Author: JRVogt

Piano. In woods. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/23/massachusetts.piano/index.html Fiction. Stranger than.  Subscribe in a reader

Survey of the day: When watching a science fiction movie, which scientific innaccuracies or oversimplifications annoy you the most? Do any do so to the degree that it makes you stop watching? Or do you just remain in the audience and heckle the actors? Right now, I’d say “computers being…

A friend from work sent me this article about a man’s attempt to pay an overdue bill, which had me laughing so hard that both our dog and cat hid under the couch until the thunderstorm passed. Needless to say, don’t try this with your own utility company.  I see…

Thoughts and prayers to Tobias Buckell, who notified folks yesterday that he had been hospitalized due to a heart condition (probably a family trait) that needs some specialists called in for.  Seems to be in high spirits, since he’s already asking for an Xbox beside his bed.  Praying for a…

I’ve been asked by a couple of folks if I’m taking part in November’s NaNoWriMo. (National Novel Writing Month, for those new to the term.) This is where your goal is to write the first draft of a novel in thirty days. Seems like a rough chore, but the idea…

Now this is fun. I’ve been pretty active in this online reviewing site that I’ve mentioned a few times: Online Writting Workshop. Mostly in their sci-fi/fantasy genre section. I hit Master Reviewer status a bit back and have read a ton of great stories and gotten in contact with some…

No blog till next week. Up in the mountains with my dad, trying to get some meat for the winter. Can you say “elk jerky”? Bye now.  Subscribe in a reader

We talked about “rejectomancy” in the previous post–that bad habit of trying to decode form rejection letters to figure out the secret messages agents are trying to beam into your head. Doesn’t really work and is honestly more depressing than the initial letter itself.  But there are good, productive ways…

Kelly McCullough weighs in on his opinion of rejections, so I thought I’d share his thoughts from the SFNovelists blogroll. http://www.sfnovelists.com/2008/11/11/rejections-as-a-way-of-keeping-score/ Seems like McCullough has a similar approach. We both have spreadsheets to keep track of submissions and rejections, and both of our numbers are in the hundreds. I would…

Here’s a fun video of Neil Gaiman explaining some of the story about the upcoming Coraline movie, how he first envisioned the story, and how it moved from being a book to a huge, 3D stop-motion film.  Loving all the glimpses of how crazy and eerie the movie looks to…