Other things I Learned From The Goth Scene

Because I’ve been thinking of these all day. – Any scene that’s been around for more than five years or so is liable to get into a sine-wave state of oscillation between ‘The scene is dying! We must recruit new people!’ and ‘New people are coming into the scene! I liked it better without them!’ […]

It’s Business Time

I decided to order business cards to take to Asylum, so that when interesting steampunk people give me their cards I can offer them mine in return, and so that in everyday life when people ask me what I do I don’t have to scribble the name of the website on the back of a […]

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 […]

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.

Things I Already Know People Won’t Like About Firebrand

About half-way through the first round of edits on Firebrand, and then the Beta Crew can take delivery of it and I’ll kick it out of my head until it comes back red-pencilled. As is usual at this stage, I’m noticing things people won’t like about it and thinking ‘Well, I like it’. Thing the […]

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 […]

I write long books.

Today I realised that Kallisty’s uncle Hawkwood Prime is played by Sir Patrick Stewart, which (a) explains why he’s managed to persuade so many people to marry him, and (b) is going to be a serious impediment to killing him off if I find the plot requires that. Today’s writing also featured one of the […]

Random assortment

I like websites that log you in and keep you logged in. I get mildly annoyed about websites that expect you to log in every day, but I realise they’re doing it for security reasons. But websites that keep you logged in for a long but unspecified length of time and then randomly log you […]

A sequel of unfortunate events

I always like it when books have authors’ notes reading ‘This book was a pain in the backside to write’ because it makes me feel like I’m not alone and it gives me hope that they managed to finish a book so there’s no reason why I can’t do the same. At present Heavy Ice […]

Heavy Weather

Aaaaand I’m still having trouble with the construction of Heavy Ice. Honestly, considering the heavy weather I’ve made of it so far, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I came from some kind of universe where novels had stalled out after Tristram Shandy and everyone took to reading epic poems instead, and now here I […]