It’s been awhile since I’ve done the music review round-up around here. Since I’m in the middle of having my brain implode on a short story that has been dogging me for a few weeks and there’s nothing to report on the latest book in draft (nor word from SOULS’ trip to NYC), I figure I’ll dump a list of records that might pique your curiosity (and give you reasons to visit your favorite indie record store). A number of them have been good company over the last few months.

Via Justine Larbalestier, Jay Lake, Elizabeth Bear, Tim Pratt Cherie Priest and Ben Peek (who gonzoes it up enough that he might indeed have really nailed the proper method).

So, the novel process. A lot of what has been said is true for me as well, but the one thing I want to add to this is the movie trailer. I tend to spiral off into research and never come back so getting enough of an idea together to get started keeps me from vanishing into faux academia. Usually I’ll knock one of these out in a few hours, collecting all the images and structural bits and what-not that I’ve got until something that resembles a movie trailer. It serves a few purposes:

(a) it is supposed to get me excited about the book, teasing me with enough bits that I want to find out how they fit together,
(b) it starts formulating a thematic structure and the way in which it might be pitched should such a time come, and
(c) it collapses what I know down to a workable chunk that I can file away and come back to later and unfold it all again with little effort.

Here’s an example. This is a trailer for a fantasy novel that I was working up with a buddy back in 1999. This is what I gave him as an info-dump of what I had.

Surfacing briefly to note that my submission to A Field Guide to Surreal Botany was accepted. I am the Haunt Vine (Ipomoea Umbris, of the Convolvulaceae family). More details as they become available (including who the other 47 lucky botanists are — it’s been entertaining to spot them surfacing with news across the ‘net).