Where have I been?

So it’s been almost two weeks since I last posted anything, including any of the half-dozen or so short stories I’ve listened to that I feel are worth sharing. What’s going on? We did just have a new baby less than two months ago, though that’s not been as disruptive to everything as I expected.… Continue reading Where have I been?

Children of the Starry Sea cover reveal!

Behold! This is the ebook cover for Children of the Starry Sea, coming out sometime this summer! If it looks familiar, that’s because I kept the art from my earlier experiments with Stable Diffusion—the feedback was so positive, including from my writing group, that I decided to make only a few minor tweaks, such as… Continue reading Children of the Starry Sea cover reveal!

Children of the Starry Sea: Chapter 1 (excerpt)

Here is an excerpt from my forthcoming novel, Children of the Starry Sea. It’s a direct sequel to Star Wanderers and the second book in what is going to be a trilogy. It’s also the longest book I’ve written since I started publishing more than ten years ago. The rough draft is already finished, and… Continue reading Children of the Starry Sea: Chapter 1 (excerpt)

New Star Wanderers cover mockup

So I’ve been playing around with Stable Diffusion, working on a new cover for Star Wanderers. This is what I came up with: What do you guys think? And how does it compare with the cover mockup I did yesterday for Children of the Starry Sea? …and now I should probably take a break from… Continue reading New Star Wanderers cover mockup

So I’ve been playing around with AI art…

Note: this post originally appeared in my newsletter, but I was so excited about it that I decided to post it here too. Enjoy! So my wife is getting a PhD in computer science, which means that she’s on the cutting edge of research into things like language learning and topic models and other techy… Continue reading So I’ve been playing around with AI art…

How I hacked my ADHD to triple my daily word count

Writing with ADHD can be tough. It’s easy to beat yourself up for being “undisciplined” or “lazy” when the greater problem is that you’re trying to work against your ADHD instead of finding ways to make it work for you. It’s like swimming against a rip current instead of swimming sideways to get out of… Continue reading How I hacked my ADHD to triple my daily word count

A weird thing I’ve noticed

So I’ve been making good progress on Children of the Starry Sea, writing about 2k words or one scene per day. But in the last couple of weeks, I’ve also had a bunch of short stories drop in my lap, two of them from dreams. My best writing time is between 4am and 6am, so… Continue reading A weird thing I’ve noticed

Toward a new writing technique

For the last year, I’ve been struggling to write this novel (Children of the Starry Sea, Book 2 of the Outworld Trilogy) according to my new novel writing method, which I’ve been developing since about 2017. The method involves creating a rigorous scene-by-scene outline and cycling through each scene multiple times, so that you basically… Continue reading Toward a new writing technique