2013

…And Hanukkah, Saturnalia, Sunreturn, Kwanzaa, Festivus, and whatever else anyone wants to celebrate. In the dark times of the year, we all need a little joy and sparkle. Which is why I took this two-year-old necklace, the first piece I made when I got back into right-angle-weave beadwork: And reworked it into this: Because I…

Read More Merry Christmas

A good workspace can enhance both inspiration and production, but it won’t magically do all the artist’s work. (This fits writing-related workspace issues, too.) One of the recent would-be insults leveled at me, as an artist: I ‘worked out of a kitchen’. The person who said it was possibly deflecting scrutiny from their own unprofessional…

Read More Craft Credo #3: Work is more important than workspace

Singer in Rhunshan is now in its more or less final form, hovering around 16,000 words/75 pages. Too big for a short story now, but respectable for a novelette. It is a romantic fantasy action/adventure with discreet hints of a male/male/female love triangle (but no actual sex in this part of the story), and a…

Read More ‘Singer in Rhunshan’ novelette inches closer to publication

I just looked (for the first time in years) at the backlog of letters I sent to my then-literary agent back in the mists of antiquity – roughly two decades ago. Our association began when one of the founding agents heard me reading a contest-winning fantasy short story* at a big international SFF convention. It…

Read More Yes, I was that clueless

Among my brain’s many flaws is the complete inability to write a decent first draft. I write and revise at the same time. I’m doing it right now, since there have already been three versions of the first sentence. A dozen, if I count that I am writing on a tablet today. Otgerwise, all ny…

Read More The Revision Curse

I do most of my reading online these days, but I still love the physical feel of a real book in my hands. (With book artists, that’s probably a given.) I really like bookmarks – the civilized answer to turning down pages. I’ve made them from silver sheet, carved bone, and antique ivory piano keys,…

Read More Bookmarks and other anachronisms

Over on AbsoluteWrite.com, author Richard Garfinkle had some great things to say about worldbuilding – from a reader’s point of view. “One of the things I often say at writer’s workshops is that readers who get into the story will often push the edges of what is written. They’ll wonder about the lives of the…

Read More More about worldbuilding

Today’s art-related Public Service Announcement is all about a company called Alien Skin, and a filter package called Snap Art. I’ve been lucky enough to use versions of this going all the way back to its introduction. I recently had the honor of helping beta-test Version 4. Wow. Okay, backtracking here. This will mean nothing…

Read More Art PSA: Alien Skin Snap Art 4