Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
Digital editions now available for sale on the CDP website.
Print and digital versions available here and everywhere from 5 April 2017.
A GOD IS BORN!
TOO BAD ABOUT THE PERSONALITY DISORDER
So reads the graffito.
MOM is the mall operations manager — the greatest intelligence in history, a machine awakened to self-awareness at a time when the last few human survivors have withdrawn to the last two remaining refuges on Earth. Quarantined from the global nanobot superorganism … Read more
Jack Shackaway here. Of Kicking Dogs fame.
It’s true, as Collin says (here and here). Nearly everybody’s a writer these days. And — given all the media interest in current publishing-industry convulsions — the few who aren’t writers are experts on publishing and books.
I used to tell people I was a novelist. I don’t anymore. That’s as interesting to your average citizen as saying “Every night I go to sleep.” Who isn’t writing a novel?
But if … Read more
Jack Shackaway presents a review of a recent Mickey’s Muse product:
THIS BOOK never fails to satisfy basic reader expectations, but I was disappointed that, in key ways, it never exceeds them.
Take the lead scene, for example. Mr. Ambit presents everything that Hollywood wants—a startling instance of random structural violence, with much smoke and flame and opportunity for the action hero to squint in the general direction of the shitstorm and wince in a way that suggests strong … Read more
Bingeing writers and binge writing. Traditionally, writers have been notorious bingers. And, aside from any occupational enthusiasm for booze and suchlike, we get binge writing, where instead of turning caffeine into books, as some would have it, writers instead turn whiskey into piss and engage in binge writing in the intervals between their alchemical endeavors. (I first encountered the expression “binge writing” listening to a Letterman interview with Hunter S. Thompson. See “What is writing?”)
Binge … Read more
I’m probably over-reacting, but it’s already getting harder these days to take pride in thinking of yourself as a writer, since so can anybody with the price of a computer and an Internet connection. You aren’t even permitted to die penniless and hungry in proper romantic style, since everyone will merely ask why you did that. Why didn’t you just take steps to flog your stuff?
Even if you decide you are going to flog your stuff, you aren’t permitted … Read more
This is the longest I’ve neglected my blog since I started it about three years ago.
And right now I should be working on a novel, rather than poking at this post. Except I’ve lost the plot. The structure of my narrative escapes me just now.
Call it writer’s block, or simple lack of sleep. Or maybe this book is really a classic hobologoistic project that should be presented to the jury now, with a view to burning the ms. … Read more
Christopher Moore’s *Waiting for the Lady* should see a jump in sales.
Burma’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is leaving Burma for the first time in 24 years. Her first foreign visit will be to Bangkok, where she will attend the World Economic Forum. She is expected to arrive in Bangkok on 30th May. Then she will travel to Europe to address the International Labour Conference in Geneva and to finally accept her Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo … Read more
The demise of the novel? This has been predicted again and again over the decades, if not the centuries, yet people keep reading novels. Here’s a recent vote of confidence in their persistence:
… Read more“The book-length text is coded in our DNA and will never go away; it is the written version of the oral myths and histories told on consecutive nights around campfires for 80,000 years. In each new generation, roughly the same percentage of people is born with
I’m reposting this item (originally put up by Jack Shackaway 22 April 2010), in light of the fact that Bill Page’s Nirvana Experiments are now available in e-book form. Well worth reading.
July 2011 update: The Nirvana Experiments are now available in e-book form on DCO Books, Amazon, and Smashwords.
Goodbye writer’s garret in town and hello moobaan at the edge of the universe, ostensibly in suburban Bangkok. Bill Page, Bangkok old-timer and columnist of note under … Read more
This is to announce a new feature of this blogsite—a new page, and a source of free books for those who ask. (Click on “FREE BOOKS,” at the top of this page.)
I’ve been inspired by eminent author Paulo Coelho and his recent blog about his own “Piracy Page,” and the merits of giving his work away for free. (Comments on his post express a range of attitudes toward the issues of piracy and creative products being offered … Read more