Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! This week finds me breaking out of one funk, and cognizant of another. First, I have been doing a close reading of the manuscript, and have been noticing the little things that need to be addressed: small fixes for flow. Read 90 pages today, found one misplaced ‘and’ …
Justified and Ancient
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Notes from the week. Fallout Spoilers below in #2. I am back on track, faced my fear and read my manuscript again. I can totally sympathize with the writers of yesteryear who threw away or burned entire books after deciding them to be trash, but I think the …
Fallout versus Halo: Mystery box deathmatch
Hello my friends and the occasional relative! These have been the weeks of late arrival in the blogosphere for me. I’ve put something out every Tuesday for a year and more now. Small potatoes for some. An achievement for others. As you all know, I have a Vast Global Reach™ (VGR), and I take that …
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I’ll think of a title later… (The Procrastinator’s Credo)
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! This has been a week either of failure, or of tremendously successful procrastination. I can’t lie, I have done not a thing on the book. I opened the file a few times and glanced at the legend ‘Chapter 1’, but then looked away. Why? Well, last week I …
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Fighting off a body blow
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Procrastination and doubt. I have written about doubt before, in a series I think. It was quite a long time ago. I thought I had compartmentalized my doubt: not exactly put it away, but perhaps contained it. I felt confident I had developed the tools and the knowledge …
Reading aloud to the Demon of Perfectionism
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Okay, so the copy edit is complete. One more hill climbed, another mountain ahead. I have started the read aloud proofing pass, and am 5.5 to 7% of the way through that, depending on criteria chosen. No graphical representation employed. So far I have added and removed equal …
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Halo Season 2 Finale: Mystery Box Explosion Edition
So. That was that. First impressions immediately after watching. Please recall I have watched this show once through, and not with insanely close attention, so if there are actually explanations for the many things that annoyed me, great, but they weren’t clear enough for me to catch in one viewing, which is a narrative problem …
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Halo: Mystery Box Edition (And my books are on Sale – Buy them!)
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! 97% of copy edit complete. Two things this week. One, as of today both my books are on sale in the UK and USA, in the ebook edition anyway. Continue your recovery from St. Patrick’s day overindulgence by sitting down with a good book. That’s an order, soldier! …
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Obscure words and stones in shoes
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Almost there! I am 91.6% or 93.2% of the way through the copy edit, depending on criteria used. Hopefully next weekend it will be done, and on to proofing. This week I discovered I used word in an unusual fashion. I used ‘bulled’ as a verb, to indicate …
Dune 2 and the difficulty of story execution
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Progress continues with the copy edit now 80-85% of the way there, depending on the criteria used. Finish line in sight. Reread and proofing remain. I saw Dune 2 this afternoon. No spoilers, but I feel a little let down by it, after loving the first film. There …
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Roderick T. Macdonald 