The AFICTIONADO® Blog

How should teenagers speak?  Okay, that’s a loaded question.  Let’s re-state the question: how should teenagers speak in the book that you’re reading (or writing)? Should they should sound like they just stepped out of a twenty-first century American high school? Or, especially if the book is a fantasy, should they be using the same, […]

Handwavium.  What is it and why do reviewers excoriate writers over it?  Well, handwavium in science fiction is when an author writes about a scientifically impossible idea without attempting to create a basis for it; essentially, the author says, “It is because it is.”  This seems to come up mostly regarding starflight or FTL (faster […]

The audiobook for Accidental Warrior is completed and off to QA at ACX!  I’m hoping this process won’t take more than a few weeks but, with everything else that has been upended during this pandemic, I’m keeping my fingers crossed.  In the meantime, it’s back to working on getting Complicated finished and ready for publication.  That is now […]

Spent a lot of time from Thursday through Sunday online with the Mars Society meeting. As I’ve noted before, this is not a science fiction convention; it is a dead-serious society of people dedicated to putting a real settlement on Mars. The only relationship to science fiction is that the Mars Society aims to turn […]

The cover art for Complicated: The Interstellar Life and Times of Saoirse Kenneally has arrived!  It is gorgeous (okay, I’m biased) and a very nice incorporation of some key themes from the story.  it makes me even more eager to get the book finished.  Still tracking for late fall to early winter.  You can see the cover […]

I was late to the idea of audiobooks.  I grew up reading books and the idea of listening to them instead didn’t click for me.  If nothing else, I can read a whole lot faster than someone can narrate.  So, when I started to write, the idea of producing an audiobook never crossed my mind.  […]