The best part is that he’s learning

On June 30, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized

(Context for the title. You should all watch Archer.)

So I’m starting to enjoy fiddling with Scrivener.

I spent a chunk of last night sleepily going through the (rather impressively detailed) tutorial that they include with the program, and got through about half of it. It does an impressive job of using the program to teach the end-user how to run itself, and by the time I was halfway through the thing I was fully in the okay it’s time to start writing now and figure the rest out later stage of working. And, well, as you can see I’m actually accomplishing things. Mostly. Sorta.

So far I’ve been on summer vacation for eight hours and nineteen minutes if I start the count from when I got up this morning. During that time I’ve received fifteen emails and four phone calls– one from my assistant principal, and her summer vacation started a week ago. Each and every one was about stuff that I really shouldn’t have been needed for. But whatever, at least no one has asked me to come back in. Yet.

It’s cloudy outside. It’s been cloudy outside for a week or two now, and that telescope that I acquired at the cost of high personal drama hasn’t been outside the damn house yet. Tonight will be the peak of the Jupiter-Venus conjunction, and if I can’t see it at least with naked eye because of the clouds I’m going to be pissed. It cannot possibly stay cloudy all summer long, but I have a feeling that it’s going to try. The forecast is showing a clear window between 9:00 and 10:00. That ought to be enough, as sunset’s at 9:23, but keep your fingers crossed for me. I’ll take pictures if I’m able to get set up at all.

Hey, guess what?

On June 29, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

SKYLIGHTS is live on Smashwords again, if you’re into that.

Backyard flower

On June 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Photography12 Comments

I haven’t filtered or processed this image at all. The orange really is that ridiculously saturated. I’ve never seen this kind of flower in our backyard before today and the plant itself is very different from the other flowers near it. Must have been a bird or something.

Aaight

On June 28, 2015June 28, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

(I said this on Twitter, but I should say it on WP too: loving the rainbow banner, guys. Meanwhile, not quite done having fun with this.)

Anyway. Trying to use today to clean up a lot of little writing tasks that have been piling up lately; so far I’ve written up a fairly lengthy interview (details later) and done some promotional stuff for Skylights. I need to go into work on Monday for about an hour and then my grant is put to bed and I actually get to start my summer break, which will be spent working on Starlight and Searching for Malumba and also job-hunting. So July’s full already, especially when you factor in that I’ll be spending the entire 4th of July weekend in Indianapolis at InConJunction. Book signings! Free bookmarks! Woo!

(Are you in Indianapolis, or nearby? The con’s cheap, and it looks like a lot of fun. Come see me! Creator’s Alley, booth C9! Please? I’ll be so goddamn lonely.)

Speaking of putting grants to bed, I have two days to write my final report for the teacher grant that paid for last summer’s writing adventure. It won’t be much different from my mid-year report, since I’m not actually teaching and therefore can’t report on how the grant affected my teaching. Once that’s done, I start planning for the books. My first priority on Monday is to get at least a thousand words done on Starlight; my second priority is to get another thousand words done on a BA story for Lightspeed Magazine’s open submissions period.

And play a lot of Bloodborne.

So that’s me, today. What’s your Sunday looking like?

Rainbows!

On June 27, 2015June 27, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized6 Comments

tumblr_mbkkkvXT6Q1r7w8cbo1_400 The internet in general, and especially Twitter, was a really fun place to be yesterday.

I have a crapton of errands to accomplish today, and I have to work tonight, so that leaves precious little time for posting. Instead I’ll recommend you take advantage of the fact that it appears to be raining across half the planet today (sorry, California) and curl up with a good book. Or two.

For my part, I plan on wearing a hoodie to work tonight, as we’re having an awesomely chilly June day, a phrase I don’t expect to be able to use very often but am phenomenally happy on the rare occasion when it’s appropriate.

See you tomorrow.

REVIEW: THE MECHANICAL, by Ian Tregillis

On June 26, 2015June 25, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews1 Comment

51pmVMP67oL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_ I’ve been doing a thing on Goodreads so far this year where if I think a book has a chance to be in my top 10 at the end of the year I’m putting them on a shelf called “2015 shortlist.” So far 2015 has proven to be a great year for reading. I have a new entry for the list, and frankly if Ian Tregillis’ The Mechanical isn’t in the top 2 or 3 at the end of the year it’s because the back half of 2015 was completely insane.

Which, of course, I have high hopes for. I’d love to read so many good books that this isn’t in the top 3. But goddamn is that unlikely.

You should read The Mechanical. I’m tempted to say that you should stop reading whatever you’re reading now until you’re done with it, in fact. Most of the time when I praise a book I praise it for the twists and turns in the story. I tend to be a very surface-level reader (and author, for that matter; one thing my books are not is flowery) and I like for a good plot to grab me. I can overlook workmanlike language so long as it gets the story across; it’s no accident that two of my favorite writers are journalists.

The Mechanical excels both as a story and as a treatise on how to make prose sing. It’s not quite on the level of the language in Sunshine Patriots, which I remain in love with, but it’s beautifully written. And the story itself is fascinating: alternate history going back to Christiaan Huygens in the seventeenth century, leading to a Europe where the Dutch run their society with the help of an army of possibly-sentient, virtually invincible clockwork automata and basically control the world. It’s 1926 in the beginning of the book, but civilization is distinct enough from the real world that the actual year barely matters; it feels nineteenth-century. The story centers on one particular “Clakker,” named Jax, and the remnant of the French empire, operating in exile from Canada. The Vatican is also in Canada now, because the Netherlands is a Protestant country and they’ve literally pushed Catholicism out of Europe.

Now throw in a ton of musing on free will and more theology than you’d expect to see from any 21st century novel. One of the main characters is a Catholic priest in hiding, and some of the conversations he has and the things that happen to him are fascinating, on a wide variety of levels.

It’s a great book.

You should read it.

That was a hint.

You may go now.