It’s official. I’ve become a freelancer. I’ve taken on a second job doing freelance editing, as well as a few other things. I can kiss my free time goodbye until I get up to speed with it, but them’s the breaks, and the job itself isn’t all that hard. So congratulations all around – I have a job that’s vaguely, tangentally related to writing, just like I wanted! It’s only a matter of time before [...]

Whew. Hours and hours of tweaking, and now the blog has been ported over and the site’s been cleaned up. The Taleweaving blog at over at Blogspot is pretty much going dormant. I’ll give it a while and redirect as much as I can, but for now, this is where I’m hanging out. Hope y’all like the design. Take a look at the links up just below the title too. I’ve added my photos, my [...]

10. Frequent, unapologetic swearing 9. Posts which are written using the royal ‘we’ 8. Dramatic capslock use 7. Intense, vocal hatred of bad writing, the like of which may never be seen again by mortal man, usually parsed into mocking, humourous commentary 6. Continuing love of aspiring authors, no matter what utter waste-of-paper manuscripts appear in the slush pile 5. Random lessons on grammar and spelling 4. Posts that highlight cool feminist things or call [...]

Kevin Sheridan over at Optimism Abounds has a post up about getting started with a story. Everyone says that you need something that will instantly grab the reader and get them into the story; something pithy, memorable, interesting, whatever. Nothing like “It was a dark and stormy night” anyway. Yes, children, starting off your fantasy epic with a description of the weather is not exactly quality prose. Famous first lines usually have something better going [...]

Today, I got my copy of Silver Phoenix by Cindy Pon. Got home, did my usual speed reading thing and finished it in two hours flat. Ai Ling is a young woman in the Kingdom of Xia – an oriental setting that kept bringing to mind images of the Avatar: Last Airbender artistic style – where women are constrained by social norms and generally expected to be seen and not heard. Everything starts going south [...]

Yes, I am on a roll with designs right now. Still waiting for my first sale. I live in hope, though. It’s all for a good cause – that is, me and my better half packing up all our stuff and leaving Ireland in search of more geek-friendly shores. Speaking of which, this design is just for him. Behold, the amazing Chibi-Man! With the power of his suspiciously familiar red suit, he can rescue cats [...]

The latest design: a gamer special! I used to play D&D a lot, then 4th Ed came out and it just wasn’t the same anymore. Yes, I have my own dice that no one may touch on pain of pain. I’m sure this would work better if it was white on black, but Skreened don’t print white. Shame, really. I’m guessing it’s to make it easier for people who are not graphic designers – white [...]

This is my latest design. It’s been added to a new Skreened shop called the Bizarrium. …I like funny names. Don’t judge me! In case you can’t read it, it says “Do not taunt me Mr. Fly, I have a swatter and the reflexes of a disgruntled cobra”. This design was inspired by a fly who got into my office today, and wound up splattered across the back of one of my notepads after it [...]

I write a lot about copyright, and licencing, and the situations arising from filesharing, so the shennanigans with Jason Robert Brown were of particular interest to me. In short – JRB is a famous composer, and he was slightly and understandably miffed that some sites allow his sheet music to be accessed for free. So he opened up a dialogue with one of the users of such a site, and the resulting exchange is enlightening [...]

Yes, Canada. My better half and I are making arrangements to leave for the land of forests and socialised medicine in the New Year. This particular design is called the Canadian Dream, in honour of the fact that any profits I get from the shirts will go towards our immigration fund. Next up is a commissioned design for a friend of mine.