By Kelly Robson I’ll always be grateful to Steven Barnes. At Orycon 2012, he passed on advice that made a huge difference to my writing. Steven said, when we get a story idea, we usually know either the character or the problem. To develop the story, we can ask ourselves the following questions: If we […]
Read More 2 Simple, Awesome Pieces of Characterization AdviceBy Nicole Mortillaro When we think of Mars, we think of a dry, desolate planet. But beneath the dust of Mars lies frozen water, and a new study has found that erosion is exposing that water ice. Researchers using several satellites, including the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE), have […]
Read More Erosion on Mars Reveals Water Ice: LOTS of It!By Shane Snow The other day, a friend and I were talking about becoming better writers by doing a “reading level analysis” of our work. Scholars have formulas for automatically estimating reading level using syllables, sentence length, and other proxies for vocabulary and concept complexity. After the chat, just for fun, I ran a chapter from […]
Read More Reading Level Analysis Will Change the Way You WriteBy Anastasia Stepanova (translated from Russian) … And here we are flying over the uninhabited island of Devon and we observe a strange picture: in the distance below, a few white points swish. Common sense suggests: these are the most dangerous inhabitants of the Arctic – polar bears. But the closer the plane to the middle of the […]
Read More The Mars 160 ProgramBy Morgan Daimler It’s generally assumed in Western culture today that elves, and more widely many types of fairies, have pointed ears and the image has become so ingrained in popular culture as to be a trope. Yet why do we picture elves and fairies with pointed ears, when most descriptions from European folklore^ emphasize […]
Read More Why Do Elves Have Pointed Ears?Song of Susannah by Stephen King My rating: 3 of 5 stars Read for the Second Best Reading Challenge, the Apocalypse Now! Reading Challenge, the High Fantasy Reading Challenge, and the Read the Sequel Reading Challenge. This novel was nominated for the Locus Award. I’d almost forgotten all of this one in my re-read. This […]
Read More Book Review: Song of Suzannah by Stephen KingReleasing my book trailer for the final installment of the Wyrd West Chronicles for the first year! This turned out to be a long one: unedited, it’s 45,000 words! Wyrd West publication will resume in 2019. This year, I’ll still be producing the print collection, and I’ll still be putting out the audiobook (or perhaps […]
Read More Book Trailer: The Widow’s Gambit (Wyrd West Chronicles #6)By Doris Elin Salazar If you’ve ever wondered what kind of weather Jon Snow faces as he fights against White Walkers in the hit television fantasy series “Game of Thrones,” the conditions are about the same as they are in Fairbanks, Alaska, according to a new climate simulation of the fictitious realm. Plus, dragons scorching up Westeros […]
Read More ‘Game of Thrones’ Climate Simulator Explains Crazy Weather of WesterosShards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold My rating: 5 of 5 stars Read for the Military Spec Fic Reading Challenge, the Second Best Reading Challenge, the Women of Genre Fiction Reading Challenge, the Hard Core Sci-Fi Reading Challenge, and the Space Opera Reading Challenge. This book was nominated for the Locus Award. My opening […]
Read More Book Review: Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster BujoldBy Himanshu Goenka An unusual star about 550 light-years away in the constellation Pisces is known for its erratic dimming episodes, but it turns out RZ Piscium may also be doing something else not commonly seen. The star may be actively destroying the planets and planetesimals in orbit around it and then consuming the remains. […]
Read More A Cannibal Star
