While I gather disparate info for my writing and personal life, the details don’t lead quickly to coherent sets of stories. So I’m going to try collecting and reporting bits in a Weekly Reader format, with Departments.

Reading with the Greatest Impact

Rayne Hall’s wonderful Writing Fight Scenes (Writer’s Craft) led me to this week’s high-impact reading:

Rory Miller’s Violence: A Writer’s Guide Second Edition

Ms. Hall’s guide helped me fix two critical scenes in the next Accidental Heretics story.
Mr. Miller’s text helped me fix characterization and conflict in both texts I’m writing now, in addition to leading me a new understanding about physical violence. I’m hoping, as a consequence, that the bad guys in the coming Accidental Heretics story have better flesh and bones than I’ve managed in earlier stories.

Reading with the Greatest Pleasure

Delicious noir setting, mood, and tone plus high-concept protagonist:

Blood Curse: The Springtime of Commissario Ricciardi
by Maurizio de Giovanni

A great book, whose publisher (Europe Editions) we owe so much for bringing us mystery and literary titles in English translation. However, Europa:

Hasn’t created an author page on Amazon to help this author find the fans he deserves.
Couldn’t be bothered to do a decent job with Kindle formatting, though they always create lovely print editions. Just spend another hour on the ebook formatting, please!

Best of the Social (mine, not the media)

Saturday brunch with some my old Windows Hardware Evangelism team mates. We reminisced about WinHEC Wars in 2002 — and Peter Biddle having to announce over the loudspeaker:

“We will no longer allow 20 extra points for bleeding.”

The Nvidia team won by building a network-connected system from random parts in a box in 18 minutes. I am, however, saddened to report that:

I get better results searching “WinHEC Wars” on Google than I do on Bing.
Google returned useful pages in Russian and Chinese for Mira, Tablet PC and Longhorn.
The search results also returned Jerry Pournelle.

Creative Progress

I write at least 2 books simultaneously. And I litter my personal landscape with other projects that are executed on a spectrum ranging from whirlwind to glacial. This week:

Monkey King’s Last Ride — in final Release Candidate review. I’m hoping someone, somewhere likes my protagonist. Not having much luck so far. Maybe I can subtitle it: “Anti-heroes need love too.”
(Next in Rain City Comedy of Manners contemporary fiction series — due in May, damn it)
Crux Lunata — revised fight scenes; restructured the villain with more focused motivation; got Tomás in more trouble than ever before.
(Next in the Accidental Heretics adventure series — due when it’s done, and no sooner)