Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 245

Grumph!

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Today — or tomorrow, sometime, at the rate these things are moving — I’m going to put up a list of the books I have available for sale.  Paper books, I mean.  They come from varying sources, from contrib copies (you know when you have thirty books those take up a ton of space), to copies I bought to give away because I didn’t know I could get them for free, to the periodic cleaning of Baen’s warehouses, to remnants from Comicon which I took off the seller’s hands.

I have no idea how much of...

Just Something

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Eighteen years ago I sold a book that wasn’t written because the house passed on the book that was almost finished.  The reason given for no interest in the book nearer completion was that and I quote “The Red Baron is bad. He fought Snoopy. Also, he was a Nazi.” which explains the arguments on politics I’ve been having with people in my field ever since. It also reminds me I need to dial down my vocabulary. And get a way to look into parallel worlds.

Later, when I understood NY publishing I...

Cocoon

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Who are you really?

What I mean is if you met yourself at seven, are you the same person?  Some of us remember being seven, but I might have trouble even speaking to that little girl, attending a one room school in Portugal.

And some of the things she believed and did I know just ain’t so.  We have some memories (some of them pleasant) in common, and I’d probably break the face of one or two of her enemies, just because they were smug and full of themselves and that annoys me.

Then how about...

Staying Alive

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Sorry this is so late.  I woke up with a blinding headache.  And don’t go getting all paranoid. My head aches because I’ve become a human barometer, and we have a storm blowing in.

On that, conversation last night with older son he says I’m wrong and meningiomas are ACTUALLY very rarely malignant and can’t figure out why I remember it the other way around.  I can. I was so hypothyroidal and sleeping in one to two minute increments at the time, that it’s a miracle I don’t remember more walkin...

A Lengthy Explanation

I woke up at 4:30 am with the need to explain an altercation I got into in my conference (Sarah’s Diner) on facebook, yesterday night.

I wasn’t raised in a barn, and public blow ups upset me because they SHOULD be beneath me.

The explanation turned VERY long and pulled together threads that I don’t think I ever made explicit here, including stuff about my health and what is going on with my career (though a lot of you caught some of it by implication and inference, I haven’t been explicit on...

Outcasts and Wreckers

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Anyone reading this blog knows that not only I but any number of my readers were childhood outcasts.

I spent vast portions of my early childhood walking in circles on a ledge that went around the playground.  You know, after that vital moment when I’d need to escape a locked room by walking on a tight rope.  And the very fact that I actually thought that told you why I was an outcast.

In a very traditional village where televisions were rare, and where most little girls playing at being grow...

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

[image error] Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike

So what’s a vignette? You might know them as flash fiction, or even just sketches. We will provide a prompt each Sunday that you can use directly (including it in your work) or just as an inspiration. You, in turn, will write about 50 words (yes, we are going for short shorts! Not even a Drabble 100 words, just half that!). Then post it! For an additional challenge, you can aim to make it exactly 50 words, if you like.

We recommend that if you...

Things My Characters Have Taught me

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How to select wine.

How to clean difficult stains from carpet.

How to set traps for adversaries.

If you’re stubborn enough the story line will change to accommodate you. Sometimes it makes for a better book.

If you refuse to go away eventually the author will write you into another book.

No matter how bad things get, they could always be worse.

Sometimes you just have to broom it up.

There’s always a time to say “d*mn it” and jump.

Be memorable.

Everyone has a role. Sometimes it’s a sucky ro...

Cutting Through The Cage

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Robert A. Heinlein — though he wasn’t the first — says a lion who’s been freed still paces in the confines of the imaginary cage, and that something like it happens with intellectual boundaries set by totalitarian regimes of thought.

As a society that has been bound (and gagged. Mostly gagged) by such a regime, increasingly tighter for the last fifty years, many of us are pacing that cage.

One of the — admittedly many — things that drive me bonkers about the left is their tendency to want pe...

Thanksgiving Day Promo

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE! I’M OFF FOR THE DAY.

But to amuse you, here is a book promo and a complex request.  Love you. -SAH

FROM MACKEY CHANDLER:  The Way Things Seem.

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How much trouble would you go to for an inheritance? How much would it matter what your estranged and disliked step brother and family thought of you? How much would you allow the dead hand of your distant father to influence you? Would it matter how much money was involved? And what if in the end, nothing you thought impo...