If it's a bad story that breaks canon, adherence to canon won't fix it. If it's a good story that breaks canon in a minor way, it's irrelevant; it's just nitpicking. If it's a good story that breaks canon in a major way, it's probably a good story *because* it breaks canon.
Talk about an exciting topic! But how a language encodes the connections between clauses can have far-reaching ramifications. As I explain here, Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and English have very different assortments of complementizers. How scribes translated them gave rise to a huge variety of interpretations of the New Testament. But I'm sorry to say that I… Continue reading Subordinate Clauses in Gnin El and Sasrâl
At this point it's getting a bit embarrassing to admit that I've been working on this book since 2013. It still remains my pet project and the one I'm most anxious to have see the light of day, since it reflects many of my own experiences and hopes and fears -- about my profession (artificial… Continue reading Axon, Inc. Revisions: NaNoWriMo 2021
I always have a lot of irons in the fire when it comes to creative projects. I tend to get a lot of ideas, usually more than I know what to do with; and of course I get very excited about them and I want to work on them immediately. While that’s undoubtedly a great… Continue reading A Year’s Plan: 2021
Thanks go to Fury's Reign, who created this ask game on Tumblr. 1: Summarize your WIP in 10 words or less. Tech startup creates telepathic computing; social and personal tragedy ensues. 2: Post a line from your WIP with no context. "Artificial intelligence is a tool for solving problems — problems of any sort. But… Continue reading Work In Progress Ask Game
It has been long indeed since the last update, mostly because, after finishing Axon, Inc., I tried finding an agent for it (throughout the spring of 2018), and... failed. Among the agents who gave me feedback on their rejection, the most common complaint was that the beginning was not compelling enough. This was somewhat discouraging.… Continue reading Axon, Inc. Update Feb 2020
First, an announcement: the first chapter of Axon, Inc., "Lubumbashi", is now available on Wattpad. Over the next few weeks, I'll be posting four more chapters, a total of almost 10,000 words. In the meantime revisions will continue. As an experiment, I'll be over on Wattpad a lot more in the future. In addition to… Continue reading Revisions Status: Oct 7 2015
This is a sample from the Refusal of the Call section of Axon, Inc. See the post on mapping story structure to get a sense of where this appears in the novel. He didn’t know the fastest way to a road or a house, so he simply headed back the way he’d come: straight through… Continue reading Mount Si: Refusal of the Call (Axon, Inc. Sample)
This is the second of a series of posts on the status of my revisions to Axon, Inc. The first one is here. As before, instead of giving spoilers or arbitrary word counts, I'm going to reference my Story Map here. The Story Map reveals the basic shape of the novel, without being specific about what… Continue reading Revisions Status: May 20 2015
Axon, Inc. is a tightly-focused novel, concentrating on the lives of just a few characters. Following up on the in-depth discussion of the protagonist, Walden Reathall, and the antagonist (?) Logan Byrnes, this post discusses two other essential characters: Walden's sister, Tori, and good friend, Paula Amaranto. There are no spoilers here, just notes about… Continue reading Characters: Tori Reathall and Paula Amaranto
Axon Firings 