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Showing posts with the label Old Man's War

Writing Again (and I'm done with themed anthologies)

Following a minor bout of cancer (featuring surgeries and 6 months of chemotherapy), I'm writing again! Having spent some time reviewing my writing career to date, I note with a degree of dismay that while I've had some material published, I'm not super happy with all of it. In the past I've pandered to the whims of the industry in order to get stories out. Well, I'm done with that. Now I'm writing what I want to write. No more < 5,000 word stories about "blue aliens on exoplanets", simply because a publisher somewhere decided that's what they wanted for their next anthology. I know it may seem a little hypocritical, given that I helped come up with the theme of A Hand of Knaves (and I stand by it), but I'm allowed to be hypocritical if the mood takes me. And the mood does take me.  From now on I'm writing whatever the hell I want. It might not get published, but it'll be mine and I think I'll be a lot happier with that.  Let...
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Flies in the Soup - John Scalzi

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John was the second fly to fall in my soup. He's probably my all-time second-fave sci-fi writer after Douglas Adams, and since I can't talk to him anymore, chatting with Mr Scalzi was a big deal for me. Aurealis split the interview into 3 parts, the second of which was published on SoundCloud, but I'll load a transcript here as Part 2. Interview: John Scalzi Part 1   By Chris Large   (Love this Picture) Hugo award winning author, president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (2010-2013), feminist and all-round super-powered good-guy John Scalzi spoke with me in this three-part interview in early 2015. Check out Part 1 below, originally published in Aurealis #81. John’s latest book, Lock In, is a near-future murder-mystery set against a backdrop of a world ravaged by a disease known as Haden’s Syndrome. Haden’s victims suffering from ‘lock in’ find themselves unable to move or communicate with those around them and must instead util...
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Communing with the Writing Gods

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A while ago I decided I loved John Scalzi's books. First I read Old Man's War and it was awesome. Then I read Redshirts and that was awesome too. The kids and I were going on a driving holiday so I bought the audiobook of Agent to the Stars , read by Wil Wheaton, and you guessed it, it was awesome. By the time I read his latest book, Lock In , it was just too much. I needed to speak to this man so I emailed him and we caught up on Skype, just like that. John Scalzi is a great guy and an absolute dream to interview. Once he starts talking it's like a freight train of ideas blasting toward you. We discussed writing (obvs), world-building, feminism, awards, stormtroopers, redshirts and lightsaber cross-guards. If writing, world-building, feminism, awards, stormtroopers, redshirts or lightsabers interest you in any way at all, you do not want to miss the June and July issues of Aurealis. Yes, that's right. This interview is so big it cannot be contained in one issue...
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