Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Yuletide is here again. Well, technically it has just passed, as the days are once again growing longer. The festive season is festooned with distractions. Work parties, family gatherings, buying gifts. Wrapping gifts, which, when it comes down to it, do I actually enjoy? I enjoy finishing the …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! In the land of bots does the genuine human rule? Unfortunately not, at present. The Gardener and The Goddess ebook is on sale for the next week! Grab it now! I am reading The Inner Game of Tennis (again) as part of my re-engagement with playing pool regularly, …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! My collage assembly plus extras has gained some momentum, so I am making good progress. There has in the process of doing this work been an ever-growing sense of unease. I’ve come to a conclusion or two about where it was coming from, and what to do about …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I watched an interesting video on why folk do not read self-published fantasy. You can watch it here. I get the concerns of readers. I understand the option offered by published works, and the great undiscovered fantasies of the past, of around the world. There’s a lot there …
Continue reading An Unexpected Path to Literary Freedom. (Spoiler Alert – it’s Obscurity!)
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Writing a novel is often a question of timing and willpower. I’m at that cross-roads right now. I’ve been putting together the collage of pieces and the opening is taking firmer shape with later chronology tightening. I’m beginning to do pieces of connective writing and elaboration. My pre-story …
Continue reading Willpower, Timing, and a Return to Strange Highways
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Last couple of days to snag a cheap kindle version of The Killer and The Dead! “Get them while they’re cooling on the slab!” Mortuary joke. The lead character works there, when he’s not, you know, offing people to keep his family fed. The ungrateful swine. Happy Hallowe’en …
Hello my friends and the occasional relative! Second October sale of ebook version of The Killer and The Dead starts later this week! Check it out! I have begun to assemble my collage of pieces that will become The Red Palace this week. Why, because I wrote a section that ended with the single biggest …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I have a cold. I’m still writing. Four more collage pieces since the last blog. The book is beginning to take shape. Key moments have received their first pass. The act of writing is the act of decision making and consciously or not, plenty of decisions have been …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Pool and life, pool and writing, it really does offer a lot of lessons/provide interesting parallels for me. Thank you to some of my regulars here who said hello over there on my pool playing diary! It really is just me talking to myself in public, which I …
Continue reading Writing, practice, and Mindfulness: A Meander
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! First off, the first of two October sales of The Killer and The Dead starts tomorrow! (UK and US) 1st to 8th of October. Start off the spooky season with a serial killer facing down the undead and his own familial dysfunction! You know you want to. I …
Roderick T. Macdonald 