This has been a reading week. I finished JULIET1. I’m almost half-way through CRYOBURN. I’ve finished the first disc of ARABIAN NIGHTS. I keep taking my Eee PC to work because I feel the need to write, but when I think of what to write next, it’s not clicking. I know what I need to…
I am a success! What? Did I get an agent? No. Did I get an offer of publication from a major publishing house? No. Did I get a date with Rosario Dawson? No. Yet I am still a success. I have not accomplished any of the above professional goals (and if I never accomplish that…
THE TRIAD SOCIETY is a pre-steam punk fantasy. What does that mean? That means steam technology is in its early advances. I don’t have airships or the like. I have steam-infused water and other similar “inventions!” Reliarach is the first kingdom on the Crescent Sea to develop such technology, the other six kingdoms being in…
I went to lunch across the street, diligently working on the revision of TTS (Otwald is about to meet Crown Princess Klara, which will require some serious scrubbing). The owner’s wife brings out my food and sees me tapping away on my laptop. “No more work,” she says. “It’s time to enjoy ourselves!” I smiled…
I love revision. My love for revision is inversely equivalent to my love for writing queries. When I get into a groove on revising, the words to “Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof change to “Revision,” and I hear the chorus shouting it over and over in my head. I’m 1/3 of the way through…
So I live in New Hampshire (Nashua). I work in Massachusetts (Boston). While this may seem extreme to drive from one state to another for someone living in the middle of a huge state (read any state not in New England, Delaware, Maryland, or Hawaii), it’s not that far. I drive 20-30 minutes to the…
I got a pass on WANTED: CHOSEN ONE, NOW HIRING today. This particular agent has looked at BLACK MAGIC AND BARBECUE SAUCE as well and is very good about giving feedback with rejections. What struck me today is that his comment was very similar to a comment Elizabeth Poole gave me when she beta-read the…
For those of you who do not know, my day job is in publishing as well. I commute to Boston (writing the majority of my manuscripts on the train in and out of the city) and toil away in a cube for a major publisher. This is not the first publisher I’ve worked for. The…