Mur Lafferty's Blog, page 80

All Write! #18 – The Remains of the Day

ISBW #146 – EXPLICIT – Live from Balticon, with John Anealio, Gail Carriger, and Matt Wallace

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This is live from Balticon with return guest Gail Carriger (@gailcarriger), songwriter John Anealio (@johnanealio), and Bad Cop Matt F. Wallace (@mattfnwallace). This is not safe for work or kids. We are explicit here. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Tidbits before the detailed show notes come: John's awesome songs are "I Should Be Writing" and "George R. R. Martin Is Not Your B****." NYT BESTSELLING author Carriger just...

Despair. And Sharks.

Hey- I know you're feeling it. I know you're sitting there with this weight on you and you don't want to tell your significant other, or your best friend, or your writer's group because they've heard it before. And you know that if you go to them, this will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, the one whine-fest they just are so freaking tired of listening to that they will cease to love you.

It's okay. You've got me.

It's hard, isn't it? You watch your contemporaries finish that novel...

Balticon Schedule

I'll be in Baltimore, MD tomorrow through Monday to attend one of my favorite cons: Balticon! If you're there, please say hi, and be sure to attend ISBW LIVE where we'll have Gail Carriger, John Anealio, and a live Good Cop Bad Cop segment with Matt Wallace!

My reading is at an inconvenient time (5pm Friday) but be there if you can. I'm reading something entirely new!

My Schedule:

FRIDAY

5pm Reading

SATURDAY:

3pm NaNoWriMo for Noobs
8pm Autograph Session

SUNDAY

4pm Girls' Rule Live!5pm Story...

All Write! #17 – Strenous Activity

Five Reasons You Should Come to 7×20x21

7×20x21 is a presentation that I'll be hosting at Book Expo America with my buddy and all-around good guy Ryan Chapman. Here's five reasons why you should come if you're at the convention, or why you should keep an eye out for the video online next week.

1) Cool format. Each presenter has 7 minutes to talk, and must bring 20 powerpoint slides to accompany their presentation. The slides advance forward automatically every 21 seconds. It's based on a Japanese presentation format called pecha...

Reminder: ISBW is on hiatus

I've gotten some "what's going on?" and "where's the new show?" emails lately, and I wanted to reiterate that I'm taking a break from podcasting ISBW in May. It will return in June. As a result, I won't be scheduling any new interviews for a while (I still have several recorded and ready to go), and the promo requests are backing up, so please keep that in mind when you email me.

Of course, if you don't know where the podcast is, it probably means you're not reading this blog, which means the ...

The End In Sight

Guest blogger J.R. Blackwell is a writer who believes that people can change shape, size and minds.

For some reason, the process of finishing up the first draft of a novel is proving to be one of the most creatively rich times I've ever experienced. I have ideas for photo-shoots and short stories and graphic novels that obsess me every single day. I'm about five to ten thousand words away from the end of my zero draft, and I keep thinking about other, really cool ideas.

But I'm not going to...

Addendum: You are required to suck

I've been saying for years that you should allow yourself the freedom to suck at writing. With the freedom to write horrible things, you get discouraged less, you learn faster, and you understand the difference between good and bad writing.

But lately I've been thinking that that needs to be changed. Because, at the beginning, you are going to suck. The "allowing" part means you keep going instead of stopping and wailing that your perfect idea is crap on the page. This is not an insult...

Jonathan Coulton and the Forced March (An ISBW Audio Treat)

I got a chance to interview Jonathan Coulton before his Raleigh show last Friday. I hadn't talked to him since '07 when he came through town backing up John Hodgman, and he was the opening band for Paul and Storm. Things have changed a bit since then.

I asked him about Thing a Week, when he was making a song every week for a year, and how it affected him. I was going to blog about it, but then I thought, why not just drop that snippet of the interview into the feed? (the interview was not for ...