Monthly Archives: November 2007

How to Enrage Charles Stross

This is how. Note that it has to do with SFWA, so those of you who don’t care about that should move on. Those of you who do care, however, should read the whole thing. For the record, I was the chairman of the committee Charlie served on. Our recommendations to SFWA’s board are here; […]

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Let Down by Soft Rock Yet Again

It took me 33 years to realize it, but you know what: Oz totally did give something to the Tin Man that he didn’t already have, namely, that heart-shaped watch on a chain. That’s why he gave it to the Tin Man in the first place. And the Tim Man wasn’t like, all, “oh, thanks, […]

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Fire Up the Potterfic…

… Apparently JK Rowling has given a go-ahead for fanfic. She still draws the line at porn, though, so all that Ron Weasley/Neville Longbottom slash you’ve been playing around with will still have Rowling’s Death Eaters (aka her lawyers) getting all cruciatus on your ass. It’s probably for the best.

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Dragon Magazine Wants to Own Your Ass, Cheap

Note to aspiring fantasy writers out there: avoid Dragon magazine, which has apparently re-opened to fiction submissions. The pay is on the low side of adequate for the genre (three to six cents a word), but the kicker is that for that royal sum, you are expected to give up all rights to your work. […]

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Also, Before You Ask

Athena is home sick at the moment, which is why I’m writing early in the day. Also, and I could be wrong here, but I believe if I post date an entry I write, WordPress will post it at the time I specify. Which could be useful. One of you WordPress geeks can tell me […]

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Gaming the Social Networks

Cory Doctorow’s got an interesting article on why social networks like Facebook and MySpace are doomed over time: essentially his argument is that they make it too easy for all the folks you hate to find you: For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there’s a guy who beat me up […]

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Author Interview: Josh Conviser

Over at Ficlets, I’m interviewing Josh Conviser, who’s one of those guys that make you a little sick, because not only does he write novels (his most recent one being the snappy techno-thriller EMPYRE), he’s also got a career in Hollywood (you might have seen the most recent show he was involved in, HBO’s Rome), […]

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Deadline Schedule

Book is due at the end of the year, which if you’ll check your calendars is six weeks away, and has some annoyingly time-consuming holiday things before it. What this means: Whatever is a now a secondary priority. Indeed, pretty much everything that doesn’t involve me finishing the book is a secondary priority. Also secondary […]

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The Australian Election

Justine Larbalestier is incensed I haven’t written anything about the Australian election, in which not only did the Liberal party lose big time to the Labor party (equivalent to the Republicans gett sacked by the Democrats here in the US), but the sitting Prime Minister, John Howard, almost certainly lost his seat, becoming only the […]

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What I Want for Christmas: Not a Damn Thing

Another in my series of “post once, refer people to later” entries, this time on gift giving: For a number of years, I’ve told people who have been thinking of getting me something for Christmas or whatever holiday excuse they have for gift giving that I’d simply prefer they not get me anything at all. […]

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Happy Thanksgiving

I’m off all day stuffing myself silly! I might return later this evening, but given the pernicious effects of tryptophan I can’t promise that what I write will make any sort of sense. So be warned. For those of you online today: Dude, take a day off. But if you’re going to ignore me on […]

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The Big Idea: Kristine Smith

Campbell Award winner Kristine Smith has a groovy new book out — Endgame, the completion of her Jani Kilian series — and she’s also the start of this week’s Big Idea column at Ficlets, talking about what it takes to make a “hybrid” character like Jani — part human, part not — not only believable […]

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