Dispatches since 2005
The journal
Announcements, new editions, travel, diving, cooking and the working life of a novelist — 3,180 entries, all of them here in full.
January 12, 2019 · 840 words
Portals
There follow some thoughts on setting, inspired by the earlier discussion on corridors. Setting is a character in fantasy and SF, or should be if the author knows what he’s doing. This is particularly true in fantasy, where the setting can become this big, unwieldy character with which the protagonists have to wrestle
Read entry →January 3, 2019 · 260 words
Forty
On the first of January I celebrated my fortieth year as an author, the period in which I have supported myself solely on writing and related professions. I would have mentioned this on the day, but you know what? I forgot. It was early on January 1, forty years ago, that I got a phone […]
Read entry →December 31, 2018 · 158 words
Ring Out the Old
It’s New Year’s Eve, which is a chance to celebrate the old as well as ring in the new. To that end, let’s party like it’s 1973! (Just watch the video for now, I’ll tell you about it later.) This is two examples of Seventies excess mashed together. The tune is “Nutbush City Limits” by […]
Read entry →December 29, 2018 · 116 words
Corridors
I’m well into the as-yet-untitled second volume of the second series of Praxis novels— now that would make a poor title— and I’ve come to realize that I’m really missing having at least some of the action set on a planet, where there are things like wind and plants and pretty scenery. Every scene is either
Read entry →December 28, 2018 · 129 words
So. This Happened.
It’s the first big winter storm in a number of years, and the world is covered with a layer of ice buried under several inches of snow. It won’t really get above freezing for over a week, so we’re just going to have to get used to involuntary acts of skating. I hate driving under […]
Read entry →December 23, 2018 · 641 words
Gifts for Readers #8 and #9: Two for the Price of Two
Here are what I suspect are the final two publications for veterans of Taos Toolbox, all published in the last year. (Unless someone clues me in to a novel I didn’t know about.) First up is the latest from Hugo-winning author Will McIntosh, a YA fable about a group of teens and their infallible lie […]
Read entry →December 21, 2018 · 187 words
Welcoming Our New Robot Executive Chefs
We’re about to enter a holiday period in which vast quantities of food and beverage will be consumed. Which means, as a corollary, that there will be a lot of leftovers. Why not do something different with your leftovers this year? Like make use of a recipe created by an AI? We have two AIs […]
Read entry →December 20, 2018 · 325 words
Gifts for Readers #7: Tisiphone’s Quest
We are now at #7 of my list of gifts for readers, all written by veterans of Taos Toolbox, the master class for writers of science fiction and fantasy. (And have I mentioned that all these books were published in 2018? And these are only the 2018 novels I know about— there may have been more, […]
Read entry →