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Nov 19

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A Temporary Reprieve

The chaos and madness in Hong Kong is interfering with writing. Shocking, I know. Anyway, Mrs. Dave is home, and we’re all adjusting. I’ve been sleeping poorly, but everything else is better, which is nice. Wee Dave and Wee-er Dave are ecstatic to have Mommy home. And we’re charging breakneck into the busiest period of increasingly full years. I’m not ready. I’m getting awfully tired of being the guy in nominal charge, too. The word mines are pretty dark, right now, too. I’m getting some choice nuggets out, but I’d rather expand my operations, so to speak. It’s just not happening.

But you aren’t here to listen to me whine. I have fiction, though not as much as I want. I’m still hitting some snags with the current thing. I knew exactly where I was going up to a certain point. Now I’ve hit that, and I keep getting ideas. As any writer knows, ideas are a two edged sharp thingy, which can cut you instead of what you want to cut. I also may have written myself into a bit of a corner. I’m still evaluating. I’ll be honest: I’m kicking that can down the road a bit. I’ll be back next week with more. I appreciate your forbearance.

Nov 19

10 Comments

What happens when you are avoiding NaNoWriMo

Okay, I’ll admit it. I started November off with the best of intentions. I wasn’t going to officially do NaNoWriMo. But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to write. I needed to finish the next book in the Honor & Duty series. Then there was the next Eerie Side of the Tracks series to work on. And the next fantasy novel. Well, you get the idea. Lots to work on and not time to start a new project. However, I wanted to hold myself accountable and pledged to do the 50k words, just not on a single project. Then came the end of last week and Myrtle the Evil Muse infected me with a new story, one she demanded needed my attention NOW! For once, however, she let me off with only 5k words (mainly plot notes) and a cover mock-up. Read more

Nov 18

6 Comments

Greeny-yallery

“A greeny-yallery,/Grosvenor Gallery, /foot-in-the-grave young man” Read more

Nov 17

39 Comments

The name’s the thing

I know there are authors who come up with a character name, then fill out a character sheet like they’re doing a D&D game, and proceed from there unto the plot and story. I am not one of those people.

I know there are authors who put tons of research into their names, and crafting them carefully to match the world.

I know there are authors who have multiple baby-naming books or sites, and cruise through them until they get something that matches the character already in their heads.

Me? I often end up using placeholder names, of something that caught my eye, until I finally figure out (you know, about 25,000 words in) what the character’s actual name is. And then comes the find & replace joy. (Fun fact. Find and replace treats Seth, Seth’s, Seths & Seth’ as 4 separate words, and will only replace one at a time. So make sure you look for potential misspellings and possessive cases. And plurals. Or your (hopefully beta) readers will go “Who’s this?”)

How do you handle names? What resources do you use?

Nov 16

20 Comments

Getting the Science Right

I’m tired. How tired am I? Well, I had a moment yesterday where I didn’t look closely enough as I wrote and scheduled a post and I have put my planned MGC post up on my blog. In my defense, the backend of wordpress sites looks remarkably similar. However! I will extrapolate out of my post there, on science giving us a window into the past and how that can spark a story, into something that has come up a few times recently. Namely: refreshing knowledge of math and science for those who have been out of school for a while, or have developed a new interest in it. As writers of science fiction, I would hope that this would be of interest to you, although it’s hard to say where to start, precisely. That you will have to determine! Read more

Nov 15

21 Comments

Fire

The flickering light of the flames, the pulsing red of the coals, the sheer sensuous pleasure of the radiant heat.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the first major change to their environment early Hominids made was the taming of fire. And then they evolved to better take advantage of that warmth in the cold, the delicious food that happened when things were exposed to fire. The safety from predators in the night, a relatively safe way to drive animals over a cliff. Read more

Nov 14

62 Comments

Questions, questions

  • If rising carbon dioxide levels doom the planet to destruction, and fighting “climate change” is the moral equivalent of war, why isn’t anybody talking about nuking China?
  • When did Marseilles become Marseille, and what did they do with the s?
  • Can anybody tell me how to fiddle a browser so that a blog that normally appears as white-on-black reverses its orientation and shows me black letters on a white backgrouns? I like to read Francis Porretto’s blog but it’s not easy to follow his reasoning while trying to ignore the incipient headache.
  • Is there really a good reason to continue publishing paperback editions of my ebooks?

Okay; the first question is rhetorical, the second is trivia, I’d welcome an answer to the third, but the last one, of course, is where I’d be truly grateful for insights from the community of indie authors. Read more

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