Notational Velocity

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Notational Velocity is a very simple-looking but surprisingly sophisticated little program for the Mac. It is intended to allow you to make and track notes very, very quickly. You just open it and start typing, rather like you would type in the search box in Google or Spotlight in OSX. What you type will bring up a list of the notes you have already written containing what you’ve typed. If you hit enter, it will turn what you have typed in the search box into the title for your new note, and move your focus down into the note body Read more…

Skyfall

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On Saturday Radka and I went to see  Skyfall, the latest James Bond film. I enjoyed it. Daniel Craig’s 007 was physically convincing and seems to me to be closer to Ian Fleming’s original concept of “a blunt instrument employed by a government department” than any previous Bond (even Connery’s, who was just too charming), the locations were stunning, the ladies were beautiful, the stunts astonishing. In short it was pretty much all I could want or expect from a Bond movie. Javier Bardem’s villain, Silva, was both camp and frightening, a combination that is difficult to pull off but Read more…

Black Library Weekender: the Report

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So I am finally recovered enough to report on the Black Library Weekender. I had a fantastic time and would just like to say a big thank you to everyone, fans, fellow authors and Black Library staff who made it such a pleasure. The hotel was very pleasant and, I was surprised to discover, not too far from the neighbourhood in which I used to live when I worked for GW in Nottingham. En route from the airport I passed my old chip shop and local pub as well as the corner shop where I used to buy my newspapers. Read more…

Black Library Weekender

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I am just packing to fly to the UK for the Black Library Weekender this weekend. Just wanted to remind everyone that there are still a few tickets left and to say that I am looking forward to meeting those of you who will be there. Come over and say hello! 

Writing A Bible

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I started working on a bible this week. Don’t worry — I have no plans either to found my own religion or to re-translate the Good Book. I am creating a story bible for my Kormak novels. I am talking about a grand compendium of information, not unlike the sort of thing you might find in a Warhammer army book or a roleplaying game, detailing everything a writer might need to know about the setting, basically the thing that the people who make TV series have for their writers to refer to. This is the sort of information that when Read more…