I started posting excerpts of Stars Fall Out when I was halfway through the draft. As a result, I haven’t posted excerpts of a lot of the early action that defines the book, including the …
Last week, I posted a short excerpt from Stars Fall Out in which my main character runs like hell after stealing a magic vial from her sister’s professor. All she knows about the vial is …
It’s been two or three years since I last did the Index-Card-a-Day challenge, but since I’ve been meaning to do more watercolor sketching, I decided to try it this year with time limits on how long I spend per card.
I’m not a car person, so I can only describe what passed by me on my walk in my rural New England town as a retro-future, cyberpunk Indy 500 car with strips of neon green lights blinking along its edges.
It was blasting not the synthy industrial action music that is its birthright by genre, but one of the more emotional Goo Goo Dolls songs.
There’s a saying about dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. It sounds suspiciously like the kind of thing a high-end suit manufacturer might have come up with.
Anyway, I’ve accumulated quite a few outfits that make me look like a sci-fi character, so I’ve been following that dubious piece of advice either way.
It’s tough to find a good first draft excerpt. Something that isn’t too clunky, too spoilery, or too rife with notes-to-self and bracketed terms I need to research. After starting to post excerpts at the …
Research rabbit holes: I had to look up the name of a mapmaking tool for a character who is an amateur cartographer, and now I, too, am an amateur cartographer.
One of the unexpected consequences of COVID-19 in my life is that I’ve turned into a snuggle-on-the-couch with-a-blanket kind of person, when before I was always a sit-upright-on-floor-pillows kind of person.
I guess it’s a comfort thing, but it makes it harder to go to bed in good time. If I can no longer sit upright on the floor, that usually means I’m tired enough to go to bed. But the couch? I just stay on the couch. And I watch Deep Space Nine.
One of my rewards to myself for finishing Stars Fall Out (and also an early birthday present) was a box set of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
Best Star Trek ever, and best show ever.
I should’ve bought it ages ago on whatever flimsy excuse I could come up with.
This excerpt features Master Zanhori, known as one of the greatest living oneiromancers, who travels throughout the Kirosz Empire with his three fearsome beasts, negotiating for peace where he can, and sometimes leaving destruction where he can’t.
My completed first draft of Stars Fall Out is 234,000 words, 173 scenes, and 1125 pages, with a printing time of two hours. I posted on Facebook that hole-punching would be my hobby for the …
Me: Time to print a 1,125 page draft.
HP Officejet Pro, 95 pages in: Align the printheads. DO IT DO IT NOW.
