Monthly Archives: April 2014

View From a Hotel Window, LA 2014 Edition

I’m sure that those of you familiar with LA can probably guess where I’m staying. Please don’t stalk me anyway. Flight in was good; stop at In-N-Out to get a Double Double Animal Style was good; getting into the hotel room, perchance to collapse onto the bed, also good. Life is good. Hope yours is, […]

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Oh, Look, Traveling Again

I am loitering in the Charlotte airport, on the way to Los Angeles. As a result, there probably won’t be a lot here today, at least not until I am ensconced at my hotel in California. The only thing I am sure of is that there is an In-N-Out Double Double in my near future. […]

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How I Sold My Books

Over on Twitter, author Wesley Chu has been leading a discussion on how authors sell their books — whether by submitting the full manuscript, by submitting a partial, or by proposal. This lead me to think about how I sold my own books. So, for informational and educational purposes, this is how I’ve sold each […]

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Reminder to Everyone: I’ll Be at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books This Saturday

The headline says it all — but specifically, I will be doing the following things: 1. At 2:30pm in the Ronald Tutor Campus Center, I and producer Jon Shestack will be talking about taking Redshirts from page to screen, with the fabulous Pamela Ribon moderating. Expect this to be about Redshirts, but also very many other […]

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The Big Idea: Elizabeth Bear

Two things you need to know for today’s Big Idea: One, Elizabeth Bear is one of this generation’s best science fiction and fantasy authors, and Steles of the Sky is the latest in her acclaimed Eternal Sky series; Two, there’s a really big and awesome announcement in this Big Idea. Okay? Here you go, then: […]

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Off to See Emmylou

(Warning: the video above starts abruptly with crowd noise, but is otherwise worth watching and listening to) Emmylou Harris is touring to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of Wrecking Ball, which is not only my favorite album of hers but may in fact be my favorite album, period, end of sentence, so I’m […]

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Brendan Eich and Mozilla

Getting lots of requests in e-mail to share my thoughts about now-former Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich resigning from the position after less than two weeks, in large part because of stakeholders being upset that Eich, in 2008, donated money to a successful initiative to ban same-sex marriages in California, which at the time were already […]

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John Scalzi, Award-Winning… Meteorologist?

No, I haven’t started a sideline business for when my writing career craters under me. There’s a John Scalzi (no relation, or at least no relation that doesn’t go back several generations), who works as a meteorologist for WWSB down in Sarasota, Florida, and he just won the “Best Weathercast” award from the Florida Associated […]

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A Series of Tweets Regarding My Own Personal Sexism

Apropos to a discussion on Twitter about this Slate article, a discussion of sexism, specifically, my own: (Quick multitweet spree about to commence in roughly 10 seconds, lasting no more than five minutes. Be prepared!) — John Scalzi (@scalzi) April 4, 2014 Parallel to everyone should be able to acknowledge their own racism, I'll give […]

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The Big Idea: Geoff Rodkey

Some stories are easy. Others fight you, pretending to be one thing but then turning into something else entirely. Geoff Rodkey knows about the latter — for his Chronicles of Egg series, of which Blue Sea Burning is the final installment, he had to play his story like a marlin before reeling it in. Here […]

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And Now, For No Particular Reason, a List of My Top Ten Favorite Coen Brothers Films

Because why not. Note I use the word “favorite,” not the word “best,” although I would argue for the movie in my number one position being, if not the best, at least in the top three. 1. Miller’s Crossing 2. O Brother, Where Art Thou? 3. Intolerable Cruelty 4. Raising Arizona 5. Barton Fink 6. The Hudsucker Proxy […]

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The Big Idea: Robin Riopelle

Our pasts shape us, build us and sometimes haunt us. So when part of our past is obscured from us, it creates a tension in our lives — the sort of tension that can, naturally enough, make for great stories. Robin Riopelle’s novel Deadroads looks at pasts, hidden and otherwise; Riopelle’s here to explain how […]

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Twitter Thoughts, April 2014

I see a lot of people obsessing about Twitter these days, with particular emphasis on who one should follow, or not follow, and why. Occasionally these conversations touch on me, sometimes as an positive example, and sometimes not (such as the random person purporting to be a writer attempting to lecture me on not following […]

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The Big Idea: Emily Jiang

I don’t often get a chance to do a picture book on the Big Idea, so I’m pleased that one of the rare examples happens to be by a friend of mine, Emily Jiang, who wrote Summoning the Phoenix, illustrated by April Chu. The book received a coveted starred review by Kirkus (“[an] informative and gracefully […]

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This is No Way to Run For Congress, Matthew Guyette

The good news is that John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives and my congressional representative, has a Democratic opponent this year: A fellow by the name of Matthew Guyette. This is good news in that last election cycle Boehner ran unopposed, and generally speaking democracies are healthier when their elections are contested. Whether […]

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