Monthly Archives: February 2008

Zoe’s Tale Follow-Up Q&A

Answering some questions I’ve gotten in the wake of finishing Zoe’s Tale, in comments here at Whatever: Alan Kellogg asks: “What about revisions and rewrites?” To date I’ve not had to do any significant revising or rewriting once I’ve turned in a novel, and Zoe is no exception to this: PNH sent me notes on […]

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Quick Review: Watershed, kd lang

It is such: kd lang’s voice: Continues to be a force of nature. kd’s song selection: eh. Which is a bit of a bummer, because I’ve been a huge fan of lang’s recent albums, dating back to Invincible Summer, not just because of her voice but because the songs (both original and covers). They’re not […]

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The Big Idea: Philip Palmer

Hey look! Another “The Big Idea” feature! See, now you can tell they are really here to stay on Whatever: we’ve had two of them. In today’s installment: Philip Palmer. Palmer is a novelist, with the new and ambitiously all-over-the-place space opera/comedy/pirate adventure Debatable Space. He’s also a been screenwriter for several British television series, […]

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Me on Halo as Literature

io9’s Charlie Jane Anders wrote me over the weekend to get my thoughts on the sub-genre of military science fiction (prompted by some comments on the topic by David Drake), and I responded and suggested that the most popular milSF books out there right now are the Halo books, which are based on the video […]

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Writers of the Future, Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard

A question from the gallery: My wife and I were wondering if you would be so kind as to post your thoughts about the Writers of the Future contest on Whatever. With everything in the news about Scientology right now, we thought it might be interesting to see your take on the contest, the man, […]

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What Was Decided on Super Tuesday: Nothing!

I mean, look at that delegate count from last night. One delegate difference. That’s just nuts. And the GOP side is still wacky, too. I kind of love it. Anyway, here’s a place for you to chat about Super Tuesday results if you want. Personally, I’m giving up Super Tuesday for Lent, but don’t let […]

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Please Keep Comments on Topic

Folks, I’ve been noticing an increasing incidence of people going into comment threads and writing something like this: “Hey, I know this doesn’t have anything to do with what this thread is about, but…” and then posting about something that is, true to advertising, completely unrelated. Don’t do this. I find it more than a […]

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In Other Election News

I’m not running for office in SFWA this year. Here’s why: 1. I just finished a novel, which is good. Now all I have to do are the two novels, at least one non-fiction book, two novellae and several short stories and essays I’ve all agreed to write/am contractually bound to extrude before the end […]

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Obamarama

Patrick Nielsen Hayden explains why he voted for Obama in the primary (he did it by absentee ballot). Key graphs: I’m for Obama knowing perfectly well that, as Bill Clinton suggested, it’s a “roll of the dice”. A roll of the dice for Democrats, for progressives, for those of us who’ve fought so hard against […]

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Various and Sundry 2/4/08

I sent Zoe in to Tor last night after one last quick-read through and edit (chopped up a chunk of dialogue; added 1,000 words through the book to make things clearer; put in acknowledgments) and now my brain has said “see ya,” and appears to be on vacation for a couple of days. So in […]

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Thoughts on Zoe’s Tale

Per my usual thing of offering some post-writing thoughts on the latest books, some thoughts on Zoe’s Tale: * First, it was the most difficult book I’ve had to write. Why? 1. I wrote it from the point of view of a sixteen year old girl, which is something that I have never been, nor […]

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Significant ZT Milestone

For those of you wondering: Zoe’s Tale just hit 90,000 words, which means that it’s officially contractual length (my Tor contracts specify books that are 100,000 words long, plus or minus ten percent). If all goes well, I’ll be done in the next 10,000 words or so. In other words: Not long now. Now stop […]

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