K.C. Shaw's Blog, page 32

Useless Week

This week has been a bad one for writing, in that I have not done any. Well, I did write about a page and a half on Adventures in Zoology, but that barely counts. I haven't even done much reading even though I'm reading (and enjoying hugely) Pierre Pevels' swashbuckling adventure The Cardinal's Blades. Heck, I haven't even posted here in a week.

On the other hand, I have pulled out an old story and started to edit it. It's not as bad as I remembered, but it does need a lot of work. Man, I was ...

Books everywhere, lists everywhere

I signed up on Goodreads a few months ago, and now it seems like half the people I know are on it too. That's cool. Since I've already catalogued pretty much my entire library on LibraryThing, though, I decided to just use Goodreads to list small press published books.

Of course, now it looks like I'm a weirdo whose library consists mostly of books about the occult. Hey, I can't help it that small presses are more likely to have interesting niche books on unusual topics!

I'm now 30 books into m...

Writing the urban fantasy heroine

I like urban fantasy pretty well and I've been reading a lot of it in the last couple of years. I'm seeing some unwelcome trends, though, particularly with how female main characters are being portrayed.

If you're not familiar with urban fantasy, a big chunk of the genre is given over to books where a tough woman--often connected in some way with law enforcement--investigates a crime against or by a supernatural being. Usually the woman has some kind of supernatural ability, too: she can work ...

Book stats

I keep hitting "new post" and then staring at the blank page. Since I have nothing better to write about, I'll do a meme!

I've seen this one on a few book review blogs lately. Some reviewers are breaking down how many books they've read from which publishers, and which books are debuts, but I'm too lazy to figure out all that information. But here are some statistics of the 28 books I've read since the beginning of the year.

Out of 28 books, I've read 14 by female authors and 14 by male. I tota...

This is where ideas come from

I was brushing my teeth tonight and thinking idly of "The Country Mouse and the City Mouse" fable and wondering if I could get a short story out of it, when I noticed a spider running around the bathroom. It was black, maybe big enough to wrap its tiny feet around the edges of a dime if it stretched, and it was acting kind of odd. I watched it for a while and it seemed to be either tracking prey or following the trail of a lady spider, or something of the sort. It would run fast for a few ste...

You get what you give

I spent a few hours this afternoon dismantling my mom's sadly dilapidated gazebo, the one I had to assemble last spring. It didn't last long. It might have, except that we had an unusually snowy winter and one particular snowfall weighted the gazebo roof down and collapsed it. I've been trying to keep it propped up and strapped together with duct tape ever since, but another strut broke this week and Mom wanted it taken apart.

So anyway, that's what I did. And while I worked, Mom and I discuss...

Double your fun

Well, this weekend I finally got the rest of my handwritten pages of Adventures in Zoology typed, which took forever. Turns out I'm right at the 50,000 word mark! I left my hero and heroine fleeing from city guards, and I suspect I'm going to go back to them soon. I can't just leave them in the lurch like that.

Of course, while I was typing up all that, I was neglecting The Trickster Society. I now have lots of handwritten pages for it pending typing. I just can't keep up, which is odd because...

Don't throw that paper away!

When I abandoned Adventures in Zoology to start playing with The Trickster Society (and I'm starting to see just how poor my titling skills are, just with this sentence), I had written a whole bunch of the former longhand in a notebook. I don't like leaving bits and pieces of handwritten stuff untyped, but since I'm working on Trickster Society in the same notebook, I figured it was okay. Now, however, the notebook is getting pretty full. Not only that, but I just discovered a few paragraphs ...

WIP Wednesday: The Trickster Society and Pacing

Since I had Monday and Tuesday off work, I keep thinking today's Monday. No, it's Wednesday! I haven't done a WIP Wednesday post in forever.

The Trickster Society is coming along slowly. I wondered today why it was taking me so freaking long to get through every scene; then I realized I was stopping frequently to do research on various details connected with the setting or upcoming scenes. Usually I just make that shit up. My slow pace makes me think I'm overwriting, but I'm less than 10,000 w...

June 1 peppers and angst

All the pepper plants have been sold, given away, or planted in my garden. Mostly planted in my garden. I'm getting...tired...of peppers. Here's the front garden, which is small and planted in mild peppers:


I did pick my first pepper this weekend, a sweet banana that Mom chopped up and added to the BBQ beans last night. I also picked a small but surprisingly ripe purple bell this evening that Mom plans to eat in a salad tomorrow.

Here's the big garden out back, which is planted mostly in pepper...