Dear Amazon

This is an open letter to Amazon, with regard to their UK Kindle Store. Dear Amazon: I love the Kindle. I love the convenience of being able to buy books and have them delivered immediately. I love being able to read three-volume Victorian novels without also getting an arm and shoulder workout. But the experience […]

Plot early, plot often

In the ‘good news’ category: the steampunk thing, now tentatively entitled ‘Firebrand’, is chugging closer to being finished in first draft. So then it’ll be time for the second draft and then to send it off to the various people who have very kindly offered (and in Jasmine’s case, been begged) to beta-read it, and […]

Gacked from Julian Griffith

Project: Steampunk Thing tentatively entitled ‘Firebrand’ Deadline: None, fortunately New words written: Couple of thousand Present total word count: 89226 Reason for stopping: Taking a break Mean things: Heroine is disparaging about opera. Reader is forced to spend too much time in a dress shop. Inexplicable discussion of goffering irons. Fun things: Think minor character […]

Titles

No, not ‘how do you address a marquess who is also an Archdeacon’ though I would really not be surprised at all if I did post about that one of these days. Today has not been great, though the only bit that’s really relevant to mention on here is that I thought I had a […]

An excerpt from the steampunk side project

Which is still growing like a weed. When I arrive back at the house, the second post has come and brought with it a copy of Larch’s Monthly Magazine and a couple of letters. One is from Micah Ellrington’s wife, and is concerned entirely with one of her children having the whooping-cough. This cheers me […]

Fifty Shades Of Grey

I’m reading Fifty Shades Of Grey. It’s very weird. It’s basically all about how being into BDSM is just like being a vampire. It’s not a metaphor I’m immediately hostile to, because in my experience if your partner is into any kind of hobby or scene and in particular if that scene could possibly be […]

Side project

I blame the very exciting Waltz on the Wye for the way my writing process seems to have been hijacked by a steampunk side project. Heavy Ice has not been abandoned, it’s just that at present the side project is giving me plot, and usually I have to slog away at plot so I’m taking […]

For no reason…

… here is an excerpt from the ball scene of The Maker’s Mask.

Meet the eligible bachelors of 1994

One of the heroes of Heavy Ice is a diplomat from a political family who is probably no stranger to lists of Eligible Bachelors. (Actually, his younger brother probably comes out a good few places above him on any such list, but never mind) I was thinking about this today, because while I was weeding […]

Saturday snippet: Firesmoke Soup

One of these days I will be organised enough, and get up in time, to do Six Sentence Sunday like Jasmine Ahern does – I always enjoy looking through the posts and seeing the excerpts from so many different kinds of books. Until then, here is a quiet moment with Kallisty’s bandits. The viewpoint character […]