February Reads

This update is both late because of megabusyness** and slight because once again I spent the month mainly reading an unpublished novel again, but I did get through a few shorts in recent issues of Interzone, Black Static, Clarkesworld and Lightspeed. None of the pieces I took in from Clarkesworld really stood out for me […]

A Drabble Wot I Wrote

Just realised that a drabble that I wrote last year has been published over at 100 Word Story, a cracking micro-fiction site. It’s only wee, but it counts in terms of my ten story challenge. One down, nine to go.

The Seven R’s (or Eight, or Nine)

For all my artistic ambitions as declared so forthrightly last month, there was always going to come a point where all the various things that demand energy were going to clash, leading ultimately to failure to really progress much of note. This week I have been Revising the final draft of the current day job project […]

Conventionality

Round about this time every year I start to check the calendar to see how many weeks are left until Eastercon, one of my cherished biannual breaks spent in the company of my excellent friends in the genre writing community. And, on finding out that it’s still six weeks distant (*sigh*!) I’m always a little […]

At long last: The Cyber Puppets!

Have just this second bought the brand-spanking squeaky new Kindle edition of Angus McAllister’s The Cyber Puppets from Brain In A Jar. For me this is where ebooks come into their own, making available books that for whatever reason previously missed their chance. I first ordered The Cyber Puppets – I don’t know – ten years […]

More on the muse

Reading back yesterday’s thoughts on Hal’s marvellous muse post, there’s the possibility that readers might see an implied criticism along the lines of being too precious about one’s “art” when a professional writer should be more concerned with seeing to the requirements of one’s “business”**. Obviously, that’s not what I meant. Not at all. Every […]

The trained MonkeyBrat

Just read on Hal Duncan’s blog possibly the most accurate and entertaining description of muse-wrangling and dealing with so-called writer’s block Every Committed To The Page**, and it delighted me almost as much as the awesome news that he’s finally finished TESTAMENT. There is SO much truth in what Hal says. It is *most* true […]

Novels, and me

Following this morning’s reading post, I had a nice twitter conversation with Juliet McKenna about how one of the greatest skills a novelist can learn is to hide their Grand Plan sufficiently to make the characters’ actions seem naturalistic throughout the book. You’re saying: “of course it is, that’s obvious!” I know you are. And […]

January reading

Kicking off last year’s monthly feature where I attempt to jot down some notes on what I’ve enjoyed reading-wise during the month. During February and March I’m going to attempt read the BSFA shortlisted novels, but January’s selection was a bit more of a lucky bag. The Sword Of Rhiannon by Leigh Brackett – a […]

Author: neilwilliamson