Extras

Assorted blog posts covering early concepts, nonfiction articles, and more

Writing Advice: 5 Best Writing Resources of 2019

by Cindy Rae

Currently, my five top writing resources:

  1. Writing Excuses.  This podcast rocks.  Professional authors, relevant information, no fluff, just the meat of what good writing is.
  2. The Business of Being a Writer.  Jane Friedman’s Facebook group is invaluable to prepare me for professional publication, electronically or otherwise.
  3. Scrivener.  There’s no doubt this writing tool has organized my writing and increased my productivity.
  4. Absolute Write.  This website forum is massive with very active members.  It’s helped answer wide-ranging questions, given me a way to hone my critiquing skills, provided a mechanism for others’ input to my work, and much more.
  5. Google.  Yes, okay, it’s ubiquitous.  But, it’s still so very useful.  How do I use it?
    • Google Search: writer’s workshops, the difference between alpha and beta readers, whether or not making water from hydrogen and oxygen in space is better than collecting ice and melting it… and so much more.
    • Google Drive, principally to share writing excerpts for critique, or to critique others’ work
    • Google mail.  I have an account just for my writing, including newsletters that I subscribe to.

Writing a Novel and Writing Code Share…

by Cindy Rae

…an astounding ambiguity with terminology.  You’d think, as long as writing has been around, those in the publishing industry would have agreed to standard definitions, a standard vocabulary.  Not so.

And, surprisingly, neither has the software industry.  Software being considered more of a science, one would expect practitioners to have agreed on common terms.  Yet, even what title you call one who codes, develops, and engineers software varies: software engineer, programmer, software developer, systems engineer, systems analyst, and many more.

So, with those who read a book in draft form one can have critiquers, alpha-readers, beta-readers, writing partners, mentors, development editors, line-by-line editors, and more.

One might argue that each of these titles connotes a different flavor of responsibility, but the lines are definitely blurred.

Treasured Favorites, Round 1

by Cindy Rae

What books I have read and re-read are many.  Some are special treasures.  Here are a few:

  1. Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of the World

    Excellent writing, as much of Dahl’s works are, including the more famous Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.   Beyond the quality of writing, I like Danny because it’s more realistic and because of the imagery of the young boy doing brave things, but, most of all, I like Danny because of the warm relationship between father and son.  The humor also helps.

  2. Francis Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

    My favorite of Burnett’s novels, this story is engaging and even captivating.  It’s also one of my favorite go-to’s when I read writing advice — it breaks many of the modern tidbits pundits try to make into rules.

  3. L.M. Montgomery, Anne’s House of Dreams

    The richness and depth of the newly-married Anne and Gilbert outstrips in some ways the delightful stories of younger Anne living at Green Gables.

Favorite Fantasy Reads

by Cindy Rae

Where should I start when reading fantasy?

As with science fiction, this is a tough question — for the same reason.  Fantasy worlds can be entirely different than our own, eerily similar, or a mash-up of the radically different and the every day.

Fantasy can be humorous (Anthony’s Xanth series or Terry Pratchett‘s works), character-driven (Alan Dean Foster’s Flinx series), epic (Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings), a mashup with science fiction (Anne McCaffrey’s Crystal Singer), fairy tales, portal fantasies, and much more.

Read on for the list.

Continue reading →

Starting Science Fiction: My Recommendations

by Cindy Rae

“If I want to start reading science fiction, where should I start?”

Tough question.

Science fiction encompasses a wide range of sub-genre, ranging from space opera to alternative reality, from military sf to time travel, from alien contact to apocalyptic thrillers.

So, here’s some of my recommendations:

Continue reading →

Kowal’s Advice and Works

by Cindy Rae

Recent read: Shades of Milk and Honey by Mary Antoinette Kowal.

I’ve enjoyed listening to Kowal’s advice via Writing Excuses and decided to give her books a try.  I liked the work, reminiscent of Jane Austen with a fantastical touch, and found it a bit unexpected — but I’m not sure why.

I’m looking forward to finding some of her short stories, especially “In Want of a Nail”.

Brio’s Hope

by Cindy Rae

Here’s a little backstory on the ship in Salvage, Episode 1.

Brio’s Hope is a solid workhouse of a space transport.  It’s old but serviceable, and the crew are used to working in a pinch and using what’s at hand to fix problems.

The small crew consists of the captain, first mate, cargomaster, engineer, doctor, and a new hire.  Possibly few other unnamed crew.  Most of the crew have been together a long time.  While the captain owns the Brio outright, money is tight.

They’ve ferried colonists in the past but not recently, so this trip required some re-tooling.

The ship consists of a cylindrical dome on the front, followed by a ring of crew quarters, then the massive drive and engine, then the cargo holds.  At the very end lie the crucial water tanks.

Water onboard is used for drinking and, in limited fashion, for hygiene and cleaning the ship.  Water is also used to preserve valuable seedlings and embryonic tanks for the colonists.  It’s also used to generate oxygen and in CO2 removal systems.  Solid waste is not reclaimed/reprocessed but stored for to be sold for composting later.  The colonists worked out a deal for the compost to be used on-planet when they get there.

The Brio uses a water reclamation system that’s usually about 90% effective, but slow.  Inefficiency in the system comes from the planned non-use by the crew of solid waste recycling, in oxygen generation, and from losses within the CO2 scrubbers.    The colonists brought onboard a system that processes the solid waste into fertilizer, but the process doesn’t reclaim that much water.

So, the Brio has planned water stops along the long route, as well as secondary stops favored by the crew and noted in an open-source database used by most spacecraft

December Reading Corner

by Cindy Rae

Recent Books

  • Turning to the fantasy genre, I read Deerskin by Robin McKinley, a nicely done story; then started a re-read of Raymond Feist’s Riftwar Cycle, a favorite of my youth.
  • Re-read Crosstalk by Connie Willis
  • The Almost Sisters by Joshilyn Jackson.  Mainstream fiction?  Chic lit?  However you define it, an excellent read with surprising depth.

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Merry Christmas!