The follies of the past week

1) I signed up for NaNoWriMo There’s plenty of folks among my circle of friends who do this every year, but for me it’ll be the first attempt at the nano-madness in seven or eight eight years. I primarily signed up because I miss the rigor of the public daily wordcount and it’ll be nice […]

Juvenalia Week

After realising that the last few years have been rather good to him on the writing front, Jason Fischer has decided to take a quick tour through the lands of the writer he used to be and declared this Juvenalia Week. And since he’s under the assumption that the embarrassing mistakes of yesteryear are something all […]

Horn Spotting

One of those sports that still hasn’t lost its novelty – there are two new reviews out there for the dedicated Horn-spotter. The first is available online at Specusphere – as usual, there’s a random sampling to whet your appetite: Horn is a memorable, unique, and highly polished work.  Spanning noir, horror, fantasy and several […]

Some Awesomeness, Some Writing Advice, Some Help Needed, and Some Horn Spotting

1) Two Reasons Angela Slatter is awesome The latest Clarkwesworld magazine has an interview with eight Emerging SF authors, including the insightful and rather startlingly talented Angela Slatter. She says some smart stuff, as do the rest of the interviewees, and it’s well worth a read. If, however, you like you’re writing advice in a […]

You Know You’re Awesome, Right?

I just thought I should mention it because, you folks, honestly, you rock my goddamn world. I say this full aware that it’s one of those phrases I overuse, but this week I mean it quite literally. My world, it is rocked. I spent part of yesterday studying my to-do list for the next couple […]

Writing and Gaming

On one level, it really doesn’t take much to make me a happy man. This morning happiness is achieved via high volume and the Kaiser Chiefs singing Sha-na-na-na-na during the chorus of every song on their first album. Once that hits a certain point on the decibel meter I’m all glee and shiny rainbows. Which is just […]

Things Worth Reading: The Innocent Mage

There’s always something a bit oogly-boogly about blogging your responses to fiction written by people you know (especially if you don’t necessarily know well them well), but today I’m going to bite the bullet and recommend Karen Miller‘s The Innocent Mage as one of those books that folks interested in writing fantasy should really pick up […]

Black Candy update

First draft is done (making it the first novel draft I’ve finished in, what, a decade? Maybe longer?). I’m off to vegetate to the Dresden Dolls and eat my body-weight in celebratory chocolate. Tomorrow I start work on the Claw redraft I’ve been putting off for far too long…

A Black Candy Update

I’ve not been writing well for much of this week. This is understandable, given the circumstances (dying relatives, grieving, comforting the grieving, and going in search of an affordable jacket to wear to the funeral) but it’s also kinda frustrating given that I constantly open the Black Candy draft and think “so damn close – […]

More Horn-spotting

This time as part of a three book review on Mondyboy’s blog covering a trio of Twelfth Planet releases – Horn, Dirk Flithart’s Angel Rising, and the New Ceres Nights anthology (featuring work by a whole bunch of worthy peeps including Dirk and Angela Slatter). I’m officially locking myself away and doing minimalist blog posts until […]

Write-Club

I recommend going over to Angela Slatter’s blog and reading this entry on Write-Club. It should provide context for how I managed to achieve this in the space of two months*: The short version, for the click-link adverse, is that write-club is an agreement between two writers to sit in a lounge-room once a week […]

Four-Point Fly-by Post

Today is a little chaotic, so I give you the following post in four-point structure. 1) More Horn-spotting over on Jeff VanderMeer’s blog today, this time in the form of a Horn review. 2) My parents have currently made it from Turkey to Singapore, currently scheduled to land in Brisbane sometime tonight. Went over and […]