Truer words were never written
I’ve been reading Keith Johnstone’s brilliant little book, Impro: Improvisation and the Theater, which as you can probably guess is about acting. But it’s about much more: it’s about creativity, and teaching, and anthropology, and psychoanalysis, and writing dialogue, all in about 150 pages. Somewhere in the middle of the book he drops this gem: [...]
Review: Iain Banks Matter
After two long weeks of reading in fits and starts, I have finally finished Iain M. Banks’ latest SF novel, The Culture Novel Matter. And although it was unquestionably an excellent space opera novel with all the glorious wordplay, unbelievably vast and imaginative settings, and inevitable tightening of the plot screws that are the hallmarks [...]
Iain Banks, Matter (the beginning)
I’ve been reading Iain Banks’s Matter, and I have to say that while I’m only on chapter 4, Banks’s new book is edging dangerously close to being a book easy to put down and never pick up again. Chapter 4 features one of the longest infodumps I have yet to read in a Banks novel, [...]
Back in the groove, for a moment…
I wrote 4,000 words in two days. This is as close to a miracle as I get since my writing mojo has been sorta lacking the past few weeks. It’s a silly story, the “Miss Abbas, you can’t go walking about Highfrost without underwear!” story, and now Anaria and Orin have had their moment. The [...]
How not to do foreshadowing: Karin Huxman’s Sea Change
I was reading Karin Huxman’s romance novel, Sea Change (New Concepts Publishing, 2005), and I have found much to mock. The book is set in the era of Melville, of whaling and whale ships. We have our hero, Jonah, a merchant marine captain famous among captains for his sea knowledge and his never having lost [...]
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