Computer woes over, for now

Phew, well, sorry I was out of the loop for a week there. This time I had an excuse. My last netbook broke (after being dropped at least a dozen times on a hard floor - thank you kiddos), then the keyboard on my desktop broke, then the power cord on the netbook that my husband loaned me broke, but now I've got a new netbook that is an updated version of my old one, that endured multiple drops onto a hard floor from three feet and higher. Gotta love Samsung - or I do, at least.

So I'm behind on my book reviewing and all that, but will get caught up here!

Interview with Michelle Muto is up on Black Gate

Today's blogpost is another interview on BlackGate.com. I had the privilege of getting to know Michelle Muto, author of Don't Fear the Reaper and The Book of Lost Souls. I asked her what the strangest research is she's ever had to do. Here's her answer:

Morgues, corpse timelines, and autopsies. I needed to know about the coolers bodies were kept in and the equipment used in autopsies. I also needed to know a timeline - the condition and appearance of a corpse: one who had committed suicide by slitting her wrists, and that of a body left to decay. Online research is one thing, but contacting the county morgue to verify my findings and ask about autopsy procedures for underage suicide victims felt a bit awkward. At first, I wasn’t sure if they’d think I was suicidal or even homicidal. In the end, they believed me and even offered to take me on a brief tour.

Click on over to the interview to read the rest!
 
        

Interview with David Barr Kirtley up on Black Gate

Today's blogpost is on Blackgate.com, where I've posted an interview of David Barr Kirtley, who is best known as the host of Geek's Guide to the Galaxy. He is also an artist and writer, and is one of the most analytical and methodical craftsmen I know. To give you some idea, here's part of the interview:

When I attended the Odyssey writing workshop in 2001, the program’s director, Jeanne Cavelos, encouraged us to take a short story we admired and retype it, paying particular attention to the punctuation, sentence structure, point of view, number of adjectives and adverbs, etc. After the workshop I went home and retyped one of my favorite stories, SANDKINGS by George R. R. Martin. I could definitely see how that was a helpful exercise. If I were just to read the story the way I usually did, the characters and places would come alive, and I would move through the events in a dreamlike trance, and later if someone were to ask me whether the sentences were long or short, I would have no idea. But when you spend an entire minute looking at one sentence, because you’re retyping the whole thing, you’re a lot more likely to pay attention to stuff like that. The following summer I read George R. R. Martin’s A GAME OF THRONES, and was totally enraptured by it. The book was so textured, and had so many characters and settings and emotions, that I remember thinking, “Forget retyping a short story. If I were to retype this whole book, I’d learn everything I’d ever need to know about prose.” So I decided that that’s what I’d do.

But I was already spending enough time at the computer as it was, and didn’t feel that I needed any more carpal tunnel-inducing typing than I was already getting, so I decided I’d copy the book out by hand into a spiral notebook. The first night I made it through about four pages before I had to quit because my hand was cramping so badly. I looked at how far I still had to go (the book is about 800 pages long), and it just seemed ridiculous. I decided I’d go until I hit page 100, and then re-evaluate. But as I worked through the book, day after day, I got so that I could do ten pages at a stretch, then twenty. I made it to page 100 and didn’t feel like stopping, so I kept going. When I first started, I viewed the prose as so accomplished as to be almost mystical, and I regarded its level of detail and polish as something I could never hope to equal. I made mental notes as I went: “These sentences are a lot longer and more complex than mine.” “These paragraphs are a lot longer and more detailed than mine.” My use of commas had always been haphazard, and it got beaten into me through sheer repetition where they should be placed within these long, complex sentences. Many chapters begin with a character thinking back over everything that’s happened to them since we last saw them, and that’s actually a fairly difficult thing to pull off in prose, so it was good to have a chance to study that over and over again. As I worked my way through the book, I began to understand the prose much better, and felt that its level of depth and complexity was not wholly beyond my grasp. In fact, as I neared the end of the book I began to notice a few things that I thought could be improved.

The only other person I know who's written Game of Thrones word for word, is George R.R. Martin, and he did it on a computer. Head on over to see the complete post!

Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn

Open Minds by Susan Kaye Quinn
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Obviously I'm going to support fellow Scribblers Cove blogger, Susan Kaye Quinn. When I saw that she'd written a book about telepathy, I did cringe, as I overdid telepathy in my teens and was really burnt out on the concept. But much to my joy, this book managed to make it new, interesting, and different. In this world, everyone's a telepath and that changes all of human interaction. Technology now uses a mind interface and people rarely talk aloud, or even touch skin to skin.

The main character, sixteen-year-old Kira, is a zero, which means she hasn't developed any telepathic abilities yet. In this society, that makes her a cripple, one who'll likely never get a higher education, marry, or have children. Only, when her best friend tries to kiss her, she panics and he passes out. It turns out she isn't a zero after all. She's something entirely different and more than a little frightening.

And with that setup, the plot goes rolling forward. The prose is clean and easy to read, the action moves along at a good clip, the characters are well rounded an face real moral dilemmas that have no easy answer. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes near future science fiction, stories about telepathy and psychic powers, or any teenager with an inner geek to satisfy!