Skip to main content

Long Weekend

Memorial Day is the start of the official countdown for me. I have a few more weeks of regular employment and then bring on the summer. I'm really looking forward to the two and a half months this year.



Last year I felt I made real progress making the switch from having this writing thing be a hobby to something, you know, else... I've written a half a dozen stories, gotten more or less to the rejection process, and developed a somewhat work schedule for this blog, writing stories, and then sending them out.

Still, the summer is when I get the bulk of work done. It's not too tough keeping up a regular schedule during the first half of the school year but once we get to this point the work load begins to expand exponentially. It will be nice to resume my routine of waking up at a decent hour, trundling over to the local cafe, and banging out a thousand or so words everyday. It's that routine that I've found really helps the process the most. When the product of a previous day's work is still fresh in your mind, you have something more to build from, more connections to tie together.

I'm hoping that story I've been working on for the entire spring gels together a bit better than it's on to a few more ideas I have sketched out. Recently, though, I've found myself thinking along the lines of another longer project, possibly something like a YA Space Opera. I couldn't find much along the lines of what I'm thinking other than old-school Heinlein and Asimov, which either suggests a unfilled, under-explored niche or a vast commercial graveyard. Either way, I give all of my projects the kind of audition process: prove yourself in five pages or less or get the hell out.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Review of R. Scott Bakker's The Darkness That Comes Before

First, a word about how I came to pick up the first novel in R. Scott Bakker's The Prince of Nothing historical fantasy series. In short, after finishing "A Dance with Dragons," by George R.R. I googled what should I read next. This series came up. I mention this because it might serve as a usual gauge for what to expect from "The Darkness That Came Before;" people liking Martin's mix of history, in-depth characterization, dark subject matter, and world-building will probably like Bakker's work. People not fond of entire chapters devoted to the Byzantine political maneuvers, a dozen pages of appendices on characters, maps, and language trees, or character names with umlauts should avoid this book. Basically, the story of 'The Darkness That Comes Before," follows a warrior monk by the name of Anasürimbur Kellhus, who during a quest to find his father, becomes entwined with a Holy War against a nation of fanatical monotheists. The story is...

Death's End by Liu Cixin

Having recently finished the last book in Liu Cixin's instant classic "The Remembrance of Earth's Past" series, Death's End, I can only report a feeling of total amazement and awe. There is so much about this novel that blew my mind, that offered different and better ways of viewing the universe. This novel did what I wish more novels would, serve up a new universe entire, evoking beauty and horror, nobility and disgust, in a timeless monument to unfettered speculation.  Obviously, in discussing the events of the last of a trilogy books, spoilers are to be expected. I am, however, going to try to avoid discussing much beyond the first 100 pages of the third novel. I read the translation of this novel, as ushered into being by the amazing talent of Ken Liu. Ken has written of a certain prickliness when it comes to translating work. He makes an effort not to anglicize the source material, not smudging away the occasional difficulties in bringing Cixin...

A Reaction to Peter Watts' "Echopraxia"

Peter Watts’ Echopraxia  is a side-sequel to his previous hard sf horror novel  Blindsight . Daniel Bruks, a biologist in the Eastern Oregonian desert, gets stuck in the middle of a war between a fugitive vampire and a cult of rewired post-humans called Bicamerals, ultimately kidnapped by them as they head towards the sun. The goal of post-human and vampire alike is to investigate a possible alien intelligence gaining strength there, to determine if it poses a threat, or offers a weapon for the two sides as they struggle for advantage. Bruks' goal is simple survival. Reading Watts is a simultaneously bracing and discouraging experience. Bracing because his depiction of the future and the oddities who inhabit it continue to get better and better, his plots more complicated and more involving, his characters less like sock-puppets for his ideas and more like actual human beings (or whatevers). Discouraging because Watts uses his considerable gifts, artistic and academic, ...