Back in 2007, I joined and “won” NaNoWriMo with what eventually (like 5 years after that one month) my novel A Call of Moonhart. That time, I knew I had a novel-length idea, I had the world building in hand, and the timing was right to get a jump start on all of it. Eventually, that […]
The only D I got for a grade in high school came from my French teacher. Oh, I deserved it, no question. I spent more time paying attention to the blonde next to me (hi Beth-Alison!) than the teacher in front of me, and if Beth-Alison wanted to skip class for any reason, well, allons-y […]
If you drop a penny, does it fall to the ground? Do you ever expect it might not? Cultural attitudes towards children, relationships, and religion can be described in a similar fashion. Most people don’t even think to think about these beliefs any more than they think about gravity because to even question the general […]
In my Netflix queue at present, there are 5 different movie adaptations of Shakespearean plays: Twelfth Night, Henry V, Richard II, and Hamlet. There had been three Hamlet‘s at one time, but I’ve already watched the Gibson followed by the Brannagh, with only the Tennant one left (not Olivier. Never Olivier. Perhaps Kline). I studied […]
A new, semi-weekly, semi-regular feature of the blog is going to be “Nice Song or Nice Guy™?” These are the songs of my youth, the songs I loved as a young man coming of age, the “sound track of my life.” But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to realize that many of these songs […]
I caught an episode of “Bones” the other day, “The Daredevil in the Mold” from Season 6. One of the sub-plots is that Booth asks his girlfriend Hannah to marry him. That’s pretty much the only scene I saw that day, so there may be some issues surrounding the proposal I’ve forgotten. But by the […]
I love WisCon. I really do. It was the first SF/F convention I ever went to. It’s my hometown convention. And I’ve yet to see a Wookie, Cthulu, or Hobbit walking the halls. (I love my friends who are into Cosplay and if Renaissance Faires are cosplay, then I’m into it as well. But I […]
I’m finding it challenging to perform both the business and the creative sides of writing at the same time. The two mindsets are so radically different and use diametrically opposed creative processes that I find I have only limited success at doing both at the same time. The most I’ve been able to manage is […]
One chance in 11,000. That’s what an article in Poets & Writers magazine gave as a back-of-the-envelope estimate for the chances of a new author not getting a rejection from an agent based on an unsolicited query. Those kinds of odds are nearly enough to be discouraging. Of course, the chances of being noticed by […]
I wrote the other day about how the time I worked at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival thirty years ago affected me in ways both subtle and profound. Like all of its kind, the Festival is a place of wonder, of creativity, of bawdy jokes, lewd and wonderful songs, and general silliness, with amazing performers and […]
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