Monthly Archives: May 2020

11 Week Quarantine Check In

I actually had to count it out at this point. We went into quarantine after coming back from the JoCo Cruise, and that was on Sunday, March 15. That was eleven weeks ago, which feels both a long time ago and also not that long ago now, because time is funny that way. I also […]

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The Nebula Weekend Dance Party Set List

Special event tonight in the Vorkosigan Suite: the Dance Party with John Scalzi! Yes, @scalzi will be dropping tunes and spinning the digital tables for everyone's enjoyment at #Nebulas2020. Get your groove on – your moves are real, even if the format is digital. Starts @ 7 PDT! — Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of […]

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Thinking About June

First, for no good reason whatsoever, here’s a picture of Spice, turned into a faux-pastel drawing through the magic of Photoshop filters. I think it looks pretty good, actually. Second, June starts on Monday and I’m going to use the switchover in months as an excuse to get back into a work setting. Don’t get […]

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A Dream Possibly Indicative of My Mental State at the Moment

In the dream I and Krissy and (a slightly younger) Athena are on vacation, in Denver of all places, when it’s suddenly the end of the world — we’re talking mudslides and mushroom clouds. And as we watch this from the hall leading to our hotel room, I hand Athena the ice cream cone I’ve […]

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The Big Idea: Margo Orlando Littell

In her latest novel, The Distance From Four Points, author Margo Orlando Littell tests the proposition of whether one can indeed come back home — and whether her protagonist’s experience of doing so can and will differ from her own. MARGO ORLANDO LITTELL: Like most novelists, I can say that the finished version of my […]

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Petals and Raindrops

So this morning I went and took pictures of the flowers in the front yard, and I posted the pictures on Twitter and Facebook and misidentified the flowers, so of course every single comment was correcting me on the flower identification. So I thought, well, fuck you all, you don’t get any flowers then, and […]

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The Big Idea: Swati Teerdhala

It’s said that revenge is sweet — but in this Big Idea for The Archer at Dawn, author Swati Teerdhala argues that the taste may be something else entirely. SWATI TEERDHALA: Revenge fantasies are powerful. We’ve all had one, whether it’s as petty as dripping oil on your annoying neighbor’s fancy loafers at the gas […]

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About That Deal, Five Years On

Today is a red-letter day in my personal history, because five years ago (and also on a Sunday, calendars are weird), the New York Times announced that I had signed a 13-book deal with Tor books for $3.4 million, a deal notable for its length (we expected it to run for roughly a decade) and […]

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The Big Idea: Nancy Kress

In today’s Big Idea, Hugo and Nebula Award winner Nancy Kress takes a look at controversy, science, and change — Sea Change, as a matter of fact. NANCY KRESS:  At parties in my city—environmentally conscious, crunchy-granola, high-tech and socially activist Seattle—it is easy to start a flaming argument. Just walk up to a group, tilt […]

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Ohio’s Opening Up But I’m (Still) Staying In

So, Ohio is on its way to opening up entirely — restaurants can open their inside dining areas today, and by June first places like banquet halls and bowling alleys can be back in business. This is all presuming social distancing, etc, inside those halls and alleys. A lot of people around here are thrilled, […]

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Today in “The Hell With It, I’m Gonna Treat Myself” News

I got myself some stupidly expensive caramels. Why? Because I wanted them, and this is week (mumble mumble) of quarantine, and fuck it, I’m getting myself some stupidly expensive caramels to see if they’ll break up the slog. Did they? Yup! I’m not going to buy stupidly expensive caramels on a regular basis, but as […]

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The Big Idea: Jennifer Brody

People have dreams — and then they have the dreams that come after that first set of dreams came true. For Jennifer Brody, who created Spectre Deep 6 with Jules Rivera, her new graphic novel is about the latter. JENNIFER BRODY: I always wanted to work in Hollywood. Growing up in a small town nestled […]

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Reader Request Week 2020 #10: Short Bits

To wrap up this year’s Reader Request Week, quick answers to questions I didn’t otherwise get to: Stephanie Brown: I’m sensing we’re at a major global change point: the virus, global warming, immigration, Trump & lots of major governing problems in the world—all coming to a head in the next decade or two. Does this […]

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Reader Request Week 2020 #9: Writing Short Bits

The questions you folks asked this week about writing, answered briefly: Target: The Last Emperox (and the rest of the series) read to me as much more in “your” voice, or at least more similar to how you write on Whatever than your other books. Asides, turns of phrase, sarcasm are all examples where I […]

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New Books and ARCs, 5/14/20

The number of actual physical books that have comes to the Scalzi Compound has slowed to a trickle (because the people who work in warehouses have largely been at home, and reasonably so!), but some books have still made their way in. Here are the ones that have arrived in the last… month? Or so? […]

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