Jan 19

Am He Gone, Are He Went…and Snippet

Posted: under snippet, the writing life.
Tags: ,  January 19th, 2013

From one of my mother’s favorite joke verses…and relating to the power outage that had all my stuff offline for awhile this afternoon.    I learned to recite this as a little kid, and I still think it’s funny.

Am he gone?  Are he went? Have he left I all alone?  Us can never go to he; he can never come to we.  O cruel world, to I unkind!  Go he way and leave I hind! It cannot was.

It wasn’t in the “humor and whimsy” section of the big poetry anthology we had, so I have no idea where it came from, nor did my mother.   Online search didn’t find it (haven’t looked lately, though.)   If you do, let me know the author.  At any rate, the power up in north Texas was off, shutting down my hosting service, the wonderful SFF.net/Greyware,  and they were kind enough to post what happened on Twitter and let us know when they got back up again.

The warehouse scene continues to amuse (me, anyway)  although the transitions are still extremely rough.  They feel rough to Arvid, too.

Anyway…a little bitty snippet from today that may or may not be like this in the final version:

…………………………………………………

How many were there?  The report they’d gotten only said “a gang of men” had attacked the grange.  Arvid felt in his cloak pockets–he had only three bolts left.  He glanced behind.  Could he make it over the next roof before they got to him?  Maybe.

………………………………………………..

It has to be brief because it’s a Book V snippet and would otherwise be trailing a cloud of spoilers for Limits of Power.

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Jan 15

Some Thoughts on Long Plotting

Posted: under the writing life.
Tags:  January 15th, 2013

The scene I’ve been munching in my head for several days (and tried writing today, with mixed results) is one that has antecedents a long way back and needs to connect to an earlier book…without being a copycat scene of a particular scene in that book.   And it has to fit seamlessly into this book, hitting exactly the right note of climax-resolution for its character arc and the overall plot.

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Jan 11

Relapse

Posted: under Life beyond writing, the writing life.
Tags: ,  January 11th, 2013

Had a relapse in the health side of things this week and haven’t been out of the house yet.   Nothing to worry about, but another “something going around” which on top of the partly-recovered state last weekend meant…flop.   If I were a laser cannon, my energy charge would have been listed as “expended” in the Weapons Officer’s display.  I’d hoped the Tuesday blah was just the change in weather, but…no.   Husband is also down with whatever it is (at least he doesn’t have whatever I had the week before.)

I have been able to make some progress on the socks and one scene of Book V, though it’s a lot less than I’d planned for.     In that scene, Arvid…oh, wait, that’s a spoiler.  Well…sobeit.  In that scene Arvid uses talents developed in another line of work to save lives.    Arvid sneaking across roofs and into buildings is always fun to write.    I haven’t yet figured out quite how he’s going to manage what he’s going to manage, because that requires more oxygen than is currently available to my lungs on a regular basis.  But he’s in there.

I had to give him something fun to do because I decided that a long stretch of Arvid being snarkily superior to someone teaching him Girdish law was not actually that plot-relevant.  Fun, but not going anywhere.

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Jan 09

Printing and Binding

Posted: under the writing life.
Tags: ,  January 9th, 2013

Thanks to this blog entry by Irene Gallo of Tor.com,  you can see the many steps it takes to get a book printed and bound.    You can probably also see how mistakes could happen–how, for instance, one or a few signatures of one book could end up in the middle of another.   Rare, but annoying if it’s in the book you bought.    My thanks to Gallo and Tor for putting this up–I found it fascinating and hope you do, too.

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Jan 06

We Have a Winner

Posted: under ARC, contest.
Tags:  January 6th, 2013

And the winner is…#1, Jet.   I realize that random number generators of any type can indeed come up with the first or last number, but this is the first time in the ARC contests that it’s happened.  Congratulations to the winner!

So….I need a snail-mail address for the winner.    Email me from the contact form on the website with a subject line of ARC winner so if it happens to fall into a junk mail basket, I can find it easily.

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Jan 05

Need Some Help: Contest Related

Posted: under contest, Reader Help.
Tags: ,  January 5th, 2013

In case no one’s checking the comments in the contest thread…I’ve now read everything and made what I hope is an accurate list of unique contributors.

But, given that I’ve been sick and foggy-headed, I’d like someone else to count that too.  I get thirty unique contributors…is that what y’all think?    Once I have a check on the number, I can run the random number app and have a winner.

BTW…great entries.  I was so smart not to think I could pick a winner on merit because there were too many really good ones!

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Jan 03

Some Thoughts on Character: The Why

Posted: under Craft.
Tags: ,  January 3rd, 2013

Because it’s already late in the evening (nearly 11 pm) but I had a long nap (largely due to a migraine, but that’s another issue) I’m now awake at a time when I can’t first-draft  fiction and won’t sleep.  So in light of the discussion of yesterday’s post–of character stuff–I feel like rattling on about characters in fiction.    Some of this I’m sure I’ve said before; if you need to go “Yeah, yeah, know that, get ON with it” feel free to do so.    But new ideas about characters keep popping up in my head that might be useful to those of  you who want to write fiction–or, want to write nonfiction about people.

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Jan 02

The Writer Is Recovering & Snippet

Posted: under Life beyond writing, snippet.
Tags: ,  January 2nd, 2013

OK, gang, I’m a lot better today…not well yet, but definitely on the way.  So: last day of contest entries (in case you’ve been holding back) is Friday, January 4, 2013 with a time-stamp deadline of midnight.    I should have an answer for you by Sunday night (giving myself extra time to be sure I get an accurate count of entrants and am not confused by multiples.  The old brain isn’t necessarily 100% yet.)

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