That feeling . . .

I have been working on this set of edits to Bound in Smoke, and well, all I can say is that it’s good. Really, really good, and that is exciting news to share with everyone.

Torcs and the Infamous Harry Price

This article by Tess Machling et.al. is the most fun and interesting thing I’ve read in some time. It’s about the provenance of a torc found in Pulborough that comes with a history of an infamous forger. You could skip straight to the section on Harry Price and then decide if you want to read […]

My Brief Career as a Pony Wrangler

I need to set the scene. Our house is well off the main road with a quarter mile driveway. One side of our house parallels the main road and has sliding glass doors. Looking that direction, there is about 50 yards of field with a gentle downslope south to the fence between two neighbors below, […]

When 24,000 Words Get Nuked

Today I nuked over 24,000 words from Bound In Smoke. By nuked, I mean moved the chapters to a sub-folder of my save this stuff folder in case I need any parts later. This is good news. I have been writing every day for some time and the rework slowly (as it always does) made […]

Miscellaneous Thoughts and Opinions

I’m skeptical that AI will produce a good book anytime soon. AI is trained on the finished product, not the human process that goes into writing. But of course tech folks see the finished product and because a good book reads seamlessly and effortlessly, assume that the writing process must be the same. The finished […]

Word Count is a Funny Thing

Numbers Can Deceive I keep track of my progress on a book by noting my word count. Word count is typically meaningful to writers and editors but not for readers. Roughly speaking, a 90K word book is about 300 printed pages, by the way. In a perfect world where all writers are Rex Stout (whose […]

Report From Jewel HQ

Writing Related News I am doing a paper read-through of Bound in Smoke and it’s going well. This is why I don’t have word count changes posted. The story is coming together in ways that matter. One of the fun things about paper read-throughs is using a fountain pen with pretty colors of ink. This […]

Babel By R.F. Kuang

This will be a short review. After the whole Hugo etc awards issue with this book (and others) being inexplicably disqualified for reasons that were never disclosed or explained by the committee, I decided to read the book that people agreed was the most puzzling omission; Babel by R.F. Kuang. It took me a while […]

Some Additional Thoughts on AI

I can’t stop thinking about this simple fact: Companies are rushing to implement AI despite overwhelming proof that AI does not work for most, if not all, of the stated purposes. AI still, and quite famously, provides incorrect, made up, or flat-out absurd information. Everyone in IT departments everywhere knows they are being asked to […]

Administrative Update Regarding WordPress and Writer’s Diary

Some of you may have heard the news that WordPress has agreed to sell the data on WordPress.com hosted sites to an AI firm for data mining. This blog is self-hosted and therefore not on WordPress.com. Here is a link to the original report from 404 Media for more details. Presumably, WordPress.com data would also […]

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