I made the 11-ish hour drive up to Burlington, Massachusetts for Readercon 34 last week. It had been a hot minute since I’d been to a con, COVID saw to that. I did manage a trip to DC in 2021 for WorldCon, but wound up watching most of the panels from my airbnb room due …
…and off to beta readers. This will be the first time anyone other than my lovely spouse will lay eyes on a work almost seven years in the making. Hahahaha, hope it doesn’t suck! Shew. I spent two months reading through one more time and doing line edits, tightening things and choosing better words here, …
Sometime in Fall of 2024, I decided I could finish this draft (number 5 for those at home who are counting, definitely not Draft No. 4) by year’s end. And so there I was, just before Christmas, wrapping up my latest round of edits. “I’m done,” I thought. But then a creeping horror stole over …
As I near the end of the current draft of my novel, I’m becoming more conscious of the weird gamut of emotions I’m experiencing. On the one hand, I love that I’ll soon get to read this latest version of my novel from start to finish. On the other, I begin to doubt and worry …
With apologies to Cory Doctorow. I let go of a few typewriters this holiday season, selling my 1959 Hermes 3000 Script machine and giving two others–the 1957 Sears Tower Commander and the 1953 Smith Corona Skyriter–as gifts. I have to say, it felt good to set them free. I love the idea of other people …
I have a dozen typewriters in my collection, but I’m still on the lookout for these machines: The Olympia SG1, Olivetti Lettera 22, and the Facit TP1. Olympia SG1 First and foremost is the Olympia SG-1. By all accounts, this thing is an elegant workhorse. I love my Royal KMG and my Hermes Ambassador, and …
Inevitably I’ll get to a point in my story where things are boring me, the events aren’t logical in the greater context of the story, or something seemed like a good idea at the time but is no longer working (or all three!). Or I’ll be doing a read-through of my latest draft and there …
Typewriters! In no particular order, these are the typewriters I’ve found since February: This list comprises the typewriters I’ve acquired since my lovely spouse pulled the 1949 KMG out of a pile of stuff bound for the landfill. Outside of the ill-fated attempt to collect beer bottles when I was a kid, I’ve never been …
Maybe it’s just a rhetorical question. So much of the fun of collecting anything is the hunting and finding. Once you actually own it, there might be the fun of getting it up and running, tinkering and cleaning until you can pound out some words without a whole lot of futzing. And then it’s on …
Studies show it’s true. Look, I get it. You dearly want a neat, multi-step process for getting from idea to finished novel. Maybe there are people out there who are able to go step by glorious well-defined step and end up with a work that pleases them (and, ideally, others). Most of us are not …