As you can see from the progress bar to the right, the novella for the secret project is done. As it often happens, I overshot my word count target, but in this case I overshot it by rather a lot. I had planned for 19,000 words give or take a thousand and ended up with…
Ethnic food, Westphalian style
Scrapple is a great example of a polarizing food—people either love it or think it’s abominable. I happen to love it because it’s substantially similar to Panhas, a traditional Westphalian food that was one of my comfort dishes growing up. (The recipe for Panhas was imported by German immigrants, which is why it’s mostly…
Po-tay-toes
All right, the All Dressed potato chip flavor is pretty damn good. I stocked up in Canada, and today I saw that our local grocery store carries at least one brand variety of All Dressed as well. (For the uninitiated, of which I was one until recently, All Dressed is a combination of ketchup,…
Social media stuff
After my long social media hiatus before the pandemic, I gradually reintruduced measured amounts of it back into my routine. I’ve had a new Instagram account for a few years now, and I post on Bluesky and Threads. Bluesky has become my favorite, and I am not thrilled with Meta’s policies, so I think I’ll…
Andy A. Doodle
Scientifically proven to be the Goodest Boy.
Our combination anniversary getaway/working vacation
Last weekend, the wife and I went to Quebec City for three days to celebrate our anniversary (21 years!), recharge our batteries, and plan out some new stories together. We stayed at a nice hotel in the old city, went to the German Christmas Market and did some shopping, ate fantastic meals, and generally…
Whoopsie
That’s how the last week has been going for me. How was yours? Kid #1 put the Jeepito in the ditch as he was leaving for work. Not really his fault—the conditions were pretty bad, and the road was treacherous even for an experienced driver. But it definitely kicked off a chain of work-disrupting events…
That ol’ pen-and-paper business
There are days when my brain simply locks up when I have my fingers on a keyboard and my eyes on a blinking cursor on a screen. I wrote the first two Frontlines novels by hand in A4-sized unlined notebooks. Then I got a publishing contract, and the deadlines involved required a faster pace…
07OCT2024
The developmental edits for CORVUS, second volume in the Frontlines: Evolution series, are finished and turned in. My developmental editor is excited about this book and says it’s my best one yet, so I hope it’ll land well with readers when it comes out in August. (For those of you wondering why it can’t be…
The public lives of writers (and the urge to comment thereon)
When I was in Glasgow for Worldcon, I shared a few pictures on my Instagram account. Among them were shots of the full Scottish breakfast I got to use as fuel for the day. Someone commented on the post that I should “eat less and write more.” I’m sure the person who left that comment…