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Posts Tagged ‘Elizabeth Hand’

Minor Notes

Some disconnected notes:

  • I’ve started Elizabeth Hand’s novel Generation Loss and I’m loving it so far.  I mean, don’t take my word for it, take PW’s and Peter Straub’s and numberless other awesome reviewers’, but this as of page 40 or so this is a cutting, well-crafted book.  And it looks like there’ll even be a mystery thrown in, so that’s cool.
  • Focusing on word count has become a distraction for me.  At worst I was checking my word count every few minutes.  I haven’t been an egg-timer writer before, but I’ve started working with timers, forty-five minutes at a stretch and go.  I have a more or less constant rate of productivity, so I end up doing the same amount of work (if I write for the same amount of time) but I spend more of that time thinking about story and less about word production, which removes stress.
  • On that note, I’m falling back in love with my Alphasmart Neo.  Scrivener, I do appreciate you, but there’s nothing quite like a purpose-built device.  (Also, 700 hours of battery life!)  The small screen isn’t a problem for most of my work, but does make it harder to keep track of complex conversations.
  • Karin Tidbeck’s short story collection is phenomenal and you can read more about it on NPR.
  • One major effect of writing full-time is that I’m more focused on work and less on, well, the internet.  As a result, I get even more impressed by writers who manage to handle both at once.  Though, admittedly, I’m working hard on the next novel now.  Maybe in the future I’ll be able to get back to my usual diet of cat .gifs.  For the moment, though, exposure to random internet news has dropped precipitously.
  • If you’re in San Francisco, come to my signing at Borderlands on Saturday!  If you’re in Los Angeles, come to my signing at Mysterious Galaxy on Sunday!  More about both of these on my events page!

Readercon Aftermath

Still reeling.  A friend visited from out of town, which as Confucius reminds us, is a pleasure–“you peng zi yuanfang lai, bu yi le hu?”  (Characters to follow once I figure out why Chinese support is broken on WordPress…)  But, unfortunately, my friend’s visit coincided with Readercon, so rather than abandoning either him or the con, I had to squeeze a weekend’s worth of conning into a single crazy day.  And what a day!  Excellent times with my editors at Tor, and an evening of great drinks with John Crowley, Jim Morrow, and a host of other wonderful folks whose company always makes me feel like the dim bulb on the string.

And, of course, my annual visit to the dealer’s room.  This must be what BotCon feels like for toy people.  (That’s to say, people who care about toys, not people who are toys.  BotCon for people who are toys must feel pretty… strange.)

Much more varied than my usual haul of Zelazny paperbacks.  Of course, I now own most of Z.-‘s back catalog, so it’s time to branch out.  I’m woefully under-read when it comes to Heinlein–I went through my Starship Troopers phase like so many young geeks (though it was the Shakespeare bit in “Have Spacesuit, Will Travel” that gave me the chills), but this’ll be my first time through either Moon or Space Cadet.

Very excited about the more modern books in the pile, too.  I’ve heard cool things about all of them, and it’ll be great to see for myself.