What’s Up Wednesday? The freakin’ Polar Vortex!

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us!

What I’m reading:

Well, I just finished the ‘Lockstep’ serial in Analog magazine, loved the ending, but I’ve still got lots of magazine stories to read. Also finished ‘Vampire Diaries: Shadow Souls’ from the library, and been catching up on podcasts, but I just bought me some new books at Audible: The Handmaid’s Tale, Dune, Samdman Slim, and Thuvia Maid of Mars.

What I’m writing:

Finished the draft synopsis of “Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale,” and started getting back to revisions of  “Gotta Have that Look.” Once again having issues trying to figure out how much critique feedback to take and what to ignore, sigh.

What inspires me right now:

The Kitchen Scale soundtrack, Castle, Stringing Words, and the new Odfellows newsletter.

What else I’ve been up to:

Not very much. We drove around looking at new office locations for my day job team yesterday; looks like we have to be moved by March at the latest. Calling around to family making plans for my sister’s birthday. 🙂

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What’s Up (is finally back on a) Wednesday!

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us! After skipping Wednesdays for the holidays, and fudging the date last week for IWSG, it’s great to be back on Wednesday.

What I’m reading:

Still plenty of magazine stories on the Kindle. Catching up on F&SF’s November/December issue at the moment. I didn’t really follow ‘Success’ but rather liked “Through Mud One Picks a Way” and “Hell for Company.” Still listening to the library digital audiobook of “Vampire Diaries: Shadow Souls.”

What I’m writing:

Finished the revision of “Orpheus and the Cameraman” I’ve been working on, yay! Also finished my Making Magic exercises with Kitchen Scale, and started the synopsis/outline.

What inspires me right now:

Soundtracks and collage! Odyssey Team Ambitious friends, and talking about conventions and markets and local workshops.

What else I’ve been up to:

Made it into Toronto for the Buffy Fan club dinner, which was a lot of fun. The cold weather has me mostly hunkered down and working on creative stuff, which is definitely a good thing.

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

What’s Up Wednesday, whistling merrily on by…

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us! This Wednesday’s post was slightly delayed on account of IWSG. 🙂 It’s been a few weeks since I updated WUW, since it was on hiatus for Christmas and New Year’s.

What I’m reading:

Just finished another Discworld book from the local library, “Reaper Man”, which I enjoyed a lot. Discworld Death gets some of the best lines:

“There is no hope but Us. There is no mercy but Us. There is no Justice. There is Just Us… But We must care… What can the harvest hope for, if not the care of the Reaper Man?”

I’m also enjoying the first digital audiobook I’ve borrowed from the library, “Shadow Souls” from the Vampire Diaries Return series. I’ve read the penultimate installment of “Lockstep”, and “Life Flight” by Brad Torgenson, both from the March 2014 issue of Analog, and enjoyed them both quite a lot. (Life Flight has one plot hole I noticed, which led me to a somewhat disturbing and thought-provoking fanwank.)

What I’m writing:

Mostly working on a quick revision of “Orpheus and the Cameraman” to submit to critters for feedback. I also need to get working on the full novel synopsis for “Alien Love on a Kitchen Scale.” 🙂

What inspires me right now:

Hmm… definitely not the lovely winter weather at the moment. Mythology, my writer friends, and the character cafe over at nanowrimo.org.

What else I’ve been up to:

A lot of critiquing, catching up on some good tv shows both old and new, and sleeping off a 48-hour cold.

What about you? Click here to join the hop or check in with some other great writers.

What’s Up–Thursday!

What’s Up Wednesday is a weekly blogfest to share the answers to a few simple questions… Join us! I’m proudly updating on Thursday this week because I remembered to post for IWSG yesterday. 🙂

What I’m reading:

Still great magazine stories. I finished off the December issue of “Asimov’s,” (The January issue is out already,) and read the newest installment of “Lockstep” in Analog magazine. There’s an amazing premise in that book, with hundreds of inhabited planets drifting through the dark reaches between nearby stars, all the inhabitants spending most of the time in cold sleep so that they don’t use too much of the resources that their bots are always gathering; and so that they can effectively travel anywhere in a month, because the people they’re going to meet have spent most of the travel time in cold sleep too. 🙂 And there’s some great character and narrative stuff in there too. I wonder why it was serialized, because it certainly seems strong enough that it could have been marketable as a traditional print novel.