Mur Lafferty's Blog, page 87

News From Poughkeepsie – Sunday Editon #3

This week's theme, "The New Adventures of…" was alot of fun for me, being a history nerd. Anytime you can make our only peglegged founding father talk like teenybopper is good time, as far as I'm concerned.

Jason (Anthraxus) provided the sole prompt in this week's comments, so he gets the post by default. Luckily, it's delightfully sideways look into John Slidell's work in annexing parts of Mexico:

Slidell smoothed the new map out on the expansive desk. Numerous small towns and missionaries...

ISBW PDF and more

You thought I forgot, didn't you?

The deal with freelancing and spinning a lot of plates means some inevitably get neglected. I continue to update the ISBW PDF but I just hadn't gotten around to actually editing and getting it turned into PDF format. Thankfully, the mighty Phil Lunt has come to my rescue and created some awesome ebook files for me! You can get the first three chapters now in PDF or PRC format.

Did I mention it's free?

(intro, chapters 1,2 and …) Chapter 3- Ideas are EASY. Work...

News From Poughkeepsie – Day 115

The New Adventures of….

Dear Diary,

Today was ever so fine, as I was finally able to woo the Lady Westword away from her husband and to join me for some discrete necking and some indiscrete innuendo under the pear branches. Clearly Charles knew nothing when he said my cravat made may face look bloated. Lady Westword certainly did not think so!

Charles, you are a fathead.

Once again, my restating of how I wrote the "We the people" part of the Declaration of Independence got me a f...

ISBW #132 – Feedback Special

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00:00:07 ISBW #13200:00:38 GoTo Meeting Message00:01:12 Mur tackles ISBW administrative activities00:02:49 Mur names her new assistant, Carrie Kei Heim Binas — check out Carrie's writing blog at Heim Binas Fiction00:03:37 State of the Mur update: finishing recording War, edits from agent on Heaven, more work on "Project Underground", and then NaNoWriMo in November (if all goes according to plan) to write Playing for...

On Love

Dr. Mercury by JR Blackwell

I've podcasted and written a bit on villains/antagonists and how to make them believable, but the ever-eloquent and so-damned-talented-I-want-to-hate-her-but-I-cant JR Blackwell said it so much better in this blog post.

A villain can be many things – from the casual cruelty of the hobbyist to the concentrated machinations of an expert. But Arching, the true Arching of a hero, that, my friend, takes love. Oh, it's often thought that it's hate, boiling rage or...

News From Poughkeepsie – Day 114

The New Adventures of…Mark Twain and

"Nicky, are you quite sure this is going to work?"

"You've never doubted me before, Sam."

"Before, it was all experiments and labratories and…I'm holding a ray gun, for Pete's sake!"

"As am I. And we'll need them if we have any possible hope of defeating that tentacled horror from Dimension X."

"Stick to the rayguns, Nicky. If we survive this, leave the descriptive articles to me…"

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Guest Post: A Podcaster's Guide to Winging It by Mick Bordet

Mick Bordet writes and produces 'Some Other Scotland', a podcast novel that encompasses twisted versions of current news events and listener interaction set against a plot involving ancient advanced civilisations and clan warfare.  He is also a regular contributor to the short story podcast 'Great Hites'.

If there is one golden rule of podcasting fiction, it is "Don't start podcasting until the book you are reading or performing is complete", but what if the very essence of a podcast is its...

News From Poughkeepsie – Day 113

The New Adventures of…Joan of Arc

The girl couldn't have been out of her teens, but Ronny was willing to give her the benefit of a doubt. And she clearly knew her weapons, the way she cracked open that sig to look down the barrel. But goddamn, there was no way this girl was buying all this ordinance. Like she was out to start a war.

"Listen, Miss—" Ronny started, but the girl cut him off.

"My name is Jeanne," she said. Her words soft, musical. She did not look up.

"Right. Joan. Listen, are you ...

Introducing ISBW's newest team member- Carrie Kei Heim Binas

Thanks to everyone who answered my call for an ISBW assistant to help with the show notes and QAing the episodes. The outpouring of interest in this volunteer position was surprising and humbling. Thank you all so much for offering your time to me, it really meant a lot.

I'd like to announce that I made my choice, and the new assistant is Carrie Kei Heim Binas, author of the fabulous writing blog, Heim Binas Fiction.

Carrie has already done the show notes for ISBW #131, so if you missed...

Random thought- Nano WriMo

Perhaps it's the migraines that make me think strange things. But while sitting in the haze of a (thankfully) receeding migraine this morning, I just thought, "NaNoWriMo. Nano WriMo. What, is that like really small writing month?"

Then my buddy Gwen on Twitter said it sounded like a twitter project.

So what the hell- let's do Nano WriMo! If you can't commit to 50,000 words in the month of November, how about 4200 characters? That's 140 characters of fiction every day – well, let's say 135...