What time is it, Mister Wolf…

"Wolfy, wolfy what's the time?" You all know the answer, don't you? "Dinner time!" It is (besides in playground games) probably the oldest time-mark outside of dawn and dusk. I wouldn't be surprised if the rest of horology stems directly from wanting to know how close that was. As dinner-time and 'knock-off time' were much... Continue Reading →

History of Cosmetics in a Nutshell

Men and women alike have been trying to make themselves more beautiful in their own eyes by applying various substances since forever. We only know about what was written down, of course, but I'm confident I can state that even where no record exists, someone was still smearing daubs of clay on their face, berry... Continue Reading →

A Celebrated Birth

Merry Christmas, one and all! I’m taking a week off from the cover art tutorial. It’s a holiday, I’m traveling, and frankly the last week was crazypants, so I’ll do a better job when I have less demanding my attention elsewhere. This week, I thought about the day of my post, when many of our... Continue Reading →

I’m a writer, not a…

We all know the joke about a writer's browser history. But there's also what winds up in the bookmarks, so I can find it later, and that's even more random fun! Some of my latest: The Deep History of the Sonoran Desert A Complete Guide to Pruning And Trimming Trees EAA's Interview of Weird Neal... Continue Reading →

Turn back the pages

I've just read a book that absolutely fascinated me. Great story, the author could work on his writing skills and maybe linger a bit more on some the better scenes. There's lots of obscure legend and wordplay that is rather a waste of time, even if philosophically the author was presciently predictive about 2021 -... Continue Reading →

Food in fiction

I hope we never get to a point where food is a fiction, although I have done that to some of my characters. You really don't want to be one of my characters. I mean, most of the heroes and heroines come out OK (hey, I like them to survive and live happily ever after,... Continue Reading →

Will science fiction become fact?

If you've been a fan of science fiction for any length of time, you know that writers have continually postulated building spaceships in space, rather than on a planet;  spaceships that never actually land, but remain in space, sending shuttles, passenger vehicles or lifeboats down to the surface and bringing supplies, cargo and passengers up; ... Continue Reading →

Miscellaneous thoughts about writing

This is going to be a stream-of-consciousness sort of post.  Over the past few weeks I've been heavily involved in editing;  planned and made a start on a brand-new series (so far including a huge amount of research and only a little writing);  and spent a few days with a scratched cornea, which made extended... Continue Reading →

The Time traveler

Leaving aside all the contradictions about killing grandfathers (and not just in nursing homes in New Yuck) time travel ( a once major staple of sf - and as these things tend to cycle, probably will be again. It's full of fascinating conundrums. Two of the classics of the genre would be L. Sprague de... Continue Reading →

Software to write by?

We've all heard of software designed to help us produce a fully-fledged book rather than just a document.  Scrivener is one of the best known;  it has tools to "manage the writing environment" rather than just write. It seems there's a new product on the market.  I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds promising.... Continue Reading →

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