• construction

    Building a Garage

    So the neighbors behind us are having a garage built and the delay it is taking has got me to remembering the first garage we contracted to have built. A garage is actually a pretty simple thing to build — the hardest part is the garage pad. So back when we needed a garage at our first home, I was tempted to build it myself. Luckily my wife talked me out of it. See, a garage is simple, but if you don’t know what you are doing you’ll spend forever on it. And now in our second ‘subdivision under construction’ I see it all the time, the garages taking days,…

  • Writing Resources

    Membership in SFCanada

    For those who don’t know I’ve been a member of SFCanada since I became eligible. From the SFCanada website itself: SF Canada is a bilingual association of Canadian writers, artists and other professionals working in the fields of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Speculative fiction. I’m glad I have the membership — the members are quick to answer questions and offer guidance, as needed. If you are interested in Canadian SF — and beyond — its worthwhile to check out the blog from time to time. That’s another perk of being a member — we all have access to the blog to post our triumphs to a wider audience than…

  • My Life

    Ebooks, DRM, Social Networks and Making a Living as Writer in the Future Now

    I’ve read several articles recently on eBooks and how they are/are not changing the industry. Most recently at the DRM news I viewed a solid summary of the situation from a consumer’s point of view and felt I’d add a few more points to the argument, as a reader and writer. Digital Rights Management and Competing Formats When I bought my first handheld computer (PDA) I immediately started downloading various book readers. I soon gravitated towards mobipocket and bought hundreds of dollars worth of novels through Fictionwise. And then I realized that I would never be able to read the vast majority of these on any other device! They used…

  • Fixes,  My Life

    Ha! Take that HP!

    I have an HP laptop. I’ve been very happy with it, going on two years now. But I’ve had two issues with it. The first took a long time to figure out how to resolve (it was an issue where the keyboard would switch into French mode and really mess with things. Fix was to adjust regional settings to get rid of the French option.) The second issue is that whenever I adjusted the volume an onscreen thingy would appear showing (inaccurately) the volume level, usually screwing with whatever program I had running (note to HP — onscreen volume indicator is a not a good idea, o.k. thankyou). Well I…

  • Website

    Website tweaks

    Made a few changes to the theme I’m using on this site. Let me know if you like ’em or not. 1. Added a comment count on the main screen so it is easy to see which posts have had activity 2. Posts older than a day or so will have ads appear in them 3. Weekly I’ll rotate a post in on the header. This will be my featured post of the week.

  • My Life

    Novel Progress

    I announce most of my novel progress through twitter but thought I’d do an actual quick post summarizing things. I am writing the second draft of the novel, the middle bits having turned out to be a complete rewrite with the beginning and ending looking like they will stay close to the original draft. I’m on Chapter 18 of what will be twenty seven or twenty eight chapters and sitting at 70 000 words. I want to end up around one hundred thousand words but we’ll see, it looks like it might go a little long. I think I will probably start shopping it around in early July and begin…

  • My Life

    Empire Avenue — Communities

    At the risk of turning this blog into an Empire Avenue fansite I’ll venture another post about the ‘ave. A new feature came out with the latest update to Empire Avenue — communities. This allows users to create and join groups of likeminded influencers in such realms as videogames, books, writing, or whatever else tickles their fancy. As Adriel Hampton recently discussed on his blog these communities are the chance for people to get in early on Empire Avenue and carve out an area of expertise. Basically be the dominant dog in whatever interests in them before Empire Avenue goes mainstream. In the first run of the Empire Avenue beta…

  • Writing Resources

    Writing History

    I was prompted (after reading a recent post by Brad Torgersen that brought me to an older post by Jay Lake where he discussed his publication history and how he has amassed over a thousand rejections) to put some of my own stats up here. 284 Rejections before first small press sale 397 Rejections before first semi-pro 505 Rejections before first pro 592 total subs with twenty or so stories out at market now By the end of 2010 I will have had twelve stories published in total, not counting reprints and such.

  • Writing Resources

    Canadian SF Works Database

    The Canadian SF Works Database is a useful reference guide to what has been published by Canadians. I’ve updated the 2010 list with my three stories published so far this year. I’m expecting to add at least two more to this list — “Digital Rights”, my Writers of the Future Winner, will be available this summer and “The Daughter’s Oath” is slated to appear in the Ricasso Press Anthology Through Blood and Iron. Now I just have to start selling some stories that will appear in 2011…