Here we go again!

Today’s quote from the Heavy Ice rewrites: ‘Most of us get one try or less at founding a civilisation’ I know it should be one try or fewer, but Facade Blue doesn’t care.

Point of View

So, today I’m thinking about point of view. I’ve noticed that my natural inclination when beginning books is to start off writing in omniscient POV and then drop into third person when the person whose viewpoint the first scene is in shows up. I did it with Heavy Ice, and I’ve found myself doing it […]

First Contact

So, Heavy Ice is lying fallow until I’ve got enough perspective to see the shape of it and turn it into a second draft, and I’m busy with research for the new thing. Well, I say ‘research’ – for every hour of’Exactly what shape was this particular building, and where can I find an etching […]

Heavy Ice is finished in first draft!

I am listening to James’ ‘Sit Down’ which was the song that was playing when I finished my very first novel (the terrible book about roleplayers which will never see the light of day) and which I’ve played for every first draft I’ve finished since. This book. This infuriating book. I can’t tell you how […]

Lovely Review, Also, Clockwork Tea

Kimberly Chapman (author of Finding Gaia, which you really should give a shot if you like (a) immortals who come over as genuine, complex products of a past era finding their way in the present day, (b) sidekick characters with their own strong opinions, (c) lots of intrigue and action, or (d) a killer ‘wow, […]

I Wish I Didn’t Share A Genre With Theodore Beale

I wish I didn’t share an atmosphere with Theodore Beale. I have no words to describe my disgust and anger at this incident (link to Foz Meadows’ blog post about the incident, because Foz Meadows deserves traffic and racists don’t.) I’d been thinking about putting up a modified version of a post I wrote over […]

New look for the blog

Having bought enough stock art from istockphoto.com to make it worthwhile, I’ve made a new header for the blog. There’s also a new picture of me with one of my cats, because the Internet is for cat photos.

Romance, SF, Hybrids And Newcomers

I’ve been following with interest the discussion that started with Stuart Sharp’s piece about SF romance, and continued in various places that are mostly explained and collated in this Dear Author roundup. To declare my allegiances up front: I love romance and I love SF, and people who diss either genre around me do not […]

In which I get to the point eventually, I promise.

I have not been well. This means this post is kind of blithery, and contains footnotes. So, I have been Not Well, in ways which I am not going to share with the Internet, don’t worry. This means I have been doing a lot of lying in bed listening to podcasts. [1] Most recently I’ve […]

The draft goes ever on and on

I do not love being in the late stages of a book. But one of the things I do love is seeing my characters do things on page 650 that they couldn’t have done, or wouldn’t have thought to have done, on page twelve. Also, I realised last night that Kallisty uses ‘sorcery’ to mean […]