Category: CEMurphy

Recent Reads: Forgotten Suns

June 9, 2015

I think I only managed to read one book in May, which is somewhat embarrassing. OTOH, it was Judith Tarr’s FORGOTTEN SUNS, which is strong, appealing space opera. It’s space opera with YA sensibilities: only one of the main characters is actually a young adult, but all three of the main characters are on journeys of self-discovery. The character I felt was the lead (a hard call, as all 3 stories are insanely well balanced, but hers is the catalyst for all that follows), Aisha, is the 13 year old…

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Recent Reads: Shaman

May 5, 2015

I’ve owned Kim Stanley Robinson’s SHAMAN since it came out, but hadn’t read it because I was still writing the Walker Papers, and regardless of how different his shaman and mine were likely to be (which was very, given that his book is set 40,000 years ago), I didn’t want to be reading about somebody else’s shaman while writing mine. :) SHAMAN is one of those books that’s either going to work for you or it isn’t, I think, although a lot of KSR’s work can be summarized that way.…

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Writing Wednesday: Discipline

April 15, 2015

@kit_flowerstorm on Twitter asks me to discuss how to practice the discipline of writing. This is a question I get a *lot*. I don’t know if all professional writers get it a lot or if I do because I seem to have a particularly impressive output (or if it’s just that, as I actually *noticed* a few weeks ago, I work a lot). There is not a romantic answer to this question. The truth is that when writing is your day job, you sit down and (if necessary) struggle for…

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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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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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