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Category Archives: That from a long way off look like flies
The Story Thus Far, Part 9, An Interlude and a Revelation
The new novel is going quite well, so naturally I took a couple of weeks off to write a short story. This makes more sense than it would at first seem. When doing some rather detailed world building, i find … Continue reading
Posted in Science Fiction, That from a long way off look like flies, Writing
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The Story Thus Far, Part 8: When the Fail Whale Calls Your Name
What do you do when the story goes off the rails like, as John Rogers put it, a burning train full of pantless clowns? You bury the dead and walk away, preferably in slow motion while ”Everyone” by Van Morrison plays … Continue reading
Posted in Science Fiction, That from a long way off look like flies, Writing
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The Story Thus Far, Part 7: As You Know Bob
Over at io9, Charlie Jane Anders has a great post on the art of the Infodump. As you know, Bob, the infodump is one of those tools writers, especially those of us int he speculative field,[1] use to build worlds … Continue reading
Posted in Planet X, Science Fiction, That from a long way off look like flies, Writing
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The Story Thus Far, Part 6: Words, Words, Words
The single best writing day I ever had was when I was writing The Machine of the World. I wrote 7000 words in a span of 8 hours. I took a half an hour break for lunch but otherwise wrote … Continue reading
Posted in Planet X, Science Fiction, Shameless Self Promotion, That from a long way off look like flies, Writing
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The Story Thus Far, Part 5: End of Line
The other night, I was in bed, half asleep (sans frog pajamas), when I solved the biggest problem the plot of my book had: the ending. Up until then, I had only a vague sort of general idea what would … Continue reading
Posted in Planet X, Science Fiction, Shameless Self Promotion, That from a long way off look like flies, Writing
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The Story Thus Far, Part 4
So, where was I? Right! Chapter 9. Chapter 9 was giving me some trouble. We’re already about 8 pages into the story. We’ve met two of our main characters and established a premise and shown a bit of the world. … Continue reading
The Story Thus Far, Part 3
So, the other day I had a story-related epiphany– Wait. Let’s back up a sec, so I can make sure we’re all on the same page story mechanics-wise. When writing (or just telling) a story, it’s important to now what … Continue reading
Posted in Planet X, Science Fiction, Shameless Self Promotion, That from a long way off look like flies, Writing
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The Story Thus Far, Part 2
To pick up where we left off before being so rudely interrupted by the holidays… Wait, back up for a second. For the curious, here’s a picture of my workspace, from the Ceiling Cat perspective. This is where I do … Continue reading
The Story Thus Far
A long, long time ago, back when I was actually writing things on this blog, instead of just posting random cat pictures and promising to write things on this blog, I was working on a novel. This was so far … Continue reading
Happy Lunar Landing Day!
40 years ago today, humans landed on the Moon. Think about that over the next few days, while you wondering what to do with this world we inherited, that sometimes seems so broken and wrong. We can do extraordinary things … Continue reading