After NaNoWriMo 2012

NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. It's a challenge to authors to get off their feet and onto their butts and write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November.The challange started small, grew, and became international. International or not, since almost everyone shortens the name to NaNoWriMo, it looks like they're stuck … Continue reading After NaNoWriMo 2012 →

Genies, Botnets, and State Security, Oh my!

I just finished reading a wonderful new book, Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson. It takes place in a fictional contemporary Arab emirate that's on the boiling point of the Arab Spring. Alif is a young guy, a hacker, who makes a shady, but honorable living hiding his clients'---bloggers of every subversive type: Islamists, … Continue reading Genies, Botnets, and State Security, Oh my! →

I Guess, I’ll Have to Write It

Years ago, back in the dimly remembered (nineteen) Eighties, I read and delighted in Norman Spinrad's science-fiction novel, Child of Fortune. Two years ago, for the 2010 NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) thirty day dash, I desperately grabbed ideas from Spinrad's book to get something---anything---started, and ended up with a collection of hacked together chunks of plot and bits of … Continue reading I Guess, I’ll Have to Write It →