The last few days I’ve noticed that a couple of comments have slipped in without my receiving an e-mail notification, which means that they sit in my Unpublished queue until I sign into Blogger again. This happens once in a while and usually fixes itself, but meantime, if your comment sits longer than usual, bear with me!
A Very Public Service Announcement
What I said, when I said it: the best of 2013!
I think this blog really took a marked shift in focus this year, as it feels like I did a lot less lengthy essay-type writing in this space. I’m guessing this is mainly because I put my focus almost entirely on my fiction work this year, after deciding in 2011 that it was time to stop saying “I hope to be a writer someday” and start saying “I am a writer”. My book and movie writing dropped off substantially, which dismays me a little. It’s not like I wasn’t reading and watching new stuff, but I didn’t write about it nearly as much as usual in 2013.
Anyway, here’s a selection of posts that I particularly like from the year just passing into memory. And as always, I did some (I think!) good writing for the February and August editions of Ask Me Anything!, as well as the April A to Z.
Tip your servers, folks!
Remembering the VIC-20
On Lemons
Snark sucks
Of chickens and crockpots
Let thy freak flag fly!
On ‘Bronies’ and fandom
On Roger Ebert
On personal blogging
When I was a kid, I wanted to be Bud Herseth
Hey baseball! F*** your shaving-cream-on-a-towel!
Random thoughts on Once Upon a Time
When The Muse taunts me
You’re not a special snowflake, Buffalo.
My (now useless) nomination for Twelfth Doctor
Cold-brewing coffee
The rules for reading
In praise of Bugles
On Tennyson
On Breaking Bad and binge-watching
LouisCK is full of crap.
Encyclopedia Brown’s life of crime
Favorite back roads of WNY
Snapshots from Ithaca
My rules for writing
A night with the Buffalo Philharmonic
On whining about other people’s content
Another year, another NaNoWriMo victory!
Self-publishing: Here I come!
Books I wrote about this year:
Bleyer, Me the People: One Man’s Selfless Quest to Rewrite the Constitution of the United States of America
Bujold: Cetaganda
Campbell: The Lost Fleet: Dauntless
Reese: Make the Bread, Buy the Butter
Scalzi: Redshirts
Films I wrote about this year (these aren’t all “in-depth” essays):
Amistad
Apollo 13
Casablanca
Les Miserables
Sneakers
Star Trek Into Darkness
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Revisiting cover art
The other day I noted, with some enthusiasm, an image that comes super super close to the kind of cover art I’d love to see for Princesses In SPACE!!! (not the actual title). I did try to track down the artist by following Tumblr links, but…well, if you’ve ever tried to trace the path of a Tumblr image that’s been shared a bunch of times, you’ll know that “There be dragons there”.
Somehow, though, the artist found the post today, and left a gracious comment. Her name is Liza Van Rees, and she is a talented Dutch illustrator. Check her work out!
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On commenting
Sorry, folks, but since a certain very special someone has apparently decided that I just have to hear his thoughts on how the moon landing was faked, I have again disabled anonymous comments. There are lots of places online where crackpottery of all sorts may be discussed — the faking of the moon landing, Holocaust denial, global warming denialism, anti-vaccination, why the aliens built the pyramids, and so forth. This is not one of them.
Thank you.
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Holding Pattern Delta!
Just a brief post to allay any fears that I’ve forgotten about finishing up the queries from Ask Me Anything! August 2013. I’ve had a busy week, but it’s almost over, so that work will get done, I promise!
Meantime, here’s some nifty science fiction music for you. This is from the 2004 Battlestar Galactica series, but it’s a wonderful musical nod to the show’s first incarnation, in 1978. The famed brassy main theme from Version I was repurposed for the reboot series as the “National Anthem” for the Colonials. And this treatment is terrific!
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A brief note about comments
Still here….
Wow, I’ve sucked at posting here lately…sorry about that! It’s been a bit on the busy side the last few days, and making matters worse, the air conditioning at Casa Jaquandor decided to take a nose-dive, so things there haven’t been too comfortable and it’s taken a lot of effort just to work up the proper enthusiasm for writing in the first place. So, what energies I have been able to summon on that front, have been devoted to the book, which is kind of slow-going right now anyway because I’m in the stage of the game where the pot is a rolling boil and I don’t wanna screw things up too badly.
Anyway, we’re still here! How are you all doing?