writerbrain. yeah, it's like that.

Trying to convince myself that, just because I woke up (thanks cats) at 5:15, and had coffee in me by 6am, this does not mean I'm an utter slacker if I'm not at work by 6:30.

Mind you, this morning, as of the above-mentioned 6:30 I had fed the cats, made coffee, cleaned up the kitchen from the previous night's depredations, and sorted the recycling. It's not as though I lounged on the sofa eating bonbons.

Now, I know that part of it's because I'm productive in the morning, and my brain hates losing productive time. But seriously, brain? 7am isn't good enough for you?

Screw you. I'm going to go watch cartoons for half an hour.

[oh, for the days when there were actually decent cartoons on at 6:30am. I miss my Battle of the Planets....]


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Before anyone thinks I'm a total workaholic, I feel the need to point out that between 2pm and 5pm are a dead zone for me. I can do administrative and detail work then, but writing? Not so much. So I have to grab the hours that happen...

Guest Post: Juliet McKenna on Thinking about The Trilogy

Part of an ongoing, non-scheduled series, wherein I grab writers I’m reading, and ask them to talk about something related to that book, that they haven’t had a chance to talk about before, or at enough length.

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I read Juliet McKenna’s first book, The Thief’s Gamble, back when it came out, and thought “ooh, nice read!” I then, several years later, met Juliet in person and thought “oooo, nice person!” I didn’t connect the writer-person with the book I’d liked until, oh…a year after that?

Yeah, I know. I’m occasionally slow that way.

She has a new series out - The Hadrumal Crisis - and book 2, Darkening Skies, hits the shelves this week. So I thought it would be fun to ask her about her experiences writing a trilogy, and specifically how it feels to have the dread second-book-of, coming out. What follows is an excerpt from that conversation….


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Geeky Treehugger Science Stuff

Ladies and gents and writers of all ages, your bit of Cool News for the Day, via NPR:
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Here's the story: About 13 miles from this spindle of rock, there's a bigger island, called Lord Howe Island.

On Howe, there used to be an insect, famous for being big. It's a stick insect, a critter that masquerades as a piece of wood, and the Lord Howe Island version was so large — as big as a human hand — that the Europeans labeled it a "tree lobster" because of its size and hard, lobsterlike exoskeleton. It was 12 centimeters long and the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Local fishermen used to put them on fishing hooks and use them as bait.

Then one day in 1918, a supply ship, the S.S. Makambo from Britain, ran aground at Lord Howe Island and had to be evacuated. One passenger drowned. The rest were put ashore. It took nine days to repair the Makambo, and during that time, some black rats managed to get from the ship to the island, where they instantly discovered a delicious new rat food: giant stick insects. Two years later, the rats were everywhere and the tree lobsters were gone.

Totally gone. After 1920, there wasn't a single sighting. By 1960, the Lord Howe stick insect, Dryococelus australis, was presumed extinct.

There was a rumor, though.

Link: http://www.npr.org/blogs/krulwich/2012/02/24/147367644/six-legged-giant-finds-secret-hideaway-hides-for-80-years?