http://www.stephendeas.com The Dragons Are Coming Sun, 16 Nov 2008 23:27:50 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Pop-quiz, hotshot: You're a newbie author for whom things are going unexpectedly well. You have a number of reasons for celebration. You've finished the first draft of your second book well ahead of schedule. You've sold your US rights for more than pocket-change. Your first royalty cheque came through not all ... http://www.stephendeas.com/i-nerd/ The one (and only) big advantage of being sent to far-away places in service of the day-job is suddenly finding myself with lots of free time at very strange hours of the day. Even in sub-urban Los Angeles, there really isn't a huge amount of touristy stuff that I want ... http://www.stephendeas.com/la-la-la-la-la-lamerica/ Am playing this again. Am remembering how awesome it was the first time. Tanks! The tank level rocks! And now I am remembering how crap the last 40% of the game is about to be. OK, to be fair, *relatively* crap. <sigh> And *now* I'm also remembering that I need a better graphics ... http://www.stephendeas.com/crysis-revisited/ Oh man, what a long couple of days it's been, and for more reasons than I'm going to go into here. The restructuring of King of the Crags is largely finished. Acts 1-3 (that's about 88k words) are good to go. Wordcount stands at 96k, although the last few thousand ... http://www.stephendeas.com/acts-i-ii-and-iii-complete-271008/ It's half term. Half the family are packed off to Germany to see relatives. It's just me and the toddler. I've got the week off, and I've got plans. I'm going to watch lots of movies, eat lots of ice cream and I'm going to sort out all the stuff ... http://www.stephendeas.com/my-dad-makes-a-rubbish-character-for-a-book/ It seems I can't resist the urge to rant at the foolishness of others or (frequently) myself. This sort of nonsense has no place in the News archives, which are are purely intended for book-related updates. Therefore the new thread 'Critical Failures' has been created, which can be accessed via ... http://www.stephendeas.com/reorganisational-notice-261008/ We are trying to teach number one son not to use his fingers to push his food onto his fork, but to use something else, preferably cutlery. So I show him how it's done - hold your fork in your left hand instead of your right (we're both right-handed), and ... http://www.stephendeas.com/how-to-eat-food-for-beginners/ The first reviews of the Adamantine Palace have begun to appear, on The Wertzone and SFFworld "...traditional-style fantasy, but written in a contemporary manner..." "...characters and storylines are not so much flying past but feel like they've been blasted out from a minigun like the one Blaine had in Predator..." http://www.stephendeas.com/first-reviews/ On the 11th October 2007, this appeared in my in-box: "I had a phone call yesterday... Very occasionally a publisher will have a general idea and ask if I feel there is anyone they might discuss it with on my books. Simon [Spanton] is keen to discuss intelligent dragon fantasy - ... http://www.stephendeas.com/dragon-anniversary-121008/ Seems like I'm being bundled off to California after all (sadly for nothing remotely related to books and writing). This week hasn't been particularly productive so far, so I'm hoping for better in the small hours of the morning in a quiet hotel in the middle of nowhere LA outskirts. First ... http://www.stephendeas.com/off-to-los-angeles-41008/