NOTE: Contains a fairly major spoiler for GOD’S WAR. I spent a lot of time this weekend on panels at WorldCon talking about the responsibilities of being a writer, and how what we put on the page can mean something very personal to people. I spend a stupid amount of time buried in research books and […]
Taking Responsibility for Writing Problematic Stories Read More »
So, hey, I’ve been a little distracted the last couple of weeks. But the good news is that it appears I have a more-or-less final schedule for WorldCon in Chicago from August 31st-September 3rd. I expect this schedule to change slightly before and perhaps even during the con (there appears to be some disorganization in
So, after my mega-crazy writing spree on RAPTURE, where I found myself sitting for 14, 16, and even one memorable 20-hour-stretch just… sitting, I decided it was time to finally give in and put together a treadmill desk. Depression and anxiety runs in my family, but I’ve found that if I can be consistently active,
How I Built My Treadmill Desk for $200 Read More »
I’ve been going through some behind-the-scenes growing pains in my whole writing fiction career thing right now (a popular place to be at when one finishes a trilogy, I hear), which good sense and propriety says not to detail too publicly. This is against my nature, as longtime readers will know, so I’ve had to
Whine, Whine, Whine: Why I Stress About the Writing Life Read More »
I was always OK at writing the Big Conflict in a novel. You know, the war, the genocide, the revolution, the revolt, the coup, the big hulking thing that the novel centered around. But it took me a lot longer to figure out how to write about interpersonal tension, and longer still to realize that
A couple years back, I had an old high school classmate email me out of the blue and ask if I could offer him some tips on writing, because he really wanted to be a writer so he could “Work from anywhere and make money typing on the beach in Hawaii.” No, really, that’s what he
Note: this is a film that is about violence against women. Triggers ahoy. Long-time readers know that I get really pissed off with creative work that employs random violence against women as some kind of lazy shorthand. Creators do this for all types of reasons. You don’t have to work too hard at characterizing your
“You’re No Different Than That Thing in the Cellar”: Thoughts on “The Woman” Read More »
In an ideal world, I’d write up whole blog posts about each of these, but for the sake of brevity, here’s some great books I’ve read this year that you may love, in no particular order: Ian Tregillis’s Bitter Seeds is… a great book. The Nazis have invested in a
Books you Should be Reading Read More »
In a discussion with my UK editor yesterday about the differences in the reading composition of UK/US readers, I said that even though I’d expected that most of my readers for GOD’S WAR would be women because of Nyx and her bad-ass self, 90% of the fan mail I got was from men. This got me to thinking
The Gender Breakdown of Who’s Reading God’s War Read More »
I was reading a well-known science fiction author last night and found myself repeatedly bumped out of the story by all the techno-babble. I’m not averse to techno-babble, mind, it’s just that I didn’t buy that this POV character viewed the world through techno-babble glasses. If you’re staring at a sunset, it’s highly unlikely that
Swords and Sociology, Redux Read More »