It’s getting to be about that time!
No, not Lent. Better. It’s time for Desert Spear reviews to start popping up!
The first comes from the blog SFF Chat. You may recall that blog editor Simcha won a copy in the Desert Spear ARC Contest by risking life and limb walking a metal beam over a deep [...]
Desert Spear Review at SFF Chat
Semicolons are the Devil
I’ve spent fifteen years in publishing—working as a retailer, editor, copyeditor/proofreader, managing editor, production supervisor, and writer. As a result of these experiences, I have formed some opinions, many of them centered around how subjective the rules of grammar and language style are.
One of those opinions is that semicolons are the devil. I fucking hate [...]
I Know I’m Biased, But…
Aidan Moher asked me for an excerpt from The Desert Spear to post on his SF blog A Dribble of Ink sometime in March. I agreed and took my personal reference ARC to leaf through, looking for something cool to lift out that didn’t have any spoilers.
An hour later, I realize all I’ve done is [...]
Book Review: The Blade Itself
Bias disclosure:
I have no relationship with Joe Abercrombie or his publisher. Never met the guy and haven’t read any of his other work. I picked up this book in part on the recommendations of friends, but partly because Abercrombie is, in the vernacular of The Blade Itself, a Named Man. Online, his name is often [...]
A Note on Book Reviews
I don’t review many books on the Peephole these days. Part of that is a kind of professional awkwardness. When I was blogging in obscurity, I could say whatever I wanted about a book. Say it fucking sucked, speak ill of the author’s mother, whatever. Alternately, I could gush about how awesome it was like [...]
The Daylight War Stage I: The Stepsheet
A lot of people, usually other writers, e-mail me asking questions about my writing process. Love love love to talk process, we writers. I’m not sure where the fascination comes from. I wonder sometimes if it has something to do with all of us feeling insecure. Like deep down, we all feel like we have [...]
The Author’s Catch-22
Aidan at A Dribble of Ink essentially retweeted a post from George RR Martin’s “Not a Blog”, wherein Mr. Martin discusses the current state of the long-awaited A Dance With Dragons, and gives some small insight into his creative process.
Every time GRRM makes a post like this, there is a ripple through the blogosphere as [...]
eBook Wars
So. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, you’ve probably caught wind of the kerfluffle between Amazon.com and Macmillan books. I first discovered that Amazon had delisted all the Macmillan authors when I went online to buy Old Man’s War by John Scalzi and was baffled as to why this [...]
Red Moon
Google alerts sent me a delightful link today, from the Twilight Portugal site. The new Portuguese-language urban fantasy (read: vamp/werewolf soap opera) TV show Lua Vermelha (Red Moon) premiered last night, and featured the Portuguese translation of The Painted Man, O Homem Pintado!
It seems mine is the book of choice for sexy Portuguese vampiresses. You [...]
DSAC Round 2
I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to. Part of this is being super-busy, but another part of it is circumspection, out of a desire not to offer any spoilers about The Great Bazaar or The Desert Spear before people get a chance to read those stories for themselves. In the same vein, [...]