Ugly Cover, Great Book: go read The Captured Ghosts Interview with Warren Ellis
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The great irony of Warren Ellis: The Captured Ghosts Interviews is this: it’s an interviewer with a comics writer who thinks very carefully about the design and packaging of the written product, and yet it’s released with an incredibly ugly , half-arsed cover that’s seemingly designed to discourage purchasing. Which is a pity, because the […]
Emotions Need Motion
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Interesting post about the omnipresence of grief here in the age of contagion, over at the Harvard Business Review. Emotions need motion. It’s important we acknowledge what we go through. One unfortunate byproduct of the self-help movement is we’re the first generation to have feelings about our feelings. We tell ourselves things like, I feel sad, […]
Writing in the Age of Contagion
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I’d like to talk a little about writing (and, really, just surviving) in the age of contagion we find ourselves in. This is a tricky subject because I loathe the impetus that capitalism puts on being productive at all costs, especially when you’re sick or stressed out. It’s the same impetus that makes COVID-19 so […]
Amusing Things and Cancelled Events
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A short list of things that have amused me today: A Facebook writing thread where someone referred to their graveyard of unfinished projects, and I’m so tempted to write a blog post titled “All Writers are Necromancers” The email sign-off “With Kindness,” which seems like an aspiration act in 2020. The emerging wave of apocalypse […]
Discussing Serial Business vs. Serial Craft
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A few months back, I went to see Garth Nix and John Birmingham in conversation at the local library, and Birmingham busted out a little bon mot that’s stuck with me: If we write something, and we do our jobs right, it’s going to get published. It’ll go to our publishers, and if they don’t […]
Old School Virtue
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I winnowed my inbox down to nothing yesterday, and the damn thing crept up to 19 overnight. Unfortunately, my email program has decided to play silly buggers and refuses to delete anything unless I mirror the inbox from my phone and do everything in basic HTML Fortunately, Gmail has a “my internet is ass and […]
I have eaten the donuts…
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On our first morning in Adelaide, my beloved sent me out to the local market to procure us some breakfast. “Grab some fruit and hommus,” they suggested, “we’ll avoid the exorbitant buffet charge.” And lo, I went forth and acquired grapes and pears and hummus from the local Romeo’s market. And, because I am me […]
Back from Radelaide
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I’ve spent the last three days in Adelaide, doing a lightning tour of Fringe Shows and generally being the bad kind of friend who doesn’t let anyone know that I was in town. Caught a total of six shows, ate a lot of great food, and hung out with the fam. The fringe is an […]
For those of you in Kindle Unlimited…
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If you’re a reader with a KU subscription and a hankering for great fantasy, allow me to turn your attention to the MARCH KU FANTASY READS page assembled by dark fantasy author Melissa Padgett. It brings together seventy-odd titles that cover the spectrum from sword-and-sorcery, urban fantasy, romantic fantasy, epic fantasy, and more, all brought […]
Out Now: Frost (Keith Murphy #2)
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The second Keith Murphy Urban Fantasy Thriller hit the shelves yesterday. Revised and revamped since the 2015 release, Frost is a sleeker and tighter short novel than it once was. If you’re on the fence about giving Keith a try, I’ll direct you to my favourite review of the first edition over on Goodreads: This […]
Keith Murphy: The Original Pitch from 2010
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Tomorrow the second Keith Murphy book, Frost, goes live over on Amazon. As always, I recommend pre-ordering a copy to have it delivered fresh. To celebrate the moment, I went and dug out my first pitch for a Keith Murphy serial that I sent through to the Edge of Propinquity ‘zine back in 2010, laying […]
Phases of 2020
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In my planning, this year is broken up into phases. Periods of time when all my focus bends towards a particular milestone, then pivots to spin off in a new direction once radically new focus is needed. For instance, the first stages of the year were all about preparing for my Thesis Review meeting, where […]