Hugh Howey's Blog, page 111

The Plagiarist: Chapter 3

Adam arrived late to find his morning class already full. He shut the door behind him—too loudly, everything too loudly of late—and strolled along the phalanx of his seated freshmen. The kids sat like powered down robots, gazing ahead. This forever perplexed Adam, ever since he started teaching. The cliché from films was a more [...]

The Plagiarist: Chapter 2

He only had two hours before he had to be at class, but the simulator would make it feel like six. Compressing time was a necessity if one was to live two lives at once. Adam used his faculty pass to swipe his way to the labs, then picked one of the jacks in the [...]

The Plagiarist: Chapter One

The familiar glow-in-the-dark sticker held Adam's attention. He lost himself in it—it was some kind of radioactive bee lighting on a flower, a thirsty tongue hanging out of a goofy smile. The sticker clung to the frame of his beat-up computer screen, keeping peace with a half dozen others that he'd nervously picked away to [...]

My Final Project

This is my first semester back in the classroom. It's been over ten years since I've taken a class. Since it's part of the benefits package with my job, I thought I'd take advantage. I chose, for my inaugural course, American Science Fiction.
The class is awesome. A guy I sorta know from buying books at [...]

Not-So-Free-Will: A Bern Retrospective Part 3

One of the major themes explored in the Bern Saga is the question of personal identity. Each of the major characters are orphaned. They are removed from their native homes. The idea of them floating in space, of being "lost" while simultaneously existing in a vacuum, is meant to highlight this. What kind of person [...]

Beginnings and Endings: A Bern Retrospective Part 2

SPOILER ALERT! DON'T READ THESE RETROSPECTIVES UNLESS YOU'VE FINISHED THE BERN SAGA.
There are a ton of themes in the four books comprising the Bern Saga, but two of them stand above the rest. The first is the use of cycles, of repeated actions, of going 'round and 'round even as things change. The second is [...]

Planning the Unexpected – A Bern Retrospective Part 1

Welcome to the first of what I hope to be two dozen or so retrospectives on the Bern Saga. If you haven't read the series, some of these discussions are best avoided. There will be spoilers galore. For those of you who have read all four books, I believe you'll enjoy hearing my thoughts on [...]

NaNo at the Watauga County Library

Awesome night of writing and sharing at the public library. A local group of NaNo participants met for food, fun, writing, and reading. I was blown away by the talent and dedication in the group. One of the young ladies was working on her fourth novel and wrote 4,000 words in the four hours that [...]

Here we go!

National Novel Writing Month begins in two hours! While many NaNo'ers will stay up until midnight and begin hammering out their novels, I'll be going to bed and getting an early rise. The goal for tomorrow is 3,000 words, which is gonna be difficult. I work from 9 to 5, so I'm hoping a 6 [...]

On the eve of NaNoWriMo

We're a measly three days from the termination of October and the dawn of another National Novel Writing Month. I guess it's time to start narrowing down which book I'm going to write. There's INVARIABLE, the story of a young girl raised like a lab rat by a cold, calculating father who was kicked out [...]