George R. R. Martin On Conan
I wonder if Mr. Martin thought he’d ever be on one of the most popular late night television shows when he started The Song of Ice and Fire?
Shadowrun
I wanted to write a review for X-Com, because I just bought it and it’s a lot of fun and was a pretty big deal in gaming…but I don’t really have anything to add at this point. It’s fun, go play it. So, instead I’ll discuss the reason I bought it in the first place. I was checking out Gamestop’s digital sales and when they didn’t have anything I switched over to Steam. That’s where I saw a game coming out this month. I’d read an article in GameInformer sometime last year and it caught my attention. The more I looked at it, the more I learned about it, the more intrigued I became. I spent about three hours reading about the world of Shadowrun and its upcoming game, Shadowrun Returns. It got me so excited to play something that when I found X-Com on sale for ten bucks I…
A Novel In How Many Days?
While I was on hiatus, I read this series of posts by Dean Wesley Smith. The link just takes you to the first day, there are nine more and each one is more valuable than the last. Basically, he writes a full 70,000 word novel in ten days and documents his progress across each day. Ten friggin’ days. I remember when I first started writing, spending months on a single chapter. Don’t look at me like that, I was fourteen. I thought the struggle was part of the process. And that’s part of what is so great about Mr. Smith. I don’t agree with everything he states about publishing, but he serves as an essential counterbalance to everything else you hear in the industry. He is all about debunking the myths of writing and publishing, to the point he has a book called Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing, much of…
Deus Ex Machina at Indies Unlimited
Lynne Cantwell over at Indies Unlimited (another of those blogs I follow) has a great post about Deus Ex Machina. I won’t go into detail, because she does it better than I do, but it’s a great summary of the idea as well as its use. Read it here.
A Couple Articles On Publishing
I said yesterday that I’ve learned a lot about publishing since last posting. One of the ways I’ve done that is by seeking a balance in the information I ingest. I read a lot from self-published authors and supporters (Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Katherine Rusch, The Book Designer, The Passive Voice)as well as traditional publishing supporters (Janet Reid, Tobias Bucknell, Nathan Bransford, and various other agent’s blogs). I want to share a couple of articles, because I think they present some good opinions on both side. First off, Tobias Bucknell’s article on Survivorship Bias. It’s about the success you’re seeing in self publishing being the only voice, or the loudest voice, because of the sort of “cause” surrounding it. Anyone who disparrages it is seen as a defeatist or anti revolutionary. It’s a really good article and worth reading even if you’re not looking at publishing. That type of bias…