The most important question for a storyteller is the one asked by anxious readers who are glued to the story…”And then what happened?” In any of its variant forms, this question means that so far the story is functioning as it should. The glue itself varies with the reader…I remember books praised by other kids, Read More…
Tag: Vatta
Words, Words, and Word Software
My traditional lament for the demise of Word*Star and spot of loathing for MS Word: o waily woe (lament) and grrrr (spot of loathing.) Word*Star did not lose files or parts of files unless you made a really stupid mistake with a dot command. Which I did, once. (Once was enough! That whole unversal action Read More…
NewBook Charges On
80,000 words on May 13. There’ve been some “blank” days on which other stuff happened, and of course lots of other stuff is happening to everybody everywhere. But NewBook is well past any concern about “Will it gel into a book?” It’s definitely going to make a book, though “But will it be a GOOD Read More…
Mid-January Progress
New Book is at 170 manuscript pages, 34, 280 words, and the plot is thickening. I’m limited in time for it right now, as the legally required reports must be done by their deadlines, but the book needs a daily or almost daily infusion of time and thought and energy…so while it’s not moving *fast* Read More…
Progress and Regress
There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that the new Vatta book has hit 50 pages, and though it’s going slowly, it’s still alive so far. Ky and Rafe and Stella sound like themselves, and the twins are a hoot. The bad news is that Audible has gone bananas, peanuts, and crazy-cake Read More…
Updates
The gorgeous but unpredictable little mare who bucked me off and kicked my husband (same maneuver; she probably didn’t intend to hit him) in mid-February finally sold to someone in California, hurray, hurray. Until she’s transported, she’ll be out of that barn and into another site to gain weight for the trip (she’s not bony, Read More…
Copy Edits!
Copy edits arrived this morning. The work space is set up now, with dictionary and Chicago Manual of Style at hand, and several sharp pencils. This is the *next to last* step for me (checking page proofs is the last) and one that’s very important. Even so, if you find a typo in the final Read More…
And Four To Go
Four days to COLD WELCOME’s release, that is. But let’s get on with the story (my hands are hurting so this may be a short segment, and following the POVs may be a bit rough.) There may be other foursomes or fours in hand or other fours around in this Interlude story. You never know, Read More…
And a Reviewer said…
From Booklist‘s review: “Moon returns to hard sf after nearly eight years, visiting familiar characters from the Vatta’s War series. Though it is intended as an alternate entry in the series, readers need not have read the previous books to enjoy this one; Moon provides enough backstory to fill in any blanks. A gripping page-turner Read More…
More Zeros, More Progress
There’ve been some hitches in the work on the book lately, but some reworking of sections this week seems to have unkinked things again. Tonight I hit 110,000 words, and today’s words feel like good words rather than just “I have to make the wordage if it means writing I can’t think, I don’t know, Read More…