I did something very unusual this weekend, which was send a book out to beta readers. Normally I…don’t do that. Broadly speaking I feel writing a book is largely a closed loop between myself and my editor: she’s the source of feedback that I need, and I generally find adding more people in to that cycle to be very stressful. I am, in fact, finding it very stressful, which is totally on me, not the readers: they’re providing feedback in exactly the way a writer wants them to, which is…
We’re watching a tv show where one of the storylines is set in India. In the second episode there was a spontaneous song and dance routine. Ted said, “I’m pretty sure people in India don’t actually spontaneously burst into song and dance all the time, but if they do, we’re really living in the wrong country.” I then got into a discussion on Twitter about how movies from America in the 1950s also suggest that Americans drop into song and dance at the drop of a hat. A friend said…
Nephew: Excuse me? I have an important question. How powerful is Captain Britain? Could he beat Superman? Me, having already described the “the one who serves the story best” aspect of this kind of question and delighted to be asked: I *believe* CB’s power is drawn from the spirit of the British people, so potentially yes but probably only under certain circumstances. Nephew: Right, great, okay. How about Captain Britain against Juggernaut? Me: They’d go toe to toe. Nephew departs, totally happy ♥ :) I made Blackberry Pi on Monday,…
About four years ago I got it into my head to wonder what PRIDE & PREJUDICE would be like if the Bennet sisters were plagued by an excess of magic rather than a dearth of cash. In a fit of inspiration, I wrote a first chapter, and then over the next year, a second and a third. By then, Patreon was a thing, and I decided to write MAGIC & MANNERS as a serialized crowdfunding project. It took longer than I expected and brought me to the conclusion that serializing…
Oh my *god* the ATLANTIS FALLEN manuscript ended up a mess. I found an entire chapter and a half that hadn’t been in the version I was working from, and a scene that had been referenced but wasn’t in the version I was working from so I had to go find it and @.@. Fortunately it, most of it at least, could more or less slide right in with just a bit of massaging, but ye gods and little fishes. The manuscript is 20K longer than the one I started…