Q&A

Being a Better Writer: Live Q&A Tonight!

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Hello readers!

If you’re looking for a new Being a Better Writer post today, you’re not going to find it. Oh, I’ll share a link to a classic post in a moment, but right now? Today there will not be a new installment of Being a Better Writer in written form.

That’s because today’s BaBW installment will be, as stated last week, a live question and answer section over on the Unusual Things Discord channel! That’s right, tonight at 5 PM MST I will don my headset and begin streaming live answers to questions asked from the audience. Usually these last about an hour to an hour-and-a-half depending on audience interaction, but they’re great fun (as many in the audience can attest). Questions are usually related to writing and publishing (because after all, that is the mainstay of this site) but branch out into questions about upcoming works and the like quite frequently.

So, if you’ve got a question that you’d like answered, come to the Q&A tonight! Use Google to make sure you’ve got the right time for your time zone, then join the Discord channel (using the link below the jump; today only) and enjoy!

Now, if you can’t make it, still would like your Monday morning/afternoon dose of Being a Better Writer, or just would like something to read while you wait for 5 PM my time to roll around, well I do have a classic post for you to peruse. While you wait, enjoy Being a Better Writer: Playing Out Your Puzzle Pieces.

But while that loads, be sure to hit the jump, and I’ll see you at 5 PM tonight for the live Q&A.

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Updates and Reminders for the Weekend!

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Hey folks! You know, I debated on doing a more traditional post for the weekend, like an OP-ED or the like, but honestly? Instead I sat down and finished reading the Shadow of an Empire proof. Sands and Storms is that a ripping tale!

In addition, the proof was almost perfect. I’ve got a few minor changes to make this weekend or Monday, but all in all it’s largely ready to go. Just need to make a few minor adjustments, and it’ll be ready for launch.

You know what that means, don’t you? That’s right: Shadow of an Empire will be available in paperback form next week! And yes, this means that it most certainly will be a topic for Monday’s live Being a Better Writer Q&A. If you wanted to ask questions about getting a book ready for paperback print and what that entails, this Monday would be the proper time.

Which brings me to the next topic, a reminder that this coming Monday will not feature the standard Being a Better Writer article posting (outside of a link to a classic article), but instead be a live Q&A session with you readers using Discord to post questions which will be answered live via an audio stream. We’ve done a couple of these so far over on The Makalay Camp, the site’s official Discord server and they’ve been pretty successful. If a little light sometimes on viewers, since finding the right time for everyone is tricky. This coming week we’ll be holding it at a later hour: 5 PM MST. That’s Mountain Standard Time, so if you live east or west of that and want to participate, use Google or some other method (math?) to find out what time that would be for you, and then use your computer or your phone to join the site’s official Discord server! Come with questions!

As to how to get on the Discord server, there will be a link provided Monday morning in lieu of the usual BaBW post that will allow admission to the server for those who’ve not joined it before. Bring writing questions! After the Q&A is over, you can leave the server or stay part of it in order to chat or just gain occasional glimmers of news that seep through its channels.

With that, I believe I’m out of news! Have a good weekend everyone, and get ready for both the Q&A and the chance to hold your own paperback copy of Shadow of an Empire in your hands!

Being a Better Writer: Live Q&A Event!

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UPDATE: The event is now over, but you can still join the official discord for the next few hours!

Hello readers! And welcome back to something different! Not completely different, since A) we’re not doing that bit and B) we’ve done this before … But this will be only the second time.

To commemorate the end of yet another Being a Better Writer topic list (number 17), today at 3 PM mountain time I will be hosting a live BaBW question and answer session via the Unusual Things official discord channel The Makalay Camp. Which means that all of you can ask questions in real time and hear my melodious (?) voice give the answers!

Now, we’ve done one of these before and it’s generally a pretty relaxed and chill experience. As of right now, The Makalay Camp has two channels, Fireside Chat, and the Being a Better Writer Q&A voice channel. Participating in the Q&A will be pretty simple. You show up (we’ll talk about that in a moment if you’ve never used Discord before), join the Fireside Chat channel, and then join the Being a Better Writer Q&A voice channel by clicking on it. You may notice that you will not be able to speak in the voice channel. That’s by design. Otherwise there’d be a million voices competing. No, you join the voice channel to listen. That’s what I’ll be using to answer questions. Questions which will be typed in the Fireside Chat channel.

Now, if you’re familiar with Discord or already a member of the server, you know what’s up. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Discord or aren’t members of the server, hit the jump, and let’s get you set up with the link.

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Starforge is One Massive Step Closer to Completion (And Other News)

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Readers, I have good news: Yesterday, I finished Part Three (out of four total) of Starforge. Finishing out a colossal 56,000 words across three chapters, I laid down the final words of that portion of the draft, and started the section heading for “Interlude 3.”

Which means … Okay, will it actually means a bunch of things. First of all, it means that Starforge‘s draft progress on the “Current Projects” tab is now at 80%, and the total wordcount at 377,000. Now 50k more than Colony, but still almost 79k less than Jungle (which was an absolute unit of a story, and yet at the same time flew by for many).

Second, it means that I need a small break. Today I’ll work on Interlude 3 a little bit, but since I’ve almost hit my monthly quota (I’m just a few hundred words away) I don’t feel the need to stress out about it.

Which is good. The last few months have been very stressful, and Starforge is part of that. Though in fairness, I started working on it officially last July off-and-on between editing on Axtara, and then fully in October. which mean much of its 377,000 word current length has been written in just seven-months. On par for the same speed with Colony, I might note (which was written in six, but was also 50k shorter).

The end is coming, readers. All that’s left is that last 20%. And with that, let’s talk about some other news since we’re all here anyway!

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Welcome to the Wild: The Bi-Weekly Update

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Hello readers! It’s Wednesday, and that means a small news update on how things are ticking along!

First of all, there’s still more news about Axtara – Banking and Finance to deliver now that the paperback is out and in people’s hands. For starters, some of the author copies I promised to people have finally arrived, are now signed, and will be heading out as soon as I get to a post office this week. So rejoice, those of you who are getting one of those: You’ll soon have them in your hands!

Paperback copies of Axtara continue to go out as well. To where, I don’t get to see, but I’ve started seeing listings pop up on other book sites as well (usually European, maybe someone over there loves Axtara?), so they’re starting to spread out. I’ve been told that it’s been ordered by a few libraries as well, which is pretty cool!

So hey, if you’ve found Axtara in the wild, be it at your local library, a bookstore, or a bookshelf, let me know about it! I’d love to see how far she’s flown! Snap a picture with your phone and upload it to imgur or social media, then send me a link! I’ll post it here on the site if you’re willing!

Even if you aren’t, it’d be nice to hear how far she’s made it! How did you find Axtara? And where?

All right, time for other news updates. Starforge continues to make it’s way forward, and now clocks in at 270,000 words. Which may not seem like too much of an increase over the last I shared its progress, but I’ll remind you LTUE happened last weekend, and a big con like that does take a bite out of my writing days. Now I’m back on track and working my way through part three of the draft.

Speaking of LTUE, it was great this year. The team handled the con being all online really well, and a few rough patches on the first day were smoothed out by the end. Those who attended the conference can still go back and watch the streams of each panel, so if you signed up for LTUE and missed something, you still have the option to go see it!

Actually, for those of you who were able to attend this LTUE because of its online nature and would like LTUE to have an online component continuing in the future, let me know in the comments! I’ll pass them along to the LTUE staff and crew so they can see what sort of response they’re getting to keeping the streaming an active feature at future LTUEs!

All right, other relevant news. Computer is still holding up, though occasionally it gets a bit dicey. I’m fairly certain that my GPU is just on its last legs. While the life of that one hard drive can be “extended” by having my rig ignore bad sectors as they occur, a GPU going out is just a case of “it dies until it’s dead.” It’s kind of a shame the market for GPUs sucks right now with all the currency-mining going on; I’d have a better chance of getting a trip to Pisces than a new GPU to replace this old 660 Ti.

Then again, it’s served me long and faithfully. Maybe it can hold out for a year more.

Anyway, there isn’t much other news to share. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get back to whatever it is that Jake, Sweets, and Anna are up to. Which happens to be—

No spoilers. Sorry.

… And I was mistaken. I realized right before I was about to post that I did have one last bit of news. So prior to LTUE, rather than a traditional Being a Better Writer post I had a live Q&A session where I took questions from a chat and answered them on camera. We had a few participants show up, and it was a lot of fun. Which got me wondering: Would any of you be interested in having a live Q&A with a bit more regularity? What sort of regularity, and for what? Leave your comments below if that would be something you’d be interested in seeing, even as a Patreon Supporter Special of some kind?

Let me know, and I hope you’re all having a great week!

Today’s Being a Better Writer Will Be Tonight … and a Live Q&A! TEST CLOSED!

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EDIT: Thank you to everyone who showed up, asked questions, and helped me test the stream! We went for an hour and a half, and it worked great!

All right people, pay attention to this post! We’ve got a special event happening tonight!

So, as most of you should know, this week LTUE 2021 is happening, or Life, The Universe, and Everything. It is the writing convention for Science-Fiction and Fantasy writers, and in a unique twist that makes sense as long as you haven’t been living under a rock, is online!

Yes, that’s right. Due to the coronavirus there will be no physical meet-up this year. Instead the entire conference will be held in digital space, with streams of the panelists up to watch for those that have registered for the conference.

So what does this have to do with today’s lack of a Being a Better Writer post? Simple. I’m one of the panelists. Which means I’ll be streaming my panel thoughts, comments, and knowledge out over the internet this Thursday-Saturday. However, I don’t want to do so without testing my system first.

To be more accurate, without stress-testing my system. I want to make certain that the camera, mic, headset, and everything else I’ll be using will be functioning properly when this Thursday arrives, both in the short term and over the course of an hour or so. I want to make sure that the tone is clear, that there’s no disruption or distortion from overlying cables … You know, the works!

How am I going to do this, you might ask? Simple! Tonight, at 6 PM, this post will gain a discord link after the jump. It will take those who click it to a discord server set up just for this occasion, where I’ll be using Discord’s streaming capabilities to stream myself and answer any questions people have about writing, my books, whatever! It’s going to be a bit of a free-for-all, and I’ll try to keep things running smoothly (bearing in mind that my goal is to test my mic and camera setup, as LTUE’s staff are handling their own server and streaming for LTUE.

So yeah, that 6 PM Mountain time. I know it’s short notice, and an odd time, but I just want to see how well my rig runs things and if there are problems. Note that if there are problems (like say, a BSOD), I’ve got multiple backups that should enable me to keep streaming. Same with LTUE. But the point of this stress-test is to make certain my system is up for this long term in advance. So we’ll go for an hour. 6-7.

So, come back at a little before 6 PM Mountain time tonight and look after the jump for a link to the temporary server. The rest of this post (also after the jump) will be some news for all of you to enjoy. But mark your calendars (or leave a note on your phone or whatever) so you don’t forget!

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Being a Better Writer: Micro-Blast #1

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This post was originally written and posted November 3rd, 2014, and has been touched up and reposted here for archival purposes.

I’m back! Woo! Man, does it feel good to by typing away at a keyboard this morning!

So, as I was looking over my list of topics this weekend, I came to a realization: A large part of what I had left to do from my list was mostly there because I’d never felt they would make a sufficient topic on their own. And the few topics that hadn’t been left for that reason had been left untouched for their own reasons; namely, that they were better-suited to one-on-one Q&A sessions, truly massive and in-depth writings, or very specific break-downs.

“This is no good,” I thought to myself. How can I manage to tackle all of these small issues in separate posts? They’d be small. To the point. Too abrupt. But I still wanted to cover them.

Which is why today I’m doing the first ever Micro-Blast! Why do separate posts for each one of these small topics or general ideas, when I can do several of them in one, quick, condensed post! This way, I can clean out the last of my old list before moving on to a whole new range of topics. So, without further ado, let us begin with the blasting!

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