Finn Longman's Blog, page 2

Breaking The Streak

Last week was a week of endings: projects completed, tethers cut, deadlines met. One friend handed in her PhD; another passed their viva. I handed in pass pages for Moth to a Flame, the last book in a trilogy I started in 2014 with a character I created in January 2012. And I also uninstalled …

Stitching The Details

There’s a phenomenon — I’m sure you’ve experienced it — where you’ll learn a word that you’re sure you’ve never heard before and will probably never hear again, and then almost as soon as you’ve learned it, you start seeing it everywhere. It’s like a conspiracy: the world knows you just learned that word, and …

Farewell to 2023

Is it a cliché to write a round-up of the year on New Year’s Eve, or a tradition? I suppose the answer probably depends on how much you enjoy reading the round-up, and how much of it seems like poorly concealed bragging on the part of the writer. Either way, I’m doing it anyway, because …

05/12, Funebro – Part II (TBA Readalong)

Today is the last day of our readalong for The Butterfly Assassin, two and a half months after we started. It’s been my longest blog series, with well over sixty thousand words in posts – not quite as many words as another volume in the trilogy (they tend to run in the 95-100k range), but …

28/11, Funebro (TBA Readalong)

Dear friends, I said we were close to the end of this readalong and now we are on the final chapter of the book, and the penultimate post I will make in this series. I’m not sure what I’ll blog about once this is over; it has resulted in more blog posts than I’ve written …

27/11, Misio–Ofero–Eskapo–Malespero–Postrikolto (TBA Readalong)

Oh boy. We have five chapters to get through in today’s post – the entire climax of The Butterfly Assassin – so I’m going to have to keep things super businesslike and not get too distracted by my notes/past drafts if I want this post to stay under 10k words. Apologies to those who wanted …

26/11, Promeso (TBA Readalong)

We are so close to the end of this, guys. Today’s readalong post is a reasonably short one, covering only chapter 32, but tomorrow is a bumper edition, so get ready for that. Might end up being the longest post I’ve written on this blog, which would be saying something, because I have no self …

25/11, Homŝtelo–Preparo (TBA Readalong)

Today’s post for our readalong of The Butterfly Assassin covers chapters 30 and 31 – we’re in a rapid slide towards the end of the book now, and accelerating (Monday’s post is going to need to cover five chapters, and I haven’t figured out how to do that yet. Might have to split it!) On …

24/11, Infano (TBA Readalong)

We’re picking up speed again with our readalong of The Butterfly Assassin – you can expect daily posts for the next week or so as we accelerate towards the end of the book. (Which I had not totally remembered was the case and I have not written them, so imagine me hastily writing posts like …

22/11, Konsento – Part II (TBA Readalong)

Hi, everyone. It’s the 22nd of November and I’m back with the second half of chapter 28. I feel like my last post was pretty heavy, and I’d like to reassure you that this one won’t be quite so intense. At the same time, like… it’s the Anti-Military, Don’t Kill Children, Defund The Arms Industry …