Back of the Envelope

Amazon has announced its new Kindles, including three new Kindle Fires, and two new e-ink Kindles.  I'm not going to review them here, j...

This past weekend, Kristin and I went to Worldcon 70.  Worldcon is one of the bigger non-profit science fiction conventions, and probably th...

Everyone knows how important first impressions are. Fair or not, the first impression you make tends to form the filter through which all ...

The Dark Knight Rises , the final movie in Christopher Nolan's Batman saga, lies under the dark cloud of the tragedy that took place on ...

A week ago, Kristin and I went to Readercon .  Readercon is only the second Writer's convention that I've gone to, and the first wit...

Kristin and I went on a three-day backpacking a couple of weekends ago.  For those of you who may be even less outdoorsy than me, backpackin...

Medieval European swordsmanship has the advantage of a number of contemporary training manuals, and recently there's been something of a...

I finally got around to watching John Carter last week.  It's time in the theater was awfully brief, and I didn't get around to seei...

Kristin and I went camping this past weekend.  We pitched a tent, cooked a meal over coals (and then figured out that it takes forever to co...

As I mentioned last week , I have a book coming out soon, and I've been spending some time thinking about the release party. Of course I...

This past week, I signed my first book contract. Yes, someone actually paid me to publish my book. The book in question is Fire , which yo...

Kristin and I spent this past weekend visiting her brother and his family in Alberta, including three nephews whom I was meeting for the fir...

I've decided to start reading, and reviewing, some of the novels available on Amazon.com's Kindle Lending Library.  This allows Amaz...

The Avengers came out this past weekend, and I talked Kristin into seeing it for our date night on Friday.  We had already seen all the lea...

Doc Rampage tells a heartwarming story of a boy, his dog, and his cut-anything shears.  Go read .

Not everyone understood the technical issues discussed in last week's post .  I apologize for that, and if there are any specific questi...

Do fantasy writers need to know anything about quantum physics? At last year's World Fantasy, I attended a panel on magic systems, where...

It's been a while since I've blogged anything.  I've been very busy writing, but that's really more of an excuse than anythi...

Once again, I'm going to talk about twist endings that worked.  Once again, there'll be spoilers, so I'll add some space. . ...

Last week , I talked about how to make stories unpredictable.  This week, I want to talk about some stories that did it right and really sur...