Sarah A. Hoyt's Blog, page 246

On Being Thankful

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Yes, you probably should take this as a warning I’ll take tomorrow off.  If you guys have thanksgiving sales on, send them to me now as I can assemble a post for tomorrow by tonight.

As all of you, and some other people know, I’ve been disheartened, dispirited and down right depressed over my writing, and my soit disant career, but yesterday one of my “kids” (HOW did the woman who tried to have 11 kids but ended up only birthing two sons end up with a tribe of you who call me “mom” anyway? I...

Remaking People

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I’ve admitted before I’m not good at writing/thinking about aliens.  It’s not that I think they can’t exist (logically they should.)  It’s that I have next to no interest in them.  Sure, the point at which humans interact with aliens is interesting but that’s about it.

You see, I like humans.  The ways in which we fall short of the ideal and sometimes manage to be better than any idea fascinate me.  I might actually be interested in humans interacting with aliens.  Full disclosure, I have a...

A Total Eclipse of the Heart

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Sorry this is so late.  It’s not that we went to the doctor: that wasn’t such a big deal.  It’s that we went to the doctor and then got high-jacked by the demon of small details: oh, yeah, I need some kind of exercise clothes since current set (36lbs down) is falling off me, and would be shocking to wear in public; oh, we need to return redbox and grab another one; did you know we’re out of yogurt?; I probably should stop by craft store and buy the craft caddy thing I’ve been putting off.

Th...

Vignettes by Luke, Mary Catelli and ‘Nother Mike and Sunday Book Promo

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Sunday Book Promo

FROM ALMA BOYKIN:  Oddly Familiar

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Ah, October, when the ghosts, and spirits walk, and the Off Ramp of Doom falls quiet. Too quiet…

Lelia Chan and her Familiar, Tay, continue learning about magic and what mages do. When a customer drops a strange silver disk in Belle, Book, and Blacklight, it starts a chain of events that pull Lelia deeper into shadow magic. André Lestrange and Rodney return to help sort out the off-ramp. Someone else returns, someone who wants to open door...

On Being Lydia Bennet

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In 1997 my heart broke and I decided to give up writing.

Sure, you can read that again.

Look, I’d been at it for 12 years.  And I mean seriously, even though sometimes we couldn’t send novels out because we lacked the $8 for postage. But still, by that time I had written 10 novels (8 in the same universe) and come in second in two contests.

My first short story got a personal rejection, but after that I was stuck in bad-photocopy-land.  I used to fill a big plastic bin of rejections every Ma...

For Various Reasons…

For various reasons, I can’t write a post today.  So I’m going to give you a picture (hopefully not repeated, but who knows) and let you play.

At some point I had some idea of doing noir mysteries in space.  Then I was playing with Daz and this happened.

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It was supposed to be called “the Dame and the Bot.”

Lift That Light High!

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I don’t think I told any of you — have I? — the sequence of events that propelled me out of the political closet.

It started with my publisher Toni Weisskopf asking me to write an intro to Robert A. Heilein’s Puppet Masters (and as much as I loved Bill Patterson both as a person and a writer, I think what they’re now doing excerpting the bio as an  intro is a great idea.  Calling a book a “hack” book and part of the fear of the reds or whatever might be good literary criticism. It also fails...

Pulpy Things! by Julie Doornbos, a Blast From The Past From August 2015

*I should be writing a real post, because I have things to say.  But frankly, I also have things to say for pay for PJMedia, and more importantly, I have a novel that I need to finish. So, I thought it was time for a little fun in our lives, and to remember it’s not just indie covers that can misfire horribly.  I do have a post on words in Mad Genius Club. If you can’t do without my writing, you know? -SAH*

Pulpy Things! by Julie Doornbos, a Blast From The Past From August 2015

Greetings! I’m...

External Conformity and Inner Truths

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I’m always surprised when I hear someone refer to me as a happy warrior (which happens about once a week.)

I’m not a happy warrior.  I try really hard to be a nice person.  I know my anger can cause a lot of harm to me and others, so I try to keep it in check, to the point of inducing depression to stop myself expressing it.

I’d prefer, by far, to live as so many female writers in the past, dreaming up nice stories and never pronouncing on politics.

Unfortunately I was born too late for that...

What happened?- by Amanda S. Green

[image error] What happened?- by Amanda S. Green

That’s the question so many of us have been asking since last week’s election totals began rolling in. It is a question we’ll continue to debate over the next two years. We need to look at the close races as well as the races we should have won. What went wrong? Then, in those races we shouldn’t have won but did, why?

Let’s get one of the reasons out of the way right now. The first is that we saw a standard mid-term response to the party in office. Historic...