Monthly Archives: February 2020
The Big Idea: R.W.W. Greene
Posted on February 11, 2020 2 Comments
For his Big Idea on the novel The Light Years, author R.W.W. Greene considers what things make the cut, when civilization itself is on the line. R.W.W. GREENE: Moving always sucks. But especially when it’s unexpected. Even someone with Chrisjen Avasarala-level planning skills, when faced with an eviction or a sudden breakup, is going to […]
Meanwhile, In Range of Motion News
Posted on February 10, 2020 45 Comments
The picture above is not exactly the sexiest photo I’ve ever taken, but it’s notable in that it represents the furthest up I’ve been able to raise my left arm for several months. That’s because at the moment I have a physical condition known as adhesive capsulitis (more commonly known as “frozen shoulder”), which restricts […]
The Big Idea: Valentine Wheeler
Posted on February 10, 2020 1 Comment
In No Parking, author Valentine Wheeler imagines a town undergoing change, and what it means for the people who live there. And it all started… with lunch. VALENTINE WHEELER: I started writing No Parking because of a chicken wrap. No, seriously. A new restaurant came to town, and they make a killer shawarma. I was […]
Today’s Quote That I Actually Texted Someone Which I Am Now Providing You Without Context
Posted on February 7, 2020 27 Comments
“Oh, posh, what could possibly go wrong eating an entire jar of emulsified oil?”
The Big Idea: Jim Ottaviani
Posted on February 6, 2020 4 Comments
Sometimes storytellers miss out on telling a story. But as Jim Ottaviani and Maris Wicks learned with Astronauts: Women on the Final Frontier, that just means that some stories, you get to come back to. JIM OTTAVIANI: Astronauts started on the cutting room floor of another book. More than ten years ago I wrote a […]
People Doing Terrible Things to Books, But (Possibly) Not Being Terrible Themselves
Posted on February 5, 2020 119 Comments
Late last month writer Alex Christofi posted a tweet about how he would physically cut long books in half to make them more “portable,” thus revealing himself as history’s worst monster, and also, starting up an internet conversation about how people treat their books. This has lead Slate to reprint an essay by Anne Fadiman […]
Smudge Had a Rough Night
Posted on February 4, 2020 37 Comments
I told him not to stay up for the Iowa results, but would he listen? Noooooo. (I sent this picture to Krissy this morning and she immediately called to see if he was okay. He’s fine. I just caught him in an awkward moment.)
The Big Idea: Juliette Wade
Posted on February 4, 2020 3 Comments
The paths we walk in our lives are not necessarily straight and narrow, and in writing her new novel, author Juliette Wade found she needed another metaphor entirely to explain her character’s movements. In this Big Idea, Wade explains on why the metaphor she landed on was Mazes of Power. JULIETTE WADE: This is the […]
Late Night Texts at the Scalzi Compound
Posted on February 3, 2020 33 Comments
Look, I know you people adore Smudge, but as a still-young male cat, he’s got a lot of “asshole” in him that he hasn’t completely got out of his system yet. And the time he likes to burn through some of that is roughly between the hours of 2 am and 5 am. Which means […]
Whatever Everyone Else is Saying