I’ve sold a short-short called “Mira” to Sword and Sorceress #25, scheduled to be out in November. Sword and Sorceress was Emma Bull’s first sale, and, as Emma is one of my heroes (no, I’m not kidding), I’ve always wanted to have a story in that anthology. I’m delighted. The story came out of a conversation with Reesa, so special thanks to her. Smooches, too.
Category: Writing
Progress report, and thank-you
I’m on the last chapter of Tiassa, and I want to take a moment to thank Alexx Kay for his timeline, Mark Mandel for Cracks and Shards, and everyone who has been maintaining the Dragaera Wiki; these resources have been especially useful over the last couple of days.
Another Tiassa Update
After several conversations with Reesa, what I think is the last chunk of Tiassa has fallen into place well enough that I can see where I’m going. I think. Maybe. For the moment. So I believe I’m on track to finish it. I have noticed that, with each of the last several books, I have pissed off some percentage of Vlad fans, and this makes me sad. So, with this book, I’m hoping to piss off all of them. I hate half measures.
I have something important to tell you
To all writers, and especially TV writers, just thought you should know that the riff where someone says, “I have something important to tell you,” and then gets interrupted before being able to tell it, is now played out. In fact, it was played out the first time it was used. If your goal is to make me think, I guess it works; but what I think is, “Geez, what a lousy writer.”
Maybe you can come up with some clever twist on it, where that is what happens, but it doesn’t seem to be what happens, so that the audience doesn’t realize that you’re pulling that stunt until the reveal. If you can do that, fine. If not, I think you ought to take that gimmick and put it into the bag next to woman-who-kicks-ass-because-her-kid-is-threatened and drop it into Lake Michigan; with all the pollution already there it’ll hardly be noticed.
Thank you. That is all.
Tiassa Update
It’s been pointed out to me that I’ve been slacking off on giving progress reports.
Tiassa is being difficult. Between conversations with Reesa and with Neil, I’ve been convinced to try something a bit challenging. I think it’s going to be really cool if it works, but at the moment I’m beating my head against it about halfway through. Judging by past experience, I imagine in a week or so things will fall into place and I’ll be moving forward.