is, essentially, a brochure—an unsolicited submission, if you will—from the Scott Meredith Literary Agency:
Continue reading “Random, Uh, Brochure: The Scott Meredith Literary Agency”Teaser Tuesday: “Seven Surrenders”
So this week I was reading Seven Surrenders, the second book in the “Terra Ignota” trilogy tetralogy, by Ada Palmer:
A Change Of Scenery
So for the last thirty years or so, whenever I’ve been working on a book or short story (which has been most of the time), I would do it in the mornings before going (or, since our office closed, “going”) to work. Also, for the past 15 years or so, when I’ve been working on the blog—mostly not this one, of course, but rather, the one with the animals on it—I’ve been doing that in the mornings befor work, too, or else on the weekends. But it’s only the last year or so that I’ve been trying to work on a book and do a daily post on the animals’ blog, and that, it turns out, is just a little too much to manage.
Continue reading “A Change Of Scenery”Teaser Tuesday: “The Future is Blue”
So this week I was reading The Future is Blue, a story collection by one of my favorite writers, Catherynne M. Valente:
Continue reading “Teaser Tuesday: “The Future is Blue””
Teaser Tuesday: “The Poppy War”
So this week I was reading The Poppy War, by R.F. Kuang, which I would characterize as Big Trouble in Little China meets Harry Potter meets Mulan, although insofar as I have never actually seen Mulan (any version) I’m kind of just guessing on that last one*.
Wrong Turn, Clyde
So as I’ve mentioned before, I don’t plan my books out in advance, except for that one time, and that one time the book didn’t come out anything like how I planned it. This tends to end up working out well for me, but it also means that, sometimes, I end up going in a direction that doesn’t work out. In the case of Dragon Stones, that entailed the wholesale excision of a character’s point of view scenes*; but in the case of the book I’m currently working on, Blue Roses, I’ve decided that the direction it was going with three of the main characters (four if you count the squirrel**) just wasn’t working out, and so I’ve axed the last 20,000 words or so, pruning the story back to where it branched in the direction that proved unproductive***. Because sometimes you’ve gotta be ruthless.
Viscosity 