duskpeterson: (bookshelves)
"I feel like sometimes my life is a fanfiction co-authored by Dusk Peterson and Mercedes Lackey."

--J. Albert Rusla.


It took two frickin' weeks to set up my new computer, so here's a quickie, before I go back into writing hibernation on Saturday:

An illustrated summary of what I've been up to, with a thank-you note to jesse_the_k )

I'm off to spend time with Layle. I'll see you again in late December, when I'll be posting my holiday gift story, which I wrote last summer.
duskpeterson: An apprentice builds a boat as a man looks on. (apprentice)
"Follow our instructions. Seriously, I'm not kidding. I don't care if you are a publishing expert with 20 years experience, follow the damn instructions. There is one exception. For those who want to fail, spend 300% more time on the formatting, and have no fear of being driven terminally insane, and are generally narcissistic bastards, you may do as you please. For the rest of you, follow the instructions. Repeat after me, 'I will follow the instructions in the style guide or have a pox upon my house.' Now say it 37 times, turn around and hop on one leg."

--Brian Meeks, parodying Mark Coker putting "the fear of god" in self-publishers in The Smashwords Style Guide.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


My task list for last week )
Back to work, and evidence that the Clean Air Act isn't working )
This week's menu )
Slow but steady on editing and layout )
The old way and the new way of submitting manuscripts to SF/F magazines )
Reviews and recommendations of fiction and nonfiction narratives )
Other links )
duskpeterson: An apprentice builds a boat as a man looks on. (apprentice)
"Change is inevitable. And, just as we assigned nostalgia to cheap, discarded paperbacks in piles underneath failing bookstores, or to scratchy vinyl records we have to flip to listen through and that had us begging for the clarity and capacity of the CD, the affordances and special traits of e-books will somehow become charming to the next generation. They may remember reading a certain book on a certain device with fond memories, or where they were, or how they discovered the book on Facebook and who recommended it. New interactive formats will deliver a new aesthetic. The human mind will find new ways to embrace stories and how they're told."

--Kent Anderson: Mourning the Printed Book - The Aesthetic and Sensory Deprivation of E-books.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


Deadline looms )
E-book plans for this summer  )
Nonfiction projects )
My magic formula for writing regularly )
I'm still alive (*gasp*); thoughts on the publishing industry's future; Bookshare, Harlequin, and Carina Press )
Links that might interest you )
duskpeterson: (summer night shells), Credit: http://applepaper.livejournal.com
"I figured out early on that writing is about failure. Almost 100 percent guaranteed failure. You'll never write it as well as you want, you will always fall short of perfection, a typo will always slip in, rejection is more certain than death and taxes, and, if you are lucky enough to get published, a horde is waiting to happily rake you over the coals. After a while, you build up great layers of scar tissue. At this point, I don't care what anyone thinks except my readers, who are my only customers. And, in a way, they are among my closest, most intimate friends. So why should I care if some scared writer [who condemns self-publishing] tries to apply a stigma? If you're a writer, you should be scared, but if you go around worrying about other writers, you have your eyes on the wrong prize.

"Listen to readers. They rarely apply stigma. The only labels they care about are 'good' and 'crap.'"

--Scott Nicholson.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


Dear writer who wishes me to read their book/e-book )
What writing I'm working on, now and in the coming months )
In the I'm-so-proud-of-my-boy department . . . )
Muse Marathon )
My Muse and my mental health )
About the Doctor Who episode, 'A Good Man Goes to War' )
Reply to comments )
duskpeterson: (bookshelves)
"What should one do to report a website that one suspects is in violation of copyright? . . . Seeing I'm the copyright holder and have every right to grumble, no-one's ever done anything more than take the book or story down, occasionally -- very occasionally -- muttering something hopeless and grumbly like 'information wants to be free!' as they do, but mostly being very pleased someone let them know that it was up there.

('No, that's pizza,' I want to tell them. 'Pizza wants to be free. Concentrate on liberating pizza from evil pizzerias. Information, on the other hand, really hates being free, and is never happier than when manacled to a wall, like Kirk and Spock in some piece of late 70s bondage-oriented slash fiction.')"

--Neil Gaiman.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


The Nifty folks continue to arrive )
My current diet )
E-book publishing, and my father's thoughts on beautiful book design )
Locus and e-books )
Smashwords and Meatgrinder )
Links that might interest you )
duskpeterson: An apprentice builds a boat as a man looks on. (apprentice)
"[Editors who are] used to plowing through mountains of manuscripts find reading digital pages less satisfying: 'It's difficult to tell how far you have to read [and it's] not as satisfying as throwing away pages.'"

--Publishing Trends

How I reply to comments at this blog.

Just a gentle reminder: I posted a thread with a request for prompts for my holiday gift story two weeks ago. So far, I've only received one prompt (which needs to be tweaked if my Muse is to be able to do anything with it).

This is the one time of the year you guys can say, "You never wrote about such-and-such!" and my Muse will pay full attention.


Worrying about e-book publishing )
In which my Muse saunters in blithely, as though he had never left )
And my Muse continues his stunning reversal  )
Life Prison (with a question for you guys), royal wedding, and 'Sherlock' )
The results of my pricing experiment this week )
Reply to comments )
duskpeterson: (bookshelves)
"When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink."

--John Keats (composed in 1818; published posthumously).

How I reply to comments at this blog.


Deadlines and schedules )
Eve of my relapse )
A tribute to Sarah Jane Smith )
Stepping off the cliff )
And it begins )
So far, so good with my health; plus, Torchwood and Doctor Who )
duskpeterson: (bookshelves)
"My audience is mostly women in their forties, fifties and sixties. So basically, there's no such thing as too much sex. I try to remember to put a bit of crime in the books to keep male readers entertained."

--Author Jon Loomis, responding to the question of how much sex is too much in a mystery novel.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


Planning for story submissions )
Doctor Who and me )
Another stab against my Internet addiction )
Doctor Who and my antibiotics )
duskpeterson: An apprentice builds a boat as a man looks on. (apprentice)
"Time is very dangerous without a rigid routine. If you do the same thing every day at the same time for the same length of time, you'll save yourself from many a sink. Routine is a condition of survival."

--Novelist Flannery O'Connor.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


Waterman and nuclear power )
Dinner and scheduling  )
duskpeterson: (grief), http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Weyden,_Rogier_van_der_-_Descent_from_the_Cross_-_Detail_women_%28left%29.jpg
"Three hundred years ago a prisoner condemned to the Tower of London carved on the wall of his cell this sentiment to keep up his spirits during his long imprisonment: 'It is not adversity that kills, but the impatience with which we bear adversity.'"

--James Keller.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


Powers of ten )
And we're Go for launch: I'm going off my antibiotic soon )
The fiction I wasn't around to read )
I'm beginning to realize why I've done so little reading of SF/F short fiction in recent years )

. . . and my thoughts are with those of you who have been affected by the earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
duskpeterson: An apprentice builds a boat as a man looks on. (apprentice)
"The mountain says you live in a particular place. Though it's a small area, just a square mile or two, it took me many trips to even start to learn its secrets. Here there are blueberries, and here there are bigger blueberries . . . You pass a hundred different plants along the trail - I know maybe twenty of them. One could spend a lifetime learning a small range of mountains, and once upon a time people did."

--Bill McKibben: The Age of Missing Information.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


Jaw-dropping time - a medical test actually showed something about my health )
Health decline and e-book determination )
A break-through in treatment of my illness )
The Three Lands )
Quick health update )
I have my limits )
duskpeterson: An apprentice builds a boat as a man looks on. (apprentice)
"Reading . . . is an act of resistance in a landscape of distaction, a matter of engagement in a society that seems to want nothing more than for us to disengage. It connects us at the deepest levels; it is slow, rather than fast. That is its beauty and its challenge: in a culture of instant information, it requires us to pace ourselves. What does it mean, this notion of slow reading? Most fundamentally, it returns us to a reckoning with time. In the midst of a book, we have no choice but to be patient, to take each thing in its moment, to let the narrative prevail. Even more, we are reminded of all we need to savor - this instant, this scene, this line. We regain the world by withdrawing from it just a little, by stepping back from the noise, the tumult, to discover our reflections in another mind. As we do, we join a broader conversation, by which we both transcend ourselves and are enlarged. . . . It is in this way that reading becomes an act of meditation, with all of meditation's attendant difficulty and grace. I sit down. I try to make a place for silence. It's harder than it used to be, but still, I read."

--David L. Ulin: The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time.

How I reply to comments at this blog.


Life Prison review and friendship fic )
Weekly schedule )
Daily schedule )
Pizza and being spoiled  )
Excellent day )
Symptom check )
Special note concerning my Friends list )
duskpeterson: (winter sled), Credit: http://applepaper.livejournal.com
"Let me tell you a depressing little truth. Back in my starving-editor days in the late 1960s, I edited a trio of men's magazines. And it was company policy to fire any first reader who couldn't reject a story every two minutes, because that's how fast they arrived. That means he had to open the envelope, pull out the story, read that opening page, attach a rejection slip, stuff and seal the envelope, and put it in the outgoing mail tray, all in 120 seconds. If you [the author] hadn't captured him by paragraph 2, he never got to all those gems that you had up ahead on pages 8 and 19 and 22."

--Mike Resnick: Slush.


How I reply to comments at this blog.

What I did today )
duskpeterson: An apprentice builds a boat as a man looks on. (apprentice)
"Basically, it has to be clean enough that the cable repair guy doesn't need to worry about updating his tetanus shot."

--My apprentice, describing a couple of years ago how much housecleaning he needed to do before a repairman's visit.


How I reply to comments at this blog.

What I did today )
duskpeterson: An apprentice builds a boat as a man looks on. (apprentice)
"There are many, many people who, thanks to an overdose of pop psychology and an dearth of imagination, cannot conceive of an author writing about attitudes and actions, especially repugnant ones, that he or she does not share. . . . . Such people feel that when writers show that people and cultures held unpleasant and harmful ideas in the past, the writers are saying that the harmful ideas are valid.

"Apparently, it would be better if writers whitewashed the past to make it look sweet and innocent and prettiful.

"Personally, I feel that this is disrespectful to the people who suffered in the past. You have an obligation to get it right. Prettying up the past—weaving a fantasy in which people of different races, religions, national origin, sexes and sexual orientations never suffer at all—tacitly says, 'All the rotten stuff that you guys went through? It doesn't matter. It makes us uncomfortable. We'd rather forget about it.'"

--Gehayi: Back to Basics: Historical Accuracy (And Why Historicals So Often Aren't).


How I reply to comments at this blog.

What I did today )
duskpeterson: An apprentice builds a boat as a man looks on. (apprentice)
Where I stand at the moment )

Those of you who have chronic pain or some other symptom related to my condition, what do you do to care for yourself?

February 2012

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