My apologies, but I'm not ready with the art for the children's book slash coloring book slash humorous illustrated rag just yet. So the cover design post will happen likely next week. This week? I'm somewhere between auggh! and hngghh... this morning. My dear lovely husband suggested I write this post last night. I was... Continue Reading →
Terry Pratchett and the Sadness of Puppies
The rumblings and attempts to delegitimize Sad Puppies are gearing up over a medium more suited to cute photos. People who haven't followed the campaigns and who have been told by those they trust that the Sad Puppies supporters are evil jealous old white men who can't get an award on merit and have to... Continue Reading →
The Turtle Moved
It should come as no surprise to anyone who's even a little bit familiar with my posts here that I'm a shameless Terry Pratchett fangirl. I mourned when I learned of his early onset Alzheimers. I watched with a slightly sick sense of inevitability as his books slowly lost that special spark Terry at his... Continue Reading →
Fantastic Journey through Time
We were talking, my First Reader and I, about what to write for you Mad Geniuses. He suggested writing about old hats. Not literal hats, although it is a lot of fun to look at costume through the ages and see how fashions have changed. But what about writing? he asked, how can you pick... Continue Reading →
Book Review: Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett
I am, as I've said a few times, a shameless Terry Pratchett fangirl. If it wasn't so damn difficult to procure the goats and such a hassle to clean up the blood afterwards, I'd have an altar to him in the living room. I make do with his books instead. That said, I find myself... Continue Reading →
Fantasy is Tough
I don’t like fantasy. You heard me. I grew up reading Tolkein, CS Lewis, Madeline L’Engle, and loving them. I remember absorbing the Pern books all out of order and visiting different libraries to try and track them down (yes, I know technically Pern isn’t magic, bear with me). I read all fourteen Oz books... Continue Reading →
Humor in Writing
Yesterday my body switched to “off” and left me feeling as though I couldn’t think straight, much less write. Sanford Begley offered to step up and write something for the Mad Genius Clubbers, which was very noble of him, considering he is somewhere at the headwaters of the River Nile when it comes to admitting... Continue Reading →
Discworld Convention Report
And now for something completely different, involving giant turtles, elephants and a world that's a disc. I spent last weekend at the 3rd North American Discworld Convention, and I'm still exhausted. It was wonderful, despite the last-minute news that The Man Himself couldn't make it (no, not his health - he has a book due... Continue Reading →
Enriching the soil
A big part of SF and Fantasy writing is the world-building - creating the illusion of an entire culture out there that exists independently of the story you're telling. If the illusion is well done, the piece feels more solid and will often be much stronger even though the world-building doesn't directly impact the characters... Continue Reading →
Why is there so much Gray Goo?
It’s pretty much a given that we Human Wavers (Waving Humans? Only if the human in question doesn’t mind being waved around like a really ratty flag) don’t like Gray Goo. For that matter, declining sales from the mainstream suggest pretty strongly that not many other people like the stuff either. It’s gray, it’s gooey,... Continue Reading →