The Whatever Holiday Gift Guide 2021 continues, and today we move away from books and focus on other gifts and crafts — which you can take to mean just about any other sort of thing a creative pers… | Continue reading
Today is Day Two of the Whatever Holiday Gift Guide 2021, and today the focus is on Non-Traditionally Published Books: Self-published works, electronically-exclusive books, books from micro presses… | Continue reading
How to get readers to accept the impossible — or, at least, the wildly implausible? Author Ian Douglas has a technique for that, and in this Big Idea for Solar Warden: Alien Hostiles, he̵… | Continue reading
Welcome to the first day of the Whatever Shopping Guide 2021 — Our way of helping you folks learn about cool creative gifts for the holidays, straight from the folks who have created them. Tod… | Continue reading
Authors often see themselves in their work. But sometimes, it takes a while for that to happen. This is a thing Jeremy Szal discovered while writing Blindspace. Here he is to delve further into tha… | Continue reading
Every year as the holiday season begins I run a gift guide for the holidays, and over the years it’s been quite successful: Lots of people have found out about excellent books and crafts and c… | Continue reading
Here’s the spread at the Scalzi Compound today: Turkey, ham, two types of cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes, sweet potato soufflé, green bean casserole, sage stuffing, deviled eggs, dinner rol… | Continue reading
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the United States, and while I think a lot of people these days see that holiday mostly as a turkey-spangled speedbump in front of the unstoppable juggernaut that i… | Continue reading
And that someone might have been me. Here’s one of the pictures I made fiddling with it (DxO Filmpack 6, in case you’re curious). Spice has never looked so moody! Or monochromatic! R… | Continue reading
Hey, remember back when people used to go to science fiction conventions and hang out, and go to panels and get autographs and do all those things? Well, I do! And it turns out I’ll be doing … | Continue reading
The CDC and the USDA opened up COVID booster shots to everyone over the age of 18 yesterday, so guess what I did this morning? If you guessed “thought deeply about your mortality and your pla… | Continue reading
Krissy, Athena and I went to Cleveland to see the multimedia Van Gogh exhibit (it was lovely) and while we were there for that, decided to take a short family holiday. It was delightful and I reall… | Continue reading
Because don’t I deserve breakfast cake? Yes I do! And so do you! Probably. I mean, you could have been a real shit to someone recently, in which case, no cake for you. But otherwise: Cake awa… | Continue reading
From a deleted post on r/explainlikeimfive that asked, “What makes a book a New York Times Best Seller and how does almost every book I read have this award?” The answers there were not… | Continue reading
Music inspires us, moves us, and in some ways inhabits us and has the power to change our lives. It’s this power that Patrick Swenson draws upon for his new novel Rain Music — that, and… | Continue reading
It feels like it’s been a while since I’ve posted a sunset picture here, so, hey! Look! It’s a sunset! And a lovely one, too, with orange clouds and the sun through branches and e… | Continue reading
Writing a novel is often a journey, and in writing You Sexy Thing, author Cat Rambo discovered that their journey was taking them to some surprising but welcome places. Let’s retrace the jour… | Continue reading
We’ve decided what the 2023 novel will be. I’m very happy with the choice we’ve made. I’m pretty sure you will be as well. In, uh, 2023. | Continue reading
It’s never too late for surprises, and as Jane Yolen relates in this Big Idea for Arch of Bone, some surprises are absolutely worth the wait. JANE YOLEN: Here’s a surprise. Take a bookish Jew… | Continue reading
This is one of those “wait, what?” deaths, in that Petra as I knew her was so absolutely full of life and energy that the idea all of that would come to a sudden stop is a little breath… | Continue reading
The first substantial snowfall of the season. I prefer the first snowfall to happen after Thanksgiving, but I guess the weather doesn’t actually care about my needs or wants, so. Here it is, … | Continue reading
My previous keyboard, which I have had for a few years and have written at least three novels on, developed an alarming list on the right side of its space bar; it was suddenly catching and not rel… | Continue reading
Look, you can like apocalypses all you want, but here’s a fact: Erica L. Satifka was into doom before doom was cool. And in this Big Idea for the appropriately-named How to Get to Apocalypse … | Continue reading
Charlie knows she is not allowed up on the furniture. And she always looks guilty and ashamed when she is caught on the furniture. And yet she does not stop climbing up on the furniture. Which sugg… | Continue reading
In Swashbucklers, author Dan Hanks takes his characters on an adventure… which includes the quest for child care. I know that got the attention of every parent out there. Here Hanks is to del… | Continue reading
Honestly I should probably just write a series of beloved children’s picture books about these two. Also Charlie isn’t supposed to be up on the ottoman like this, but of course the Rule… | Continue reading
Short story collections aren’t (or at least don’t have to be) mere compilations, where the author just takes the latest collection of short pieces and shoves them into a single book-sha… | Continue reading
“Twitter Blue” is Twitter’s new subscription service, which adds some new functionality and lets users try experimental features before anyone else. Here are some early impression… | Continue reading
Teamwork makes the dream work — but does teamwork make for dream novel writing? Authors Amanda Foody and Christine Lynn Herman decided to make a go of co-writing their novel All of Us Villain… | Continue reading
Also, yes, the following is true. I do not encourage you to vote for The Interdependency in the Best Series category just to see me accept dressed as a Christmas Elf. However, if you after sober co… | Continue reading
Before you lay a stick, and a ball. There is a human approaching to take them away from you. You can save only one from the human’s predations. Which will you choose: The stick? Or the ball? … | Continue reading
Writing characters is often one of the most fun parts of the creation process, especially when those characters end up doing more — or doing things differently — than we initially expec… | Continue reading
If there’s frost on your grass and your dog is out in the yard and doesn’t want to come in, resist the temptation to say “Oh, well, I’ll just walk across the yard in my bare… | Continue reading
Comedy comes to us in surprising times and surprising circumstances, as Jennie Goloboy discovered as she sat down to write what would become Obviously, Aliens. Here is to give you all the (possibly… | Continue reading
I’ve had the Pixel 6 Pro for a week now, and have used it as a daily phone and taken lots of pictures with it. I did a piece of (very) first impressions the first day I had it, so this is a f… | Continue reading
Inspiration comes from anywhere, but for Star Mother, author Charlie N. Holmberg found inspiration from a most unusual place. But from unusual places can come stellar ideas, as you’ll discove… | Continue reading
Spoiler: It was me. I voted. This was one of the “off-off years” for voting, in that there were no national or state level elections; on the ballot this year were things like township t… | Continue reading
Fairy tale curses are familiar territory, but for Briar Girls, author Rebecca Kim Wells wanted to go beyond the supposed curse and look at what that magical apparent impediment would do to those th… | Continue reading
Roughly six weeks ago I wrote a first impression/kvetch post about Deathloop, the new video game from Bethesda and Arkane Studios. In it I mentioned that I thought the game was pretty great, I just… | Continue reading
Some types of stories evoke certain locales and lives — can those stories be transplanted into new locations and still be successful? Wendy N. Wagner is thinking a lot about this for her new … | Continue reading
Well, then, here. This seems seasonal. And if that’s not enough on the nose for you, here’s the same band doing the day’s theme song: Have a happy Halloween, y’all. — … | Continue reading
For those who were wondering what the photo quality of the Pixel 6 Pro is, I present to you a small collection of photos I just took with the new phone. Save for a small bit of cropping on a couple… | Continue reading
Cartoon cats! And science! I mean, that sells me on Waffles and Pancake – Planetary-Yum right there. But author/illustrator Drew Brockington is here to tell us more about how a childhood love… | Continue reading
My Pixel 6 Pro arrived yesterday, and I switched everything over last night and have been playing with it since. I haven’t had enough time with it to do everything that it’s capable of,… | Continue reading
Dune has a checkered cinematic history, as just about everyone at this point is aware of. There was the 1984 film by David Lynch that was, charitably, a real hot mess; Lynch was and is a brilliant … | Continue reading
Look to the Sun is a book that is getting a second chance at a release, and in the time between its first appearance and its new one, author Emmie Mears looks at how the world changed around it … | Continue reading
Christopher Hinz is seeing the re-issue of his Paratwa Trilogy of books (of which Liege-Killer, the cover of which is above, is the first), and on the occasion of their re-release, Hinz has a lette… | Continue reading
It was inevitable, and it happened this morning: The first substantial front of the season. My entire yard is tipped in tiny ice crystals, which is beautiful, and also cold, and as you can see abov… | Continue reading