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So what’s that new novel of yours about, anyway?
I’m glad you asked. It’s called Terra — have I mentioned that? And it’s the follow-up to The Portal. Here’s the marketing blurb I wrote for it yesterday: Larry Barnes thinks he’ll never use the...
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Cover for my new novel
. . . which is called Terra, you will recall. Subject to further fiddling. Comments are welcome. You will notice that we’re looking for a parallel universe vibe here. What is that ray gun doing...
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Terra, Chapter 1
Here’s the first chapter of my new novel, which is probably a couple of months away from actually appearing in print and ebook format. It’s a sequel to The Portal. It would help to read The Portal...
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Terra, Chapter 2
Here is the second chapter of my novel Terra. (Here’s the first.) I’m still not sure if I want to post the whole thing; let’s see where this goes. ================= Chapter 2 I stared at her. She...
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Sequels
I’m finally getting around to reading Funeral Games, the last volume in Mary Renault’s trilogy about Alexander the Great. It is wonderful. And it addresses some issues I’m trying to solve while...
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Writers in the movies: “Trumbo”
One more in an apparently very occasional series. Trumbo, of course, is the movie about Dalton Trumbo, the blacklisted screenwriter who wrote Roman Holiday, Spartacus, and other major movies. The film...
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Free ebooks in return for reviews: Some results
It’s becoming harder to get customer reviews for books nowadays. That’s probably related to the general downturn in the ebook market. Here I mentioned a program, run by my epublisher, to give away...
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The Bad Sex award
The Bad Sex award for 2015 was given out last December. Guess I missed it. Here’s an interesting article in The Guardian about it. The British award is given out for badly written erotic passages in...
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“Terra” is now available from Amazon!
It took longer than I expected — but Terra is finally here. Terra is the sequel to my novel The Portal; it extends and deepens the story of Larry Barnes and the cosmic gateway he has discovered to...
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Points of view
Here’s an article from the Times Book Review about the return of the omniscient point of view in fiction: Most 19th-century novelists didn’t try to hide their authorial presence. With modernism’s...
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First customer review of Terra
And it’s a good one! A really intriguing and rather different coming of age story. Alternate universe, strange portals to travel through and a planet called Terra. Earth, but not Earth. A place where...
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The paperback version of Terra is now available!
It’s $14.99 and worth every penny! Available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (I have no idea how there is already a used copy for sale from a bookseller on Amazon.) By the way, we’re in the process...
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New PORTAL cover?
My publisher liked the cover we came up with for TERRA. (They also seemed to like the uppercase letters.) So they suggested coming up with a comparable cover for The Portal and change its title to...
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That sinking feeling when…
… when you realize that the alternative-universe young-adult adventure story you’re writing is turning out to be about Donald Trump. Trump is ruining everything.
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Sixth-graders are the best people in the world!
I posted this photo on Facebook already, but here it is again for my blog. I was invited to give a talk about The Portal to the sixth-graders of the Gateway Regional Middle School in western...
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Sequels and sixth-graders
So I walked into the auditorium for my talk to a bunch of sixth-graders, and one of them is helping to set up the AV. I tell him my name, and he says, “You wrote The Portal?” “Yep.” “I loved that...
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That one special scene
In my talk to those wonderful sixth-graders I discussed why I wrote The Portal. It wasn’t because of the science-fictiony adventure story; the reason I wanted to write it was the encounter between the...
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From “Portal” to “The Portal” to PORTAL
Got that? I originally named my novel “Portal”, but my publisher thought that one-word titles weren’t commercial, so they talked me into “The Portal”. But now that its sequel TERRA has debuted, we...
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“Arrival”, time paradoxes, and me
I was eager to see the movie Arrival because my novel Forbidden Sanctuary is also a first-contact story involving a linguist and a bunch of aliens. There isn’t much overlap between the stories,...
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Shaping a novel: How many points of view is too many?
I am about to start the final quarter or so of my novel, and I realize that this weekend I’ve already decided on three new point-of-view characters. Two of them ought to be first-person narrators, in...
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