The Blue Night Blog

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Yesterday, Ireland became the first country in the world to legalize same-sex marriage via an overwhelming popular vote. Yup, Ireland. The same country that only decriminalized homosexuality in the early 90s, and saw its staunch traditional Catholicism reel from recent waves of child sex-abuse scandals among clergy and affiliated lay groups. Where the infamous ‘Magdalene…

Read More Ireland did it. The Millennials helped.
by 3 comments on "Context reading in Adult SF&F"

…or, ‘I Am Not Five, and I Don’t Read Like This:’ I’ve recently followed some online critiques of other people’s science fiction and fantasy works-in-progress. I noticed a common factor: some readers’ inability or unwillingness to deduce words from context. One example: a friend’s Norse-flavored take on the Tam Lyn folktale held seven or eight…

Read More Context reading in Adult SF&F
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Back in 1998-1999, I needed another last-minute entry for the Beadwork Magazine/Interweave Press miniature beadwork exhibition ‘Up:Close’. I made this piece in three days: ‘Mom’s Mutant Cactus’. Dimensions: 3″ x 3″ x 3″. It’s a mutant because it doesn’t precisely mirror an existing cactus species, and because it has a blue flower. Until we get…

Read More Mom’s Mutant Cactus
Aside 2 comments on "Content writing for blogs"

A handy tip on writing for your blog: do most of it yourself or don’t do it at all.

Sure, cultivate guest blog trades for relevant and relatable posts. It’s fun and lets you network with peers. But your blog should be about your voice and vision, not someone else’s. Especially not someone you’ve hired to scrape and repackage web topics. Otherwise you’re not blogging, you’re just a spamming spammer who spams. 

If you can’t write well enough for publication, take some classes or use free online English-as-a-second-language resources until you can. 

Especially if your blog is your business contact and showcase.

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C’mon, you gotta know this one. It went from pun to meme to geek celebration? May the Fourth be with you. It’s a bittersweet holiday for me. ‘Star Wars’ was my Sf&F call to action back in ’77. It galvanized my attention like Tolkien had a few years before: big settings, classic stories slightly retold,…

Read More Happy Star Wars Day
by 1 comment on "Intergalactic Medicine Show: free fiction"

I’ve witnessed some extraordinary discussions over the past month, as the Hugo Awards controversy continues in the science-fiction and fantasy community. Eventually, I’ll provide links (cribbed and cited from a couple of diligent AW sources) to the best explanations of what happened and why. Part of the fallout? Free stories listed online by authors, editors,…

Read More Intergalactic Medicine Show: free fiction
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…is adding a kickass prologue that brings the fantasy novel up past 85,000 words, which is the minimum that several great Big Five publishers want to see. Once I finish minor tweaking to answer comments from four beta readers, I should see a book around 87K. More to the point, it’s a good book. I’m…

Read More More happiness
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Especially in America, there is immense corporate pressure to have a college degree – as a meal-ticket to a better job and future, not necessarily as a proof of one’s intellectual skills. When the fact of having the degree is more important than the process of earning the degree, the stage is set for fraud…

Read More Thesis mills
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If all you write are erotic ‘romance’ books where the plot is a flimsy excuse for more (and more graphic) contractually obligated sex scenes…then yeah, you might burn out on writing sex scenes altogether.

 

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In my typical ADD fashion I was reorganizing fabric yesterday, in preparation for some housecleaning. Found snippets of printed map fabric left over from one of the award ribbons projects. Remembered a possible book project I’d sketched, using digitized fabric prints of some old Southwestern mini-landscape paintings I’d sold to galleries years before. Why yes,…

Read More Dryland Codex (in progress, post 1)
by 2 comments on "Selfie or not?"

There’s a writers group on LinkedIn I was considering joining. I’m not, now, because they require a headshot photo of all prospective members. (I did end up joining, after all; see update in Comments below.) I don’t have many pictures of myself not costumed or otherwise masked. They’re around. I’m just not happy about adding…

Read More Selfie or not?
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While browsing for out-of-copyright quotes about maps, journeys, and wanderlust (for an upcoming book art project), I stumbled across some incredible wooden bathymetric charts. ‘Below The Boat’ creates unique, breathtaking maps of laser-cut, stained, and layered birch plywood, each following a coastal area’s underwater terrain. It’s a deceptively simple concept, brought to reality by skilled…

Read More Below The Boat