I believe this is the first time I’ve doubled down on the work of one particular writer in my Read this book recommendations–I lauded her first book back in January–but man, is it deserved. A Closed and Common Orbit doesn’t follow the story established in the first book of the Wayfarer series in terms of…
May ended up being an unexpected windfall of material to read, and as it was generally pretty quick to get through, I made good headway with it. I was in a library and wandered by the graphic novel section and came across the first three collected books of a series called Ascender. It took me…
We went to a friend’s pool party this past Saturday. One of our friends there had found a tiny baby bird–way more skin than fluffy down, eyes still not open, not able to move around too much and even that very unsteadily and unbalanced–on the pool deck. With no nest in sight to try to…
A month ago I went for a medical exam to look at booking a minor operation, and in the pre-exam they check everyone’s height and weight and blood pressure. The usual things. Later, as I was in talking to the doctor, he was very frank about everything, and he brought up my weight. He asked,…
As of this weekend, I’ve broken 200 pages on my project of humourous stories and observations. That is, to be clear, 200 pages as they’d appear in a book, not 200 pages of solid prose writing. That’s crazy talk. This leads me to wonder when I should call it done as far as length goes….
I’m now officially employed by the LCBO as a summer customer service rep. Such short-term work can at times lead to being brought on for a permanent position, then potentially more hours and more choice in hours worked, so here’s hoping. I’ve been working the last couple of days on the requisite twelve hours of…
When we did our recent reno, I donated a lot of books. Dozens of them, easily. Maybe hundreds. Swept off shelves by the armload, put into boxes as efficiently as possible, and hauled to the thrift store, again and again. Initially I balked at the idea. These were my books, after all, and book lovers…
Bit of an odd month. I not only forgot to track what I was reading in April (very weird), but I’m pretty sure I actually completed reading… well… zero books. Which is really unusual. Here’s the thing: I put aside Fire Up Your Writing Brain, which I had started in March, in order to read…
I’ve mentioned before that there are various things that will bump me from enjoyment of a book. Sometimes it’s plain bad writing. The advent of self-publishing has been a boon for anyone who has ever thought they want to write a book, because now they can produce one from their laptops and it will instantly…
For anyone who doesn’t get my newsletter… I mean, first off, why not? Geez… but secondly and more to the point, I’m looking for work, and one of the opportunities that came up was a scriptwriter for an upcoming Star Wars game from powerhouse game developer Ubisoft. One of the suggested items to have in…