Author: mizkit

Picoreview: Seventh Son

April 13, 2015

Picoreview: Seventh Son: I can’t tell if that was subjectively bad or objectively bad. The problem is that I’ve read the source books, but not for quite a while, and they’re a terrible adaptation of the source books but because my memory of them isn’t clear I spent a great deal of the movie going, “Wait, is that…did that…was that…okay, that’s DEFINITELY not from the books…,” which left me uncertain at the end if I’d seen your bog-standard bad fantasy film, in which case, for a bog-standard bad fantasy film…

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KSR at Hodges Figgis

April 11, 2015

Last night was Kim Stanley Robinson’s talk at Hodges Figgis. It went really well: the audience was full and there were a lot of great questions, almost none of which I can remember right now. :) Someone asked about ESCAPE TO KATMANDU, which I haven’t read and which apparently I must, and ANARCTICA, which is actually one of my favourite KSR novels (and turns out to be one of his favourites, too, although it evidently made no blip at all when it came out) was mentioned, and there was someone…

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The Sorrow of Thin Mints

April 9, 2015

When I was a kid, she said, hunched over with one hand in the small of her back and the other waving an imaginary cane, they made Thin Mint Girl Scout cookies Differently. They had the chocolate cookie base and the thin chocolate layer, but between them they had a thin layer of mint candy, like one might find in a peppermint patty or Junior Mint. The chocolate cookie base had a slight ridge around the outer edge, so the mint candy fit inside that, and one could scrape one’s…

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writer alarm: engage!

April 9, 2015

So I’ve been looking into what’s necessary for submitting self-published books to major review sites (RT, PW, etc) and the answer is primarily “a long lead time.” Several months. Four, for RT, ideally four but 3 is bearable, for PW. Which means if I want to get REDEEMER in for a late October launch, just post-Octocon, I have to have it written and edited by 21 June. AAAAAAAAAAGH. Written, yes, it will be written. But *edited*? Like to the editor, returned to me, and revised? That seems…unlikely! I mean, I’m…

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Shaman Rises cover

Writing Wednesday: Outlining a Series

April 8, 2015

Beth Cato, author of the splendid CLOCKWORK DAGGER books, said she’d love to know more about my outlining process(es) for series. bahahahwoooohahahahahaha ahahaha bahahah hee hee hee *wipes eyes* Okay. No, seriously. *laughs* Seriously, it’s an excellent question/thing for me to think/write about. The truth is I’ve become much more serious about outlining in the past few years, but I haven’t yet taken it to the series level that I’d *like* to. (I should, in fact, be looking very hard at REDEEMER and perhaps MAGIC & MANNERS in those terms…

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