Category: Books

more work in progress

Posted on By Wil

This is from the Coming of Age review I've been working on:

Obligatory Technobabble: “With this new extricator, sir, we could eliminate three more bulky machines from cargo space.” – Riker, explaining how, even though Picard says it isn’t possible, there really is room for a Foosball table in the cargo bay.

Ha. See what I did there?

I'm going to be at the Phoenix Comicon next week, and I'm bringing two unreleased TNG reviews to read. I'm not saying which ones, in case I change my mind, but I think Coming of Age may be one of them.

work in progress …

Posted on By Wil

work in progress

I should really tell OpenOffice that Stardate is a word, but now it’s kind of amusing to me that it always tells me “UR DOIN IT WRONG!”

Coming of Age is as enjoyable to watch as I remember, even though I haven’t seen it in at least twenty years. In fact, my only real complaint so far (I’ve watched a lot more of it than it would appear from this screenshot) is that my acting is pretty flat and predictable. I make a lot of obvious, weak choices. Of course, I’m not exactly objective about that sort of thing, so maybe I’m being too critical of myself. Also: really bad pre-helmet hairdo. There’s a story behind that, but you’ll have to wait for the book to find out what it is.

Oh, and to anyone who says that Memory Alpha isn’t exhaustively comprehensive, I can only say: flux coordinating sensor.

(Image can be embiggened at Flickr)

i really love trader joe’s

Posted on By Wil

This week’s LA Daily is all about an awesome cookbook Anne and I discovered entirely by accident, and how it’s made cooking fun again:

When I was in my early twenties and had the dual luxuries of copious time and disposable income, I loved to cook. I cooked different things all the time, experimented with various styles of cooking and ingredients, and wasn’t afraid to take a chance on something exotic. “What’s the worst that could happen?” I thought. “I’ll just make something different if this doesn’t work out.”

Then I got married and had kids. My days got longer, my responsibilities grew exponentially, and the whole concept of free time became a memory so distant, I wondered if it had ever really existed at all.

I still cooked, but I had a new set of priorities. Instead of grabbing a cookbook and picking out a recipe that looked interesting, I had to ask myself: How long would this take to prepare? How much is it going to cost to feed two growing boys in addition to two adults? How likely is it that the kids I’m working so hard to feed are going to complain about the uniqueness of the meal I’ve prepared? Wouldn’t it just be easier to order take out or throw something in the microwave?

I had resigned myself to a lifetime of culinary boredom until last month, when my wife and I came across a cookbook that singlehandedly made cooking fun, easy, and affordable again. It’s called Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s, and it is exactly what it sounds like: choose a recipe, head into your local Trader Joe’s to pick up the ingredients, and make your friends and family think you’re a hell of a chef.

We’ve been making something different every night since we got this book, and it’s just awesome. I wish I’d discovered it years ago.

in which wil connects the dots

Posted on By Wil

I was talking with Andrew last night about the Monolith Press editorial calendar for 2009. As we planned out our release and drop dead dates, the subject turned to the fiction project I wanted to do in 2008, but never finished.

“The plan is to [REDACTED],” I said, “but I don’t know which one I’ll start on first.” I thought for a second. “Probably [THING I’M REALLY EXCITED TO WRITE.]”

“Good idea,” Andrew said. He asked me what was going on with a story that I once had a great deal of enthusiasm for, but haven’t made any progress on in months.

“I made two huge mistakes with that,” I said. “First, I didn’t realize until I was almost ten thousand words into it that it can’t be a first person narrative, because it’s way too limiting for what the story needs. Second, I didn’t outline it before hand, I just had a basic idea for where I wanted it to go, and tried to write it by the seat of my pants. It was really stupid to do it that way, but I learned a valuable lesson from the experience: I need to work from an outline, because when I do, I’m connecting the dots instead of assembling a jigsaw puzzle.”

“That makes a lot of s—” he began.

“Wait. I like that. I need to write it down.” I opened TextEdit and typed connect the dots instead of assembling a jigsaw puzzle.

“I see what you did there,” Andrew said. “You should be a writer.”

“Thanks! I’m working on that.”