London, and the rest of Britain
I'm looking for some book recommendations. Specifically, can anyone recommend to me a recent (last 20 years or so) urban fantasy novel by a British author which isn't primarily set in London?I ask...
View ArticleTaking my own advice.
I've talked before about how I think Facebook is a bad setting for political debate, and how it's all too conducive to a very unproductive kind of anger. Well, I've strayed a bit lately from the...
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New words
More from the book of 'Things that really irritate Rik':No, not the first part, the second. The bit about how new words are killing the language. I actually followed this one up to check if Conan...
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The Second Realm 8.3: Ash
First Episode - Previous Episode - Season 1 Hub - Season 2 Hub - Season 3 Hub - Smashwords (all major ebook formats, pay what you like)Logic and Reasons3. AshAlong the bottom of the valley, the air...
View ArticleMajikthise and Vroomfondle
In Douglas Adams'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, there is a well-known sequence in which Deep Thought, the "the second greatest computer in the Universe of Time and Space" is asked to provide the...
View ArticleChanging the World
Epic fantasy, the (sub)genre I feel most at home in, is about the changing of a world. Done well, as for example by Janny Wurts, Robin Hobb or Patrick Rothfuss, it is about the changing of a world...
View ArticleEndings
As I said last week, I'm spending most of this month on posts relating to the end of The Second Realm (a week from Saturday!). Today I'm tackling a topic that's been on my mind most of the year: what...
View ArticleAcknowledgement
Lynne Hunt has been my beta reader/crit buddy for The Second Realm since episode 3, back in February of 2012. I'd initially planned to try to get a different test reader for every episode, which...
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The Second Realm 8.4: Rain That Doesn't Fall
First Episode - Previous Episode - Season 1 Hub - Season 2 Hub - Season 3 Hub - Smashwords (all major ebook formats, pay what you like)Logic and Reasons4. Rain That Doesn't Fall Late in the morning,...
View ArticleNew Realms and Old
So, it's done then. The Second Realm is complete.What the hell do I do now?Actually, before I get to the future (...he said as if he wasn't entering it right now), I'd like to take a moment to look...
View ArticleDiversity
My books are not very diverse. In all my published work and in my trunk novels, I have never written a black character. I've never written an openly gay character, or one who is not cisgendered. I...
View ArticleNaNoWriMo 2014
(Disclaimer: contains shameless self-congratulation and bragging. You are under no obligation to read any further).When I finished NaNoWriMo 2010 in a little under 8 days, I knew I could do better. I...
View ArticleFully Automated Luxury Communism
Go watch this. It's not necessarily a perfect sociopolitical model (after all, it's only an 8-minute video), but it's an interesting idea. The claim is basically that automation means that very soon -...
View ArticleGetting what you wish for
Back in early July I wrote this post, basically bemoaning the fact that video games aren't 'taken seriously' by our culture. Since then some very serious things have happened in gaming (i.e....
View ArticleEveryday sexism (that I am guilty of)
I was walking across campus on Monday and it so happened that the person in front of me on the path was female and attractive. I made a conscious effort not to ogle, and yet, when she was greeted by a...
View ArticleLecturer
No-one who knew me during my first year at university, or to be completely honest at any point in the five-to-eight years before that, would be surprised to hear that I enjoy lecturing. During that...
View ArticleIdiot Overload
It's been a truism of human society for centuries that it's easier to sound convincing than to be right - 'a lie has run around the world before the truth has got its boots on' and so on. I want to...
View ArticleCultural Vertigo
A few weeks back, someone challenged me on Twitter to come up with a New Year's Resolution and I came back with 'Open some of the doors I've got my toe in at the moment'. That's a worthy, if slightly...
View ArticleEveryday sexism (that I am guilty of) part 2
Actually, this time it's not just sexism - it's every other dimension of privilege as well.I'm working on a lengthy and complicated thing about white male identity and 'gamers' - my identity,...
View ArticleBoiled Potatoes and the Analytic Method, part 1
I found myself in need of counselling last year. The counselling I received was extremely helpful, but it's only as, in the intervening time, I've started to study critical perspectives from gender and...
View ArticleBoiled Potatoes and the Analytic Method, part 2
I found myself in need of counselling last year. The counselling I received was extremely helpful, but it's only as, in the intervening time, I've started to study critical perspectives from gender and...
View ArticlePiano
Sometime in the next month or so, it will be twenty years since I had my first piano lesson. That's the point I think it's reasonable to call the point at which I first played the instrument (or indeed...
View ArticleBoiled Potatoes and the Analytic Method, part 3
I found myself in need of counselling last year. The counselling I received was extremely helpful, but it's only as, in the intervening time, I've started to study critical perspectives from gender and...
View ArticleBoiled Potatoes and the Analytic Method, part 4
I found myself in need of counselling last year. The counselling I received was extremely helpful, but it's only as, in the intervening time, I've started to study critical perspectives from gender and...
View Article41.62MB
'IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE', thundered a friend of mine on Twitter when I said something about finally getting a smartphone. I took the plunge in January, at last feeling I have enough spare cash - over...
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