The Day of Rest
First up apologies to the people who commented yesterday but whose comments did not get moderated till today. This happened because I take Sundays off. I don’t touch my computer unless it’s a real work emergency and the only writing I do is with a pen and paper. I don’t go near a screen unless to watch a little TV. The only gadget I make an exception for is my Kindle and that is basically because all I can do on it is read. I started doing this because my RSI and computer related health problems got really bad and Read more…
Malekith
So how do you go about portraying a Dark Lord? Tolkien keeps Sauron off-stage for the whole of the Lord of the Rings. (One reason I have heard for this is that he knew Satan was the most compelling character in Paradise Lost and he did not want Sauron to be the same in his great trilogy. I don’t know whether that is true but it certainly sounds plausible.) The easiest way to deal with Malekith in the Tyrion and Teclis books would have been to do the same thing, just make the Witch King a vast, implacable presence and leave it at Read more…
The Tech Roundup
It’s a big week in tech for me. Asus and Acer have just announced their new ultrabooks, Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) is due any day now and, perhaps, most importantly Literature & Latte have (sort of) announced a release date for Scrivener for Windows. First up, the ultrabooks. I have long lusted after some version of the MacBook Air. It seems to be just about the perfect size for a travelling laptop to me. Somehow I can never quite make myself pull the trigger though. £1000 is a lot of money and to tell the truth I have been less Read more…
Never Thought I Would See This
From the UK Kindle Epic Fantasy Top 100 list as of 20:28 today :).
The Waiting Game
If you’re a writer you spend a lot of time just sitting around waiting. You wait to see whether your book has been accepted or rejected. You wait to see what your editor has to say about your work. You wait to see whether a project gets approved or you have to go back to the drawing board. Once you finish a project, you often sit around waiting for feedback. That is what I am currently doing now–waiting to see what my editor has to say about The Angel of Fire. Sometimes when I finish a book I need a Read more…
The Archmage Caledor
The Elves live in the shadow of titans. Of the four great figures that shaped their earliest history, two are still among the living and one is still present in the world albeit as a trapped ghost. The shadow of Aenarion falls on the Elves always and everywhere, from the gigantic statue that looms in the harbour at Lothern, to the terrible sword that waits on the Blighted Island to the very structure of kingship they use and the fractured nature of their two nations. Aenarion is the one who Elves talk about and Morathi and Malekith are the ones Read more…
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