This year the chief joy of my Christmas break from work, apart from Christmas itself, is that I can get up first thing in the morning, before anyone else is up, and work on Very Truly Run After. That's the best time of day for writing, for me, especially if I know the night before … Continue reading Christmas Break
Turning the Corner
The joy of writing a novel by the seat of my pants is that I get to find out what the story is as I go along. There's a wonderful freedom to it. I need a character, so I make one up; and the character comes to life and has his own needs and wants … Continue reading Turning the Corner
NaNoWriMo!
National Novel Writing Month is an event I usually honor in the breach; I begin a new novel when I have time, energy, and an idea I'm sufficiently intrigued by to want to chase for six months or a year. On top of that, the idea of completing a novel in one month is looney … Continue reading NaNoWriMo!
A Night in the Lonesome October
Halloween is approaching, and Roger Zelazny's A Night in the Lonesome October is a delightful way to spend some of the evenings leading up to it. The book takes place during a certain October in the late 1800's—a year when the full moon coincided with Halloween—and has one chapter for each day of the month. … Continue reading A Night in the Lonesome October
Ulysses: Now Better for Blogging
Ulysses now exports to WordPress. The evening after publishing my post about using Ulysses as a blogging tool, I checked for software updates and found a new version of Ulysses that will publish directly to WordPress blogs. I tried it and it worked a treat. Instead of four clicks, a paste, and a title copy, … Continue reading Ulysses: Now Better for Blogging
Draft Cover Art for Through Darkest Zymurgia
The publishing process for Through Darkest Zymurgia is proceeding apace! The layout of the inside of the book is complete, and now we just need to get the cover squared away. This is the current draft of the cover image, featuring professors Thintwhistle and Carbuncle and their dog Bruno investigating a new find, courtesy of … Continue reading Draft Cover Art for Through Darkest Zymurgia
The Problem of Blogging, Solved!
In my last post I laid out my requirements for a blogging tool. I said: Bottom-line. I wanted a solution that would let me compose blog posts off-line, using whatever hardware I had to hand; would let me move from device to device as convenience dictated; would keep the posts resident in one place on … Continue reading The Problem of Blogging, Solved!
The Problem of Blogging
I've been blogging more or less since blogs were a thing, and had a website since long before that, and I've used a whole raft of tools to get words onto the Web, from hand-coded HTML to custom markup and hand-written formatting tools to a variety of blogging platforms. Over that time, I've learned that … Continue reading The Problem of Blogging
Tools for Writing and Thinking
I'm a software developer, blogger, novelist, and catechist; many of my daily activities involve thinking about things, working them out in my head, and then writing or speaking about them. Over time I've tried various software tools that help me to figure out what I think, to organize my thoughts, and to get my thoughts … Continue reading Tools for Writing and Thinking
Night Watch, by Sergei Lukyanenko
Sergei Lukyanenko's Night Watch series, recently concluded with the publication of the sixth and final volume, Sixth Watch, is a unique take on the whole "urban fantasy" genre, not least because it takes place in Moscow rather than in London or Chicago. Urban fantasy has rather been done to death, so much so that it … Continue reading Night Watch, by Sergei Lukyanenko
Zymurgia House 