On Writing

Wherein I ramble about technique, process, etc.

Identity should always be part of the gameplay

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This is sort of a tangential response to John Scalzi’s “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting. Good article; you should read it… and the comments. Yeah, I know, I usually say don’t read the comments. But I think they’re illuminating, if frustrating, in this case. If you’re not a straight white male, it’s a good idea to understand how even the most liberal of them think. If you are a straight white male, Scalzi’s talking to you; listen. I’ve been playing the hell out of Dragon Age and Dragon Age 2 on the Xbox 360 lately. This is partly […]

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An alternate appendix

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Stealing Martha Wells’ idea; I’m going to be posting the occasional deleted scene from my various works over the next few weeks. And since people have asked, I’m starting with the one I read at Comic Con, during my “Spotlight” panel. This would have been the second appendix of The Kingdom of Gods, if the short story “Not the End” hadn’t smacked me between the eyes after I wrote this. Enjoy! APPENDIX 2: Spider Speaks The following is a recorded and transcribed vision of the godling known as Spider (Litaria designation 3301-A, Nahadothan niwwah godling attached to Teman Protectorate, northern

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But, but, but — WHY does magic have to make sense?

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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. -Arthur C. Clarke Any sufficiently analyzed magic is indistinguishable from science. -Agatha Heterodyne (Girl Genius) by way of Larry Niven by way of Clarke La la la can’t hear you. -Me This is a whine, not a rant. I rant when I’m angry; right now I’m just frustrated and annoyed. It’s hard out here for a fantasy writer, after all; there’s all these rules I’m supposed to follow, or the Fantasy Police might come and make me do hard labor in the Cold Iron Mines. For example: I keep hearing that magic

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Ignorant Mail, and Linkspam

/ 18 Comments / On Writing, Pimping, Rantage, Shorts / By

::sigh:: I get emails from readers from time to time, and 99% of these emails are positive and welcome. (Thank you!) But every so often I get one that’s… soooo very not. It isn’t exactly “hate mail”. Generally I only get those via the comments on my more “controversial” blog posts, like when I complain about messed-up video games or movies. (Yeah, I don’t think those are controversial either, but the fact remains; I get more crap over the stuff I watch/play than the stuff I write.) I’m quick on the banhammer, so most of you don’t have to see

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Not 100,000 Kingdoms, but quite a few

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Just got another foreign rights offer! This one’s not signed yet, and I try not to talk about them until they are, but altogether The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is now available or will soon be available in a remarkable number of countries and languages. This is not an exhaustive list (because I’m doing it from memory; always a risky venture), but thus far the book has sold to: Most English-speaking countries (Not sure about India; I’m a little fuzzy on whether everyone in the Commonwealth can buy from UK sellers. Frex Australia can — sometimes — and Canada can’t. It

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Carving a New World

/ 17 Comments / Natter, On Writing / By

Ah, the holidays. That lovely time when lists begin to dominate my life: holiday shopping lists, menus for family meals, packing lists for shipping and travel, eight million flavors of to do. I’m sure all of you reading this post, in any culture can relate. But there’s one list I’m working on right now that I suspect only the fellow writers among you will fully grok. Here’s what it would look like if I jotted it down on a sticky note: !!! Synop Characters Plot? Test Chapter 1 Test Chapter 2 Proof of Concept R&D (books and stuff) R&D (practical;

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A Writer’s Education

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Apologies in advance; not gonna talk about writing for the moment. Instead I’m going to talk about the writing life, in a way. See, I took the GRE on Saturday. I did OK. Astounding on the verbal and abysmal on the quantitative, as I expected. I’ve been using my verbal skills steadily and with increasing intensity throughout my adult life, after all, and I haven’t done combinatorics in 20 years. No amount of short-term cramming can really make up for that, and I didn’t expect it to. All I really wanted to do was not embarrass myself, and I think

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Thinking Out Loud

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In honor of The Kingdom of Gods finally being out in all markets, I decided to share this: an old post from my other blog, which was originally friendslocked because it contained early thoughts on the latter books of the Inheritance Trilogy. Thought it might be fun to share because it’s a look inside my head during the earliest development phase of the book you can now hold in your hand and read, and because it contains one of my “eureka” moments — the kind of thing that led me to name this blog “Epiphany”. The “we” that I’m referring

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