Tobias S. Buckell's Blog, page 4

I Stopped Using QWERTY and Switched to an Entirely Different Key Layout

I'm prone to being into the cult of self-improvement. I keep track of how much I write via spreadsheets and have figured out when in the day I can write more, and when I am more creative. I have kept body weight, body fat, and tape measurements since 2003 (I an not super fit, if… Continue reading I Stopped Using QWERTY and Switched to an Entirely Different Key Layout

Why I stopped using QWERTY and switched to an entirely different key layout

I’m prone to being into the cult of self-improvement. I keep track of how much I write via spreadsheets and have figured out when in the day I can write more, and when I am more creative. I have kept body weight, body fat, and tape measurements since 2003 (I an not super fit, if anything since 2008 I tracked because I had a heart defect and not allowed to exercise, so I had to be careful about fighting the pounds as they added strain to the heart and I wanted more life, as Roy Batty once famo...

Why I Wrote a 21,000 Word Outline for My Novel…

(Note: this originally appeared to members of my Patreon in October)

One of the most well-read posts on my website is the post I titled “How I outline a novel” which I then updated several years later, which was mostly a summary of how I approached writing my first novel Crystal Rain. Some (cough) years later now, I mentioned that I’d written a twenty one thousand word outline for the latest novel to someone, and they looked somewhat stunned.

In my thirteenth year of writing novels I’m writin...

Here’s everything I published in 2017 that’s eligible for an award

Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance

Without a doubt, the most awards-eligible story that I have to promote is a short story of mine called “Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance.”

Initially published in the John Joseph Adams anthology Cosmic Powers it has gotten a flurry of reprint requests. Right now I can confirm that is publicly going to be in:

– – The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of the Year Volume 12 (tbd, 2018)
– – The Year’s Best Science Fiction #35 (tbd, 2018)

Those are the tw...

2018: Looking Forward

My 2017 wrap up was a bit of a meaty look at a complicated year for me. What does 2018 look like?

Well, I have a story to write every month for my Patreon, so that will keep me busy. I spent 2017 just trying to see if I was even capable of writing a short story a month. I was. The $500 a month from it was a welcome addition to my income stream but I’m eyeing the savings and know that eventually the runway ends, so a goal is to grow the Patreon. I’ve been looking at a variety of author Patreon...

2017: A Year’s Wrap Up

2017.

What a year.

Well, the TL;DR is that:

I saw a new novel come out, HALO: ENVOY, which seems to have been well-received by fans.

My story High Awareness (written with David Brin) appeared in Overview: Stories in the Stratosphere.

My Patreon story Shoggoths in Traffic was reprinted in Lightspeed Magazine and reviewed by Locus Magazine.

My story Zen and the Art of Starship Maintenance appeared in Cosmic Powers. This story is getting so many reprint requests, but the two (of many) that I can...

Quick Book Review: A Red Peace by Spencer Ellingsworth

So, honestly, I have a to-read pile that could kill a small child. I’m currently looking at 25 books that I really, really want to get to on my to-read shelf in the office. I have 4 books to look at to possibly blurb on my iPad right now. It’s overwhelming.

I ended up getting sucked into A Red Peace even though it’s #26 on the list of books I’ve purchased to read and gotten in the mail because when it came in the mail, I cracked it open and started reading out of curiosity because it was on t...

Read ‘High Awareness’ a story I co-wrote with David Brin for free online in Overview: Stories from the Stratosphere

I really was a huge fan of David Brin’s Startide Rising in high school. Enough so that when an opportunity came up to collaborate on a short story with Brin, I had to do it just as a way of sending a message back to my 15 year old self to say ‘see the cool shit you’ll be up to in your 30s?’

The opportunity to collaborate on a short story came through the Arizona State University Center for Science and the Imagination which created an anthology of stories imagining the future of stratospheric...

Cover for my next book ‘The Tangled Lands’ released

Last week Saga released the cover and art for my and Paolo Bacigalupi’s next book project, The Tangled Lands, with a big cover reveal at Tor.com.

Krzysztof Domaradzki is the artist, who created some very evocative and cool art for this book.

Here’s the official book description:

Khaim, the last great city of a decaying empire, clings to life. The living memory of the empire’s great city of Jhandpara is told in the hovels of the refugee camps across the river in Lesser Khaim; the other citi...

Devastation in the US and British Virgin Islands after Hurricane Irma and How to Help

How to help the Caribbean islands hit hardest by Hurricane Irma:

Other links to local relief in comments appreciated. Some sites were down that I tried to access, so I didn’t link those. Here’s what I came up with.

How to help the US Virgin Islands:

The Community Foundation of the Virgin Islands raises funds for VI improvement projects and is a local organization. They are taking Irma donations if you type “FFVI” into the memo area when donating. [local US news article talking about CFVI here...