The journal and sometimes blog of author, Joseph L. Selby.
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Arcadia
When I was a young lad, only twelve, and had decided in earnest that I was going to be a novelist, I began tap tap tapping away on my Apple IIGS (Appleworks, baby!). There were a number of ideas bumping around in my head. I wrote stuff for Jim Henson’s Storyteller (which in no way…
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Knowledge = (the battle)/2
I was watching a movie the other day and character A says of character B that he is a marksman. He can strike a man square in the chest at 50 meters. This was a modern piece with modern weaponry. There are different levels of writing what you know. The soul of some things can…
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The Rhythm of My H–Fingers
I wrote today. By itself this is not a big deal. I write a minimum of five days a week. Near the end of JH, I was writing seven days a week1. But I had a powerful flu that caused me to do not much of anything but sit on the couch under a blanket…
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At the End of All Things
More and more often, one of the arguments against ebooks I’m hearing is: When society collapses and there is no more power to charge the ebook or run the servers or what have you, I’ll be happy with my paper books. It’s a hyperbolic example, but not for the reasons I think they’re intending. I…
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Timing is Everything
Like the classic joke goes, “In comedy, timing is… … …everything.” I’m reading the last in the Shadowmarch tetralogy by Tad Williams, SHADOWHEART. It’s a less than stellar name and most people don’t know that a four-book series is a tetralogy1, but Tad Williams is the reason I write fantasy–the reason2. So we’re going to…
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Germ Warfare
So here’s my suggestion: Write a guest post on a popular blog and then get sick when it runs, causing you to miss the brief exposure it provides you. Yay my immune system! I hate being sick. Mostly, I hate it because I’m sick. I doubt anyone sits at their computer writing a blog post…
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Guest Blog at Pimp My Novel
Eric is on vacation this week, so I wrote a guest post at Pimp My Novel. You should go check it out.
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Arbitrary Milestones
I passed 10,000 words on THE 7TH SACRIFICE this morning. This pleases me. I don’t know why it pleases me more than passing 9,000 words or 11,000 words. 11,000 is more than 10,000 so why doesn’t that please me more? And it can’t be some ridiculous “if I pass 10,000 then I know I’ll finish…
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A Good and Happy Life
Occasionally I’ll rant in my head1. Something touched me off yesterday. I think it was a webcomic or a response to a webcomic. I don’t know. The jist of it was that an author uses his medium as a pulpit for his own opinions. At face value, this can be true. The context of the…
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Hurry Up, Technology!
I’ve made this complaint before, but we need those dream records they have in “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.” I had a sequel/continuation to a previous dream. Both of them were awesome. Both of them vanished from my brain the moment I woke up. I have little broken pieces, images mostly, floating around in my…
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Find the Fun in the Boring
I wrote chapter 2 for 7Sac today. This is a big deal because it’s the first fully original chapter of this version. Pieces of chapter 1 got held over from my first attempt and much more of it came from the wind sprint I wrote. Chapter 2 was wholly fresh. I actually tried to write…