There are some cool folks at the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) who have been working hard to make the organization more relevant and visible. Up until recently, SFWA’s website looked a bit like a time-traveling refugee from the early 1990s. But now they’ve upgraded by a couple of decades with an attractive, … More SFWA’s new look
One of my current reading projects is to explore more mysteries. Every good story has a bit of mystery in it, after all, and the murder whodunnit is sort of the ultimate, pure unadulterated form of the mystery. So I started by checking out Agatha Christie, who many tell me is the master, and read Murder at the … More Learning Mystery from Miss Marple
Saw District 9 the other day and I think I liked it. It’s one of those movies that takes a while to sink in, that requires some marinating before you can really be sure how it tastes. The clearly-cool thing about it is that it’s totally different from any SF movie ever made. It has … More Thoughts on District 9
Wrote another 700 words today, bringing the mini-writing marathon total up to 1,400 on Day 2. I had to spend a bunch of the day taking care of medical appointments and other errands, which slowed me down quite a bit. At some point I’ll need to make up a day’s worth of words, but that feels … More 700
I have two weeks off from work – hoorah! – and for my summer vacation I will be travelling to other planets via my trusty little laptop. Specifically, the other planets of my young adult scifi novel. I’m going to try for something really ambitious, like writing 20,000 words of the novel in 15 days. … More Jumping on the Wordcount Wagon
Yesterday I got my copy of Peter M. Ball’s novella Horn direct from Australia, and of course it was immediately bumped to the top of the reading list. The book daringly seeks to establish a new sub-genre with a hard-boiled noir story rooted in a world of unicorns and faeries. One of those ideas that would … More Unicorn Noir: Burgeoning New Sub-Genre?
It looks like my short story, “Tio Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts,” will be appearing in the next issue of Realms of Fantasy. You can go ahead and subscribe now to make sure you don’t miss it. This is a story that’s close to my heart, so I’m especially excited to see it in print. … More Coming to a Bookstore Near You
Having dallied long enough in the wondrous Land of Short Fiction, I am finally giving in to peer pressure and embarking for Novel-landia. More precisely, Young Adult Novel-landia. If short stories are the gateway drug of writing, then YA novels are undoubtedly its crack/cocaine. Not that I am encouraging young people to do drugs. Or to mix metaphors, … More Young Adult Reading List
Currently alternating between reading Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold and Joan Aiken’s Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Tales. Abercrombie is one of the hot new names when it comes to fat fantasy epics (so I’ve been told), and a quarter of the way through the book he’s living up to the buzz. Our heroine is Monza Murcatto, … More Joan Aiken and Joe Abercrombie
Just finished reading Storyteller: Writing Lessons and More from 27 Years of the Clarion Writers’ Workshop, by Kate Wilhelm, half-writing-tips-book and half-autobiography-of-a-writing-workshop. A lot of the writing advice is familiar, the stuff that was drilled into us at Clarion (e.g., “No deus ex machina!”), which made for a nice refresher as well as a nice … More Clarion Nostalgia Reading and Two Types of Writers
Bread & Magic 