Tobias S. Buckell’s Sly Mongoose
Sly Mongoose by Tobias S. Buckell “Oh my paws and whiskers! Well, mostly my whiskers.” So, Toby had a little contest, where he asked for captions for this picture of Pat Rothfuss in cat ears. I’m not...
View ArticleFellow sf/pf writer Karawynn Long
Just heard from Karawynn Long, a fellow sf writer who’s also keeping a personal finance blog: Pocketmint. (With Catherine Shaffer, this makes three of us sf/pf writers–I wonder if there are any...
View ArticleTobias Buckell on ebook pricing issues
Toby has a good take on ebook pricing issues. Very briefly, mainline publishing houses would prefer to go with a pricing model similar to the model for physical books, where books start at a premium...
View ArticleWisCon
WisCon, originally uploaded by bradipo. Arrived in Madison to attend WisCon. Ran into Dora, but failed to get a picture. Went to The Gathering and got a fake tattoo. Went to the dealer’s room, saw...
View ArticleTheordora Goss to edit Folkroots column
My Clarion classmate Theodora Goss just announced on her blog that she’ll be editing the Folkroots column for Realms of Fantasy starting in February. Dora is a perfect choice—a great writer with a...
View ArticleFirst meeting of the incognito writers group
A few of us here in Champaign-Urbana are trying to get a local writers group going again. Caleb Wilson, Kelly Searsmith, Charlie Petit, and I got together last night at the Urbana Library for the new...
View ArticleJay Lake on titles
I’ve had a mixed experience with titles. For some stories, they come easily. For others, I can wrack my brain for hours and never come up with a title I’m happy with. So, I was pleased to see Jay...
View ArticleCaleb Wilson reading today at Urbana Free Library
Caleb Wilson, one of the members of the Incognito Writers Group, is giving a reading today at the Urbana Free Library. (The image is the event poster produced by the library.) I’ve never heard him...
View ArticleCharacters who learn
I want to talk about something that Patrick Rothfuss does very well. It’s really a small piece of his vast array of skills—the lyrical language, the masterful worldbuilding, the high adventure, the...
View ArticleTen years since my Clarion
Ten years ago today was the first day of class at the 2001 Clarion. Steve Barnes talked about plot. (The stuff he talked about that day, together with some some ideas I got a few weeks later from Geoff...
View ArticleDrew Breunig on “Content” Creep
I think of myself as a writer, not a “content creator,” so I find Drew Breunig’s warnings of doom to anyone whose business is built around “content” to be hopeful. Those same warnings ought to terrify...
View ArticleSLF Older Writers Grant
My first impulse, when I see something like the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Older Writers Grant, is to share it with everybody. Then I immediately have a counter impulse: I should keep it to...
View ArticleEntering flow state
I use a trick for getting into flow state. Anybody who does creative work knows about flow state, where your surroundings vanish and for a timeless period you’re creating whatever is you create. If...
View ArticleAnother view on frugal living
One of my fellow Wise Bread writers, Nora Dunn, has been posting some of the financial details of her travel-heavy lifestyle, including this post on her 2011 Income. (It’s got a link to her earlier...
View ArticleDaily routine of Vestricius Spurinna
I’m a student of daily routines. I like to imagine that I’m looking for good models for my own behavior, but that’s only true in an oblique way. By now I understand pretty well the structure of a...
View ArticleAnother Champaign-Urbana writers group!
I just discovered another Champaign-Urbana area writers group for writers of speculative fiction, calling themselves All Writes Reserved. How did I not know this? In any case, it’s great to know that...
View ArticleThe win of pulp (for e-books)
In an excellent post trying to provide a model for the current e-book market in historical terms, Bruce McFarling suggests that e-books have currently re-invented the dime novel: a publishing unit of a...
View ArticleGenevieve Kierans
Genevieve at the Clarion Reunion in 2002. I just learned that Clarion classmate Genevieve Kierans died earlier this month. It was great to have her in the circle at Clarion. Nobody was nicer or happier...
View ArticleClarion 2001 poster
All the writers who taught at my Clarion did readings at the Archives Book Shop, a local bookstore in East Lansing. To advertise the readings, the Clarion office folks printed up a poster with the...
View ArticleOn doing what comes easily to other people
Here’s Marissa Lingen with one of those ideas that ought to be obvious, and yet is so very much not-obvious in practice that I’m very glad she wrote about it. When her critiquers suggested that her...
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