Monthly Archives: March 2010

The Grim Stick

One of the things I do with my day is look over synopses for other people. Spec-fic ones, crime ones, chick-lit ones, non-fic ones, literary ones – you name it, I can flense it.

Something I’ve become especially aware of in the past couple of months is that literary novels in particular tend to have synopses
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Elmore Leonard's Rules for Writing

Tips for writers

Elmore Leonard: Using adverbs is a mortal sin

1 Never open a book with weather. If it’s only to create atmosphere, and not a charac­ter’s reaction to the weather, you don’t want to go on too long. The reader is apt to leaf ahead look­ing
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Speaking of Clever People

I’ve just had one of my rare privileges: reading a fabulous manuscript that required very little of my editing and flensing talent … one that I put down only when I was so tired that I was in danger of falling asleep and impaling myself on the flensing-pen.

Meg Wildman’s Pregnant Pursuit is just, not to put too fine a point on
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I like clever people

My friend, Kathleen, deprived of a house calendar, made her own

http://tanaudel.wordpress.com/2010/03/17/frustration-induced-calendar-illustrations/

Revisiting the Teen Years … with less fingerless gloves and dayglo tees

The good thing that happened yesterday (apart from putting the new bed together without the loss of fingers and only a modicum of swears) was that my Amazon UK thingies arrived.

1. The Ballad of Halo Jones (Alan Moore and Ian Gibson)

2. Nemesis the Warlock V.1

3. Nemesis the Warlock V.2

So I was
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Writers and Money

Having had the pain a couple of weeks ago of listening to a newbie writer complaining ‘Why do we need to know this business stuff?” I’m gonna plug this issue right now.

WQ has put out The Money
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Lee McGowan Strikes Again – Football Fantasy Mash-up

Imagine Middle Earth, a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Then imagine the biggest, bestest fantasy football world cup ever. Now your on the right wavelength, I’m gonnae blow a bit of football nonsense at you, a bit of nonsense I like to call the star wars versus lord of the rings world cup.

At work we
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Covet

Wants this

Thanks, boingboing http://www.boingboing.net/2010/03/15/coffee-makes-you.html

Good Lord, Where Have I Been?

Struggling, I think.

The deadline to get Brain’s and my pieces in for Steampunk Reloaded was so tight … how tight? It was like trying to shoehorn an elephant into a narrow-fitting stiletto.

Sooo, when we finished and sent it off, the sense of enormous satisfaction lasted about a day … then the sense of “shouldn’t I be writing something really fast
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Interview – L L Hannett

My dear friend and occasional partner-in-crime, Lisa Hannett, is interviewed over here http://www.fantasy-magazine.com/2010/03/writing-writing-writing-lisa-hannett/ at Fantasy Magazine. Well worth a read – as always – and she’s just become an Australian citizen. 🙂 And quite frankly, you should probably go and read The Good Window, too. Oh, go on. You know you want to!

It’s here – just waiting for you …
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