The George Lite Zone

Another author with some useful advice on fiction writing is Jim Butcher, author of the Dresden files. His Live Journal website, http://jimbutcher.livejournal.com/ , has some useful hints and tips on the art of being a story smith. Check it out. Jim's also got a news site, http://www.jim-butcher.com/news/ , and another that has a series of podcasts, http://butcherblock.libsyn.com/ . Useful stuff to tide you over now that the first season of the Dresden files has drawn to a close. I'm currently reading his first mainstream fantasy novel Furies of Calderon (Codex Alera) at the moment. Excellent stuff so far, I'll post a review of it when I've finished.

Kurt Vonnegut, Junior. 11-Nov-1922 to 11-Apr-2007 I was sad to hear that Kurt Vonnegut died recently. Author of such SF Classics as Slaughterhouse Five, Cats Cradle and Breakfast Of Champions, he'll be sorely missed. In surfing the web recently I came across his eight rules for writing fiction. 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. 2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. 3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. 4. Every sentence must do one of two things -- reveal character or advance the action. 5. Start as close to the end as possible. 6. Be a sadist. Now matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them -- in order that the reader may see what they are made of. 7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. 8. Give your readers as much i

One of my favorite TV shows of all time was I Claudius (nothing to do with the large amount of sex and gratuitous violence honest). In a totally unrelated vein Google have revamped their personalized portal and re-badged it as iGoogle . With iGoogle you can easily setup a custom home page and fill it with a plethora of gadgets news feeds and other assorted goodies. You can also setup multiple tabs to better organise things and changing it around is a breeze with everything being done via that old fire breathing dragon excreta (dragon droppings). As it's free I'd suggest that you give it a try. The late great Isaac Asimov (author of amongst other things I, Robot ) would have approved. You can also add a nifty Add To Google button to your blog to allow others to add a feed from your blog to their iGoogle page. Cool. Check out my post on Coded Languages for a geeky set of instructions on how to do this.

Am I mad, in a coma, or have I just been listening to the Life On Mars Original Soundtrack CD. Most excellent. Not surprising really as the picking ground for material, the 70's, has been identified as the best decade for popular music. My only criticism of it is the lack of any Hawkwind , not that I'm biased, especially as the show has featured Brainstorm , Silver Machine , Urban Guerrilla , Ejection and You Shouldn't Do That over its two seasons. Still there's always the potential for a second soundtrack album at some stage in the future and plenty of material still to chose from. Track Listing King Of The Jungle (dialogue) David Bowie - Life On Mars Roxy Music - Street Life Wings - Live And Let Die ELO - 10538 Overture John Kongos - Tokoloshe Man Atomic Rooster - Devil's Answer T Rex - Rock On Free - Little Bit Of Love Lee 'Scratch' Perry and the Upsetters - Jungle Lion Armed Bastards (dialogue) The Sweet - Blockbuster The Faces - Cindy Incidentally A