M.H. Thaung's Blog: Musings, page 5

Very short stories #41

Thankfully, the oppressively hot weather seems to have left us (for now…) and it’s time to get out the anoraks, rain hats, boots and umbrellas. Not that I use umbrellas after losing my last one within 15 min of buying it . (Left it in a phone booth, which gives you an idea of how long ago that was.)

Writing-wise, The Sapphire Solution is going through beta reads on Scribophile, where I workshop all my fiction. I’m reasonably pleased with how the draft is looking, although no doubt my beta reade...

Bundle Up!

Another post this month? What’s going on? This time, it’s a book deal—that is, a deal where you can buy a bunch of books at a special price, not me signing a deal with a publisher . I’m thrilled to let you know that The Diamond Device is appearing in the Renegades of Tomorrow bundle, available on StoryBundle from 24 August until 14 September.

If you’ve not come across StoryBundle before, they’re worth a closer look. They offer limited-time deals on collections of books, which are DRM-free (ie n...

The Release of The Snake-Oil Pursuit! — Tales of Fantasy and Folly

Delighted to see my writing buddy Philip Folk has released his first novel! Be sure to check it out

I’m very excited to announce my first novel has officially released! It’s available for purchase on Amazon, and on Kindle Unlimited. It feels like the conclusion of a long journey, after so many years of work. But the next story, and the next journey has already begun… (that, however, is an update for another day […]

The Release of The Snake-Oil Pursuit! — Tales of Fantasy and Folly

Very short stories #40

I hope you’re having a great summer! The last couple of months have been pretty busy here with work projects. This does seem to be the new normal, but I’m not complaining. It’s been a very good year so far for academic publications, and we may not be finished just yet. Fiction writing-wise, I’m still chipping away at The Sapphire Solution, a sequel to The Diamond Device. The heat is pretty draining, so I’ve now got into the habit of sitting at my desk with Scrivener (my usual writing software) o...

Very short stories #39

Other than the excitement of updating the A Quiet Rebellion books, I haven’t been writing much lately. Instead, I have academic talks and a manuscript deadline coming up, so they’re taking up most of my attention. That’s fine, however. Much as I enjoy writing fiction (or at least I enjoy having written it—the process can be quite a slog at times), my inspiration often comes from topics I think about at work. If I had nothing to do but write stories, I’d probably look at the blank page and have n...

A fresh look

I’m super excited to show off my updated A Quiet Rebellion books. 4 years after releasing Guilt, I reckoned my writing skills had improved enough for me to polish up the text and give the cover a makeover. And since it made sense to update all three covers together, I did a light polish of Restitution and Posterity while I was at it.

Guilt has had the largest changes: no surprise since it was my first book, and I had little creative writing experience before it. I’ve trimmed about 1k from the wo...

Very short stories #38

My Fitbit activity tracker died a few weeks ago. I haven’t got round to replacing it since 1. I wear a wristwatch anyway (in addition to the Fitbit on my other wrist) and 2. I don’t want to rely forever on a device motivating me to be active. Bear in mind I’m not interested in sports and don’t particularly enjoy exercise.

I’d used this Fitbit for just over 3 years, and had a different one for several years before that. That’s 8-10 years of reminders to move, and a dashboard showing which days I ...

Very short stories #37

I’ve spent the last two days at an in-person conference, which was a wonderful change from the online platforms we’ve been using over the last couple of years. The meeting was at St Johns College, Cambridge. Nothing quite like long dining tables in echoing halls with 300-year old paintings on the wood-panelled walls to give you that ancient university ambience!

It was lovely to catch up with old friends and make new ones. We had conversations that would never have happened if we’d needed to sche...

Very short stories #36

Wow, February. Every year, I feel a bit surprised when I notice we’ve reached here already. And then I see crocuses on the green and wonder when I missed seeing the snowdrops come up. It’s not that I’m hugely fond of snowdrops, but the house where I grew up had them in a flowerbed beside the front door, along with crocuses and daffodils. These days, there’s less sense of seasons and time passing, which is a shame.

Book reviews

So far this year, I’m meeting my soft target of a review a week. Oddl...

All fired up

Several months ago, while we were clearing out my mother’s house, I found a lot of unused dressmaking fabric. It seemed a shame to let it go to waste, so I hung on to some of it. After clearing the entire house, we brought exactly one stuffed car load back, so there was competition for what made the cut!

Of course, one problem was that I had no idea what material the pieces were. I had a vague idea that one can identify fibre types by burning them, so off I went to investigate.

Here are a couple...