Microsoft Office 2013: Should you buy or rent?
What’s the difference between Office 365 and Office 2013? Or rephrased, should you buy or rent? A problem I have with Microsoft is that they have great information available but half the time you don’t...
View ArticleI feel a migraine coming on
The first thing you notice about Office 2013/365 is that it is very, very white. Migraine-inducing white in our family. I can see that on a smaller screen like an iPad the white would be good. Not too...
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Office 365 – cool and uncool features
I’ve been using Office 365 a while now. Here are my cool and not-so-cool features. They’re mostly simple things. It’s weird how the simple things make a big difference. Some of these features may...
View ArticleThe times they are a-changing
Sometimes I look back at the things I write and laugh at myself. We started this blog in 2006. In internet time, that’s half a life ago. In 2006 the big social networking tool was MySpace. Facebook was...
View ArticleAre you a professional writer?
Are you a ‘professional’ writer Wow. Poor Lisa Morton. I bet she didn’t expect the outpouring of vitriol in response to her article ‘Ten questions to know if you’re a pro‘ on the Horror Writers’...
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An exercise in rewriting
We don’t write so much as rewrite. Sherylyn and I go through five and more major rewrites and dozens of minor ones for each novel. Not so for blogs. Our blogs get three drafts. The initial draft, one...
View ArticleSelfies – a trend I would never have picked
Science fiction writers try to predict the future. Take a trend, extrapolate it, and there’s your future. Yet there are some things you’d never think of, even though they’re so obvious once the trend...
View ArticleOne month to GenreCon 2013
One month to GenreCon 2013. We both had such a good time last year we’re going back. We even blogged about it (here and here). The things that stay in my mind twelve months later aren’t the things we...
View ArticleA tick in the box for Office 365
I finally caved in and bought an ultrabook laptop. My not-so-little netbook that I shopped so hard for weighed in at a whopping 4.1kg, which is a fair amount of weight to carry around in your handbag....
View ArticleRemember, you became a writer because you enjoyed writing
The pressure to always write ‘serious’ stuff can lead to burn out. Sometimes you need to leaven it with some fun, otherwise you’ll find you just can’t write any more. Paolo Bacigalupi writes some...
View ArticleeBook things
The eBook market seems to be settling down, and with it eReading habits. I step back and take stock occasionally. Here’s where I’m at with eBooks right now. I buy my eBooks from a number of suppliers,...
View ArticleA final look at Office 365
It’s been six months since I bought Office 365. Time goes so fast. Only another six months to renewal, which was always the bad part about the whole deal, but I knew that when I started, so it’s not...
View ArticleMy writing crystal ball
After reading the recent tweets from #MSWL—Manuscript wish list hashtag—on Twitter I did my own non-scientific analysis of the results and came up the following list of potential future trends....
View ArticleGenreCon 2013 – Take 1
GenreCon 2013 has come and gone. We both met lots of great people, talked until we were hoarse, and learned lots from the varied presenters. As usual, we’re both blogging about it. This is my (Karen’s)...
View ArticleGenreCon 2013 – Take 2
This year, we headed to sunny Brisbane saying goodbye (temporarily) to the cold weather in Melbourne. First things first. Melbourne, why don’t you have an airtrain? Sydney does, Brisbane does. Instead...
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Sleeping in a cupboard
I love my cupboard. It is so cute and so just mine. This is the size of a single sleeper on the Brisabane to Cairns Sunlander. As you can see, it’s squeezy. After GenreCon we decided to catch the train...
View ArticleNaNoWriMo
To all of you who plan on doing NaNoWriMo this year. Have fun, and may your words flow fast.
View ArticleScience fiction through modern media
Lately it seems I’ve come across more and more people who love science fiction, yet their total exposure to the genre is through film and television. They’ve watched every episode of Star Trek, seen...
View ArticleThor: The Dark World. They should make more movies like this
By which you can guess that I enjoyed Thor 2. A lot. I was a little worried because watching the trailers I got the impression Jane had been dumbed down, made more girly. But she hadn’t. Thor/Loki?...
View ArticleNot happy, Microsoft
Microsoft and their ‘cloud’ have managed to overwrite my work with old files two days this week. Not happy, Jan. It’s like the Longfellow poem. When it’s good it’s very good indeed, but when it’s bad...
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