The garden that doesn’t like it outside

Crocuses are croaking…

The work function of writing

I don’t know about you, but I have a very high work function when the time comes to write; I’m like a happy little electron snug in my energy well of goofing off and it takes a significant boot in the butt to raise my energy enough to push my fingers around the keyboard. Over […]

Re: A Geography of Oysters

Some people have loved oysters since childhood. Some would never touch them. Some discover them as adults, and then can’t get enough of them. That last group describes me. The first time I ate an oyster on the half shell, I had the usual fears. It would be slimy. It would sicken me. It was […]

Re: Merchants’ War

Miriam Beckstein, intrepid high-tech journalist, discovers she is really a lost daughter of a clan that can travel between worlds. And she is not pleased. Before I go on, make sure you’ve read the previous books in Charles Stross‘s Merchant Prince series: The Family Trade, The Hidden Family, Clan Corporate, and the latest book Merchants’ […]

Re: Halting State

When an army of Orcs rob a bank, you’re know you’re in for a good time. So who thinks it’s worthwhile to raid the central bank of the gameworld Avalon Four? Sue, an Edinburgh cop, Elaine, a forensic auditor, and Jack, a gaming programmer, are called together to find out. Throw in corporate backstabbing, terror […]

Re: Ysabel

I started reading Guy Gavriel Kay because I had the feeling I was supposed to like him. The Fionavar books looked like just the thing for my Tolkien-warped brain. Well, I hated Fionavar, only making it partway into the second book. It got better once he stopped playing insert-the-Simarillion-reference and started writing his own ideas, […]

Re: Rollback

Robert J. Sawyer has some useful things to say about promoting your work. After all, the guy who snagged sfwriter.com for his website must know what he’s doing. But maybe he’s a little too good at promoting himself. When I heard him interviewed on Dragon Page Cover to Cover, I was intrigued by the opening […]

My 2007 Reading List

I plan to read the Nebula ballot, mostly out of a sense of obligation, but I’ve already read the one I was most interested in. I’m more excited about reading through my own list.

Writing every day

I really do write every single day. Even when I’m sick or traveling or busy. I’ve done so since September 3, 2000. Before that I wrote most days, and before that I wrote occasionally, and before that when I felt inspired, and before that I thought I would get around to writing some day. Oh, […]

The garden sneaks inside

I have a worm bin so I can compost kitchen scraps over the winter. They’re supposed to eaten by worms and converted into vermicompost. Well, it seems a piece of potato refused to cooperate. Now there’s a potato plant in my worm bin. I could say something about the resilience of life in difficult places, […]