With Blood Magic finished, I am moving onto a new project. The official announcement will come near the end of January, but I'm not waiting until then to start writing.
All of an Instant Review
Alternative world (or secondary world) fantasy gets all the attention these days as the quintessential owner of the steepest learning curves, but those expositionary slopes are molehills compared to the mountainous terrain to be conquered in the hardest of science fiction that the genre has to offer, like Garfinkle's All of an Instant.
Lloyd’s Best Books of 2022
Everyone and anyone who does book reviews probably does a similar post around this time, but given my...eclectic reading list, I doubt I need fear redundancy.
Blood Magic S3:E12: Balancing Act, Part Two Release
Did I do it? Did I stick the landing on this three-year series, some three hundred sixty thousand words of story? Only you, dear reader, can answer that question, but I think I might have done it.
Meditations Review
These are not commandments, nor diktats, nor rules for living a stoic life; they present rather as Aurelius' thoughts as he goes through life and seeks to live stoicism.
Blood Magic S2:E12: Pifecha, Part Two Re-Release
It might sound from those two paragraphs like I don't think this story is any good, which is not true - it is quite enjoyable, for all my above griping and critiquing.
Dialogue Tags
Dialogue tags receive a lot of approbation, almost as much as adverbs, and for similar reasons. Employed with skill and discretion, however, I assert that dialogue tags are a powerful and under-utilized tool for characterization, narration, and storytelling.
The Inklings Review
Instead, Inklings is a biography of CS Lewis and Charles Williams, with an emphasis on their respective roles in the Inklings group, especially Lewis, who was arguably the group’s heart.
Silk Slippers of History
Voltaire* in the early eighteenth century asserted “history is filled with the sound of silken slippers going downstairs and wooden shoes coming up.” While this metaphorical explanation for the rise and fall of civilizations is unpopular these days, I think it has significant merit in explaining societies' evolution.
Weekly Writing Update
Although I did not finish Blood Magic in time for last week’s update, that was a matter of barely, because I finished the final five thousand words on Monday.