Blair MacGregor's Blog, page 12
January 26, 2015
Insert Catchy Title Here!
My internet access last night was as slow as an exhausted sloth slogging through mud with kettleballs chained to its ankles, and writing on the computer in any position — sitting, standing, reclining, whatever — was distractingly uncomfortable. Thus I spent some hours stretched out across the bed to write by hand while the hip discomfort receded to an ignorable dull ache.
Excellent forward progress was made on Breath of Stone, the sequel to Sand of Bone. Considering I cut thousands of words wi...
January 23, 2015
Talking Writing With Brad Beaulieu
Brad Beaulieu and I met about ten years ago at the twentieth anniversary Writers of the Future workshop, where we spent a week learning the craft from Tim Powers and K.D. Wentworth. (I still have the notes Brad made on a story of mine from that week.) From the beginning, he struck me as a person who had an inquisitive and analytical mind that matched his creativity. Since then, it’s been a pleasure watching his career grow, gaining strong fan support and critical acclaim. When the opportunity...
January 21, 2015
The Indie Fantasy Bundle Is Live!
Eight novels! One bundle!
A couple years ago, StoryBundle included my first novel in the Indie Fantasy Bundle. This time, StoryBundle offered me the opportunity to curate a bundle of my own, and I jumped to accept. I couldn’t pass up the chance to share some of my own favorite writers with you.
This Indie Fantasy Bundle includes some names you’ll recognize, and some that might be new. The novels give fantasy readers who love the genre a diverse feast of great reads: epics where the fate of dyna...
January 16, 2015
It’s the Little Things
Last winter was… rough around these parts. The temps were abnormally low. Cloud cover was the norm. Snow and ice lingered. School closings were so commonplace, the local kids had perhaps two weeks of normal attendance between December and March. Deprived of the sun, unable to feel productive, stalled in any professional endeavor that required travel, I came face-to-face with winter depression.
The last time that happened, my son andIwere living poor on a rural farm. Transportation was difficul...
January 4, 2015
Stranger and Hostage — Reviews!
I don’t write reviews often.Review-writing puts me in book-report mode (always hated those in school!), and then I’m certain everything comes out sounded as stilted as a nervous non-actor reading the opening chorus of Henry V for the first time. But I love talking about books, and deeply truly want to see more readers connect with booksdeserving oftheir attention. So, in the spirit of keeping 2015 as The Year of Giving Up, I present you withan actual review:
Stranger is the first book of The C...
December 29, 2014
Posts You Didn’t Know You Might Like
At the end of the year, it’s common to let one’s blog readers know the most popular posts. But I assume most of you read those popular posts. After all, those posts were popular.
So I’m instead going to tell you about the posts I liked, but ones that didn’t get very many reads for whatever reason, just in case you missed something.
What the Reader Expects: “It’s been twenty-mumble years since I first decided I wanted to write novels. I sucked at it. I sucked hard. I mean, a lifetime of theater...
December 28, 2014
Hours and Days
Until the end of today, Serpent Heart is free at Amazon. It has been in the top 100 Free Kindle Short Reads for Science Fiction and Fantasy for the past few days, and that’s a happy-making thing. So if you’re interested in picking it up, you have a very few more hours! More books on sale and for free can be found at The Dealer’s Room.
Until the end of December, Sand of Bone is available for review through NetGalley. Three days and a few hours are left for you to make your request. It has alrea...
December 25, 2014
Comfort and Joy
My favorite Christmas song is Good King Wenceslas – not because I believe the king’s footsteps were warmed by saintly goodness, but by the simple and achievable act of self-sacrifice and willingness to lead.
My second favorite is God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen. — not because it so eloquently tells the tale of Christmas (which it does), but because comfort and joy are the two most marvelous things we can wish for one another.
As most of you know, Dev’s father passed away in the late spring of 2011...
December 20, 2014
Tetris vs. Jigsaw Puzzle
My writing “process” has so differed from project to project, I can’t even relate to the die-hard pantser/plotter discussions anymore. And really—when it comes down to it, a pantser is simply someone who plots in detailed prose, and a plotter is simply someone whose pantsing happens in a streamlined outline.
The writing process for Breath of Stone is, again, very different. Tearing apart two novels, ripping out an entire plotline and set of characters, cramming everything that’s left back toge...
Bundle Achieved!
Guys, guys, GUYS!
Eight novels. Eight aspects of fantasy. One awesome collection for StoryBundle.
Sand of Bone will be in there, too.
I can’t yet shareall the wonderful reads you’ll find in the bundle. But I can tell you now I’m thrilled by the line-up. And, every once in awhile, I pinch myself because I can’t believe I get to share that line-up with such amazing writers.
In the meantime, check out the Weird Fiction and Holiday Fantasy bundles currently available!
Tagged: books
