This coming weekend (March 5-7) is Phoenix Con 7, more affectionately known as P-Con. My panel schedule is as follows: Saturday 11am: Writing Methods of the Experts C.E. Murphy; George Green; Steve Westcott; Juliet E. McKenna 12:15pm: Superheroes – limited to the graphic arena? Cheryl Morgan; C.E. Murphy; Bob Neilson; Derek Gunn; Colin Harvey 4pm: Will water become more important in genre fiction? C.E. Murphy; John Kenny; Ian McDonald; A.J. Healy 5pm: Pictionary Sunday 10am Panel topics for P-Con VIII C.E. Murphy; Brian J. Showers; Colin Smythe; Derek Gunn; John…
nothing in particular
There’s a top ten writing rules meme going around. I’m pretty sure I could come up with ten, but the one my mother most often reminds me of is “A famous writer once told me you can’t fix what’s not on the page, so you better get writing.” I suspect that’s pretty much the most important one, for me. Facebook’s latest new improved interface is so clogged up I’ve largely stopped using it for anything besides updating my own status, which is really boring. Not sure how much longer I…
Hot Time wrap-up
The “Hot Time” novella went dark last night around 5pm Eastern (with one person getting their purchase in quite literally at the last minute: I was taking the Paypal links down as the payment came in!). This whole project has been an experiment in selling to a direct market. I pretty much think of this as patronage: the people who bought this story made it possible for me to write something that would not otherwise exist–and believe me, this story was one I have known for years *happened* and have…
gotta make the doughnuts
Ted and I got it into our heads while in Alaska that maybe we should make doughnuts sometime, since the doughnuts here aren’t very good. We got a recipe from Ted’s mom, and last week online a discussion of doughnuts came up, so I wanted to make some. I had only ever done so once before, and my impression was that it was a real pain in the ass. Today’s experiment in making doughnuts confirms that. We were making cake doughnuts, which have a very, very soft dough. Sticky soft,…
last chance salon
February is rapidly coming to an end, and with it approaches the end of the Old Races novella “Hot Time”‘s availability. Somewhere around 5pm Eastern time on Sunday the 28th I’ll be taking it down, and it will not be seen again until I sell it to a traditional publisher. That’s likely to mean it won’t be available again for years, rather than months, so get it while you can! And if you’ve read it–or just adore me on general principles–you can go to the Crowdfunded Creativity site and vote…