Martha Wells's Blog, page 204

I didn't manage to get one word on the page/screen on Sun...

I didn't manage to get one word on the page/screen on Sunday, and on Monday I'd written over 1100 words by 9:30 in the morning. So wish me luck today that I can keep that up for a bit.

I'll be heading off to my favorite SF/F convention ever on Thursday: ArmadilloCon. The major guests this year are: Guest of Honor: Rachel Caine, Artist Guest: Cat Conrad, Editor Guest: Anne Sowards, Fan Guest: Elspeth Bloodgood, Toastmistress: Nancy Kress, Urban Fantasy Special Guest: Ilona Andrews, Steampu...

Dammit, found out this morning that my favorite reporter ...

Dammit, found out this morning that my favorite reporter ever died: Harold Dow DEAD: Veteran CBS News Reporter Dies Unexpectedly He was only 62.

He was awesome on 48 Hours: Mystery. He had this technique of interviewing serial murderers and other scumbags with an expression of faintly amused skepticism. People would say far more than they meant to, trying to get that expression off his face.

ETA: From CBS: Dow won an Association of Women in Radio and Television Gracie Allen Award in 2001. He ...

Women in Early Hollywood

A while back on Facebook we were talking about the TCM documentary Complicated Women, about pre-code movies of the early 30s. I knew the 30s movies were a huge contrast (especially in depictions of women's careers and sex) to 40s and 50s movies, but this documentary had some really good examples. (I'd seen some of the ones featured, like Babyface with Barbara Stanwyck and "Queen Christina" and a lot of the Kay Francis movies, but many of these I'd never heard of before, like an early 30s "...

Not much going on at the moment except the usual. Yester...

Not much going on at the moment except the usual. Yesterday I worked on the third Cloud Roads book, then did more painting in the hallway, then worked on the YA project I'm collaborating on with a friend.

I'm watching Nora Prentiss on TCM as I do email and Facebook and Twitter this morning, and thinking, wow, the main character guy really is an idiot. Even Nora thinks so. A lot of the film noir I like (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice) seem to start with someone making an as...

I had a very good weekend out, except for the heat, augh....

I had a very good weekend out, except for the heat, augh. It was in the upper 90s, heat index in the 100s. Last night I had a headache so bad I had to get up and 3:00 and wait for the benadryl and the aleve to kick in.

We did go by Murder by the Book and stimulated their economy to the best of our ability. And I found there's a new Benjamin January mystery Dead and Buried by Barbara Hambly! These are set in New Orleans in the 1830s, and they're excellent mysteries. When free black...

I haven't been doing much besides painting and writing. ...

I haven't been doing much besides painting and writing. I changed the color to two darker ones in that same range, and it's working much better now. They're grays with a hint of green, and look different in sunlight, shadow, and electric light. I'd take a picture, but I'm not sure it would show up.

We actually got a light tropical rain yesterday, after days and days of upper 90s and a heat index above 100. Today it's cloudy so far, which feels like a huge relief.

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This is a disturbing s...

I've had trouble sleeping lately, which tends to aggravat...

I've had trouble sleeping lately, which tends to aggravate my anxiety issues, which, by a mental process which makes sense to me, sort of, has led to me re-painting the stairwell of our house this weekend. I'd actually been planning to do it for a while, since the floor has been changed since I first painted it years ago, other adjoining rooms have been painted, and the stairwell color doesn't brighten the space up the way it used to. I had the new color picked out, and decided to go ahead ...

Sunday morning cat photos:

Sunday morning cat photos:

I didn't get much sleep last night due to a) not being ab...

I didn't get much sleep last night due to a) not being able to fall asleep and b) an anxiety dream that felt like it went on for hours. I think part of it is not having a cat sleeping on me. (The other two don't like to sleep with us in the summer.)

Anyway, I noticed a couple of new places to buy books and eBooks:

Amazon UK now seems to be selling Kindle editions of three of my books. So far it's just The Element of Fire, City of Bones, and The Gate of Gods.

Lulu.com is now retailing books ...

Writing Misconceptions

The Writer Beware article on The Myth of the Evil Editor made me think about other misconceptions about writing. (Annoying misconceptions.)

One of the big ones, which I've talked about on here before, seems to be that if you write fiction at all, any kind of fiction, you must be aiming for professional publication. If you don't want to be a published author, you should stop writing. You can't just write for a hobby, for fun. Stop having fun in an unauthorized manner, stop it right now! It...