I realized the other day that it is just over 20 years ago that the last of Peter Jackson’s trilogy of the Lord of the Rings was in theatres. My wife and I went to watch each of the three as th...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2024/03/16/a-return-to-middle-earth/
Over the past couple of years, I’ve found a few online journals that provide thoughtful, interesting, well-written commentary on a number of subjects. With hope that knowledge of them might be ...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2024/02/17/rewarding-reads-worthwhile-online-journals/
Although I have been a life-long admirer and would-be practitioner of science-fiction stories, I also read a lot of thrillers. As a genre, thrillers have a wide range and the ones I enjoy most bo...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2023/11/27/the-highly-implausible-jack-reacher/
Working on a novel doesn’t just mean the writing of it. At least for me, there is all the preliminary: the assemblage of ideas, notes about possible characters, scene glimpses, the main points ...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2023/08/28/using-obsidian-in-novel-development/
I now have two science-fiction novels completed, one a thousand years in the future, and the other set several decades away. I’ve begun the routine of sending out queries to literary agents. ...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2023/06/15/pity-the-poor-literary-agent/
We hear a lot of fearful hysteria or adoring glorification of the new large language model (LLM) pseudo-intelligences like Chat GPT. The LLMs may show to some the imminent arrival of the Singul...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2023/04/06/synthetic-biology-where-will-the-world-end-up/
Over the years, as a would-be writer, I jotted words into notebooks which I stashed away for decades. There are freewriting efforts, poetry, observations, quotations and many abortive attempts at...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2023/03/01/halls-of-sun-corridors-of-rain/
Often the internet seems like a collection of lists: the 100 best pop-songs, the 15 worst scams, and all the rest. People seem to respond to numbered compilations. In the science-fiction realm,...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2022/10/07/a-personal-list-of-the-20-best-science-fiction-novels/
I’ve finished a second science-fiction novel. This one is set just ahead of us in the middle of this century, which is rather daring given the speed of change. I like to put characters in scien...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2022/07/21/beta-reader-exchange/
I’ve just finished writing a second novel. I wanted to share a few of the tools I’ve found that helped me get it done, and will aid me in the future as I start on the third one. By ‘tools�...
https://fencer.wordpress.com/2022/07/14/recently-found-tools-for-writing-novels/