Kelly McCullough's Blog, page 89

Blog Comments

I get comments on my personal blog, a lot of them, which appear to come from China. Either they are in Chinese and unreadable to me or they are in English and appear to be Chinese fortune cookie fortunes. I delete them. Does anyone else have this problem? Is there anything I can do, aside from deleting the comments one by one?

Dinosaurs!

National Geographic article about how dinosaurs' feathers changed with age.

Space is Big, I mean REALLY Big...

Because Eleanor shouldn't have all the fun pointing to cool science stuff, I wanted to share this article from World Science: "New Stars Shatter Known Size Limits."

"As­tro­no­mers have iden­ti­fied the hug­est stars yet known, in­clud­ing one esti­mated to weigh the equi­va­lent of 265 Suns"

Smart Things

Agent Kristin Nelson on the working of bookscan and how it can affect a carreer.

Nalo Hopkinson on story failure modes.

Kris Rusch on when and how to incorporate.

Tobias Buckell on why you don't see a lot of mid-career writing advice online. This one is part of an ongoing conversation that's been going on in the writersphere including big chunks at Scalzi's and Jay Lake's among others.

Michael Thomas on BarCon and knowing when to keep your mouth shut.

Jim Hines on taking the hits to your career an...

Friday Cat Blogging now with bonus extra blob cat shot

I haz found missing piece of da puzzle!



Blob cat blobs.



3 cats, 1 chipmunk, endless possibility



I killz it with my mindz!



Hold still down there, I needz landing pad



After 3 days in dezert dehydrated cat sayz:
Gin...I need gin...

Radio Interview Archive

If you missed listening to me blather live on KFAI's "Write On! Radio" you can catch it in the archived files: http://www.kfai.org/writeonradio.

Actually finding the file is kind of confusing. You have to click on the archive for 7/20/10, and accept the terms and conditions. Then it looks like you got nowhere because there's a list of all the guests, etc. BUT, if you scroll down past the announcements you'll find a tiny little header "Previous Shows" and a reddish button for either .mp3 st...

Monday WIP - Open Thread

Happy Monday!

...or not.

For me, it's not looking too bad so far. One son is off at camp for most of the day, and the other has about two hours of tennis this morning. For me, that translates into two hours of writing time. Being a stay-at-home dad, and it being summer, (and me having a deadline) I have to grab those moments when I can.

Although, really, it should be a good week regardless. Number One Son (the one not in all day camp this week) has already expressed a desire to hang out in a cof...

Astronomy Photo of the Day (from NASA)

Two galaxies are squaring off in Corvus and here are the latest pictures. But when two galaxies collide, the stars that compose them usually do not. That's because galaxies are mostly empty space and, however bright, stars only take up only a small amount of that space. During the slow, hundred million year collision, one galaxy can still rip the other apart gravitationally, and dust and gas common to both galaxies does collide. In this clash of the titans, dark dust pillars mark massive m...

Friday Cat Blogging

Rare sighting of the Wisconsonian potbellied muskrat



There was a crooked cat who had a crooked tail…



Practicing jackknife for Olympic dive competition



Your proposition intrigues me…

Who Do YOU Write Like?*

I'm sure many of you have already seen this thing that has been going around the Interwebs: "I Write Like"* It's one of those thingies where you put in a couple of paragraphs of your writing and a program analyzes it. I tried it, and the first result was Dan Brown.

While I appreciate the idea that I write like an international bestseller, (I mean, who wouldn't?) I see my prose as a bit more breezy, chatty, etc., so I thought I'd try a few different paragraphs in the same book. The results ...