Category: WRITING

Thoughts On Ellen Oh’s Advice re: #DiversityinSFF

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While looking up a little more information for a post to add to my series on SF in South Korea (though the post is about Koreans outside Korea writing speculative fiction) I ran across this post at the website of Ellen Oh, one of the authors I’ll be discussing in that forthcoming post. Oh is the Korean-American author of a series of books titled The Prophecy series, which are a high fantasy trilogy set in what is (according to this interview) a fantastical version of Korea modeled on the Three Kingdoms period. (I’ll have more to say in a forthcoming …

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On Enigma

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Jenny Greenteeth image

For the last few days, I’ve been taking medicine for an ear infection I suddenly developed. It’s not completely clear what caused the infection: contamination of the water in the pool where I swim is possible, but it’s just as likely that it’s a side effect of a particular asthma medication I’ve been taking. In any case, it’s not completely resolved, but it is a lot better than it was… yesterday, I was worried my eardrum might burst from the pressure, but today it’s almost normal again. (On the one side, at least.) Anyway, as a result, I’ve been unable …

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My Secret?

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Got a funny tweet this morning: @GordSellar Just received your memoir from @HonestTea. #location pic.twitter.com/kGxqOYeVKS — Derek Brown (@derekbrown) September 6, 2013 Ha, funnily enough, I submitted this a long, long time ago, and forgot all about it. But for all that, the principle seems to hold. In the past couple of weeks, since relocating to our new apartment, I’ve: started exercising regularly (that is, swimming daily, and tracking it on Fitocracy, because gamification = motivation boost; I’ll be adding a regimen of bodyweight exercises next week, too), drafted close to 10% of the novel I’m working on (I should …

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The Stuff I’ve Been Doing of Late

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This is just a quick update for those wondering why I haven’t posted anything in a while. There’s snaps of food I’ve cooked, a rare recording of the current state of my sax playing as of right now (and a discussion of an online course in jazz improvisation I’m taking with Gary Burton, yes, that Gary Burton), and a little discussion of my writing.

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Two More Stories of Mine Published

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So, a couple of my stories have been released into the wild… er, I mean, published in different books this month, both of which are available digitally, which means yes, you can go and buy them right now! Like, right now. (Just what you were hoping I’d say, right?) The first story is titled “The Rite,” a weird story that is about a famous ballet that caused a famous musical riot when it premiered in Paris a hundred years ago, and the pagan/magical roots of the musical content, as well as questions of the composer’s (Igor Stravinsky’s) uncertainty regarding how to …

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Yes, White Cats Can Play Jazz, So Can We Talk About Something Else?

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Sometimes, the best way to figure out what an author knows about his or her subject is to find the bit of the book where the discussion is of a topic you know something about: you can usually pretty get a sense of whether the author is full of shit, or authoritative, or something else entirely. So it’s a bit discouraging that when I picked up Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia: Necessary Memories from History and the Arts and turned to the chapter on Louis Armstrong, that I found a tiny blurb about Armstrong’s life and contribution, followed by this quote: …

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Mouthpiece Deprivation, and the Saxo-fooooon, and Making Good Art

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UPDATE (6 July 2013): Woohoo! My Barone mouthpiece arrived in time to be carried back to me by my friends! Here’s the snap my friend sent me: I’m excited to get it on the horn and start getting a feel for it! Original Post: So, a week or so ago I screwed up my tenor sax mouthpiece. I was having some problems, and there was a persistent, weird problem I was seeing–my reeds weren’t really sealing, and I was seeing a weird moisture buildup on the table of the mouthpiece, where no moisture should have been going. It was happening …

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Here’s Your Chance to Support a Great Workshop

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I’m participating in a Write-a-thon this summer, to raise money to support and continue the existence of the workshop that helped me achieved what I have as a write. I pledge ot write like hell. You pledge to support the workshop. If you have a little spare cash, it’s a fine charity (and tax-deductible, in the USA at least). It’s a great workshop that has helped along the careers of countless SF, fantasy, and horror writers, so if you feel like you should be supporting the arts, here’s a great chance!

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Gin Craze Story Drafted…

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As I mentioned on Twitter the other day, I recently finished a draft of a weird novella with the working title, “In the Company of Distillers.” I guess the best way to explain the story is that it’s set in London at that part of the 18th century Gin Craze just prior to the government’s second attempt (and the first serious one) at Gin Prohibition… As far as the makeup of the story, it’s probably easiest to explain it more like the way one does a gin-based cocktail, that is, in the form of a recipe: two parts alchemy one …

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