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  #Introduction for new server: I'm a retired software engineer and former librarian, and a long-time but very intermittently active member of the SCA (the hobby for people who collect hobbies). Since retiring and building my house, I have written and self-published 2 fantasy novels: Heir of the Bindings and Broken Oaths & Bindings, volumes 1 and 2 of the Elderkin Chronicles. Volume 3 is currently being written. I am using Superior Magpie Press (in Superior, Colorado) as my imprint.

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  It looks like the author copies I ordered a few weeks ago are being shipped, so I should have them in plenty of time for the convention in October. What makes no sense is how they are being shipped: I ordered a total of 25 physical books spread across 3 titles, in a single order for efficiency. Are the books being shipped in a single package? Apparently not. Are they being shipped in 3 packages, 1 per title? Also, apparently not. They are being shipped in 4 packages. Four. #WritingCommunity

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  #ScribesAndMakers 3 Are you more comfortable communicating verbally (or signing/ other non-written) or in writing? I am very text-oriented (that conversation could have been an email) which is arguably different from being writing-oriented. The only fully connected writing I produce any more is my signature, and I don't produce much other hand writing. I love the look of good handwriting and calligraphy, but as a hook-handed lefty with slightly hyper-mobile joints, find writing a nuisa...

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  @ai6yr@m.ai6yr.org Lines 2 and 3 are David and Bathsheba, lines 4 and 5 are Samson and Delilah

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  If anyone near Boulder needs a vehicle cleaned THOROUGHLY, I highly recommend EcoSteam Detailing. (Located in the 29th Street Parking garage.) My car had been majorly colonized by rodents, though none were currently resident, and not only did they take the job (some competitors declined to try) they basically disassembled the car to get at all of the crud. The cleaning was done with steam and ozone, not chemicals. The engine looks like new and the interior is only lacking that 'new car smel...

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  I’m excited to announce that my books, Heir of the Bindings and Broken Oaths & Boundaries, will be discounted on @Smashwords during their month-long Summer/Winter Sale in July! Find links to the promotion for my books and many more at https://www.smashwords.com/sale! #SWSale2026 #Smashwords

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  #ScribesAndMakers 9 What's a fairly typical amount of time you spend reading per sitting? How many times per day do you generally get a chance to read? I don't think there is any typical pattern at the moment: a lot depends on where I am in the writing and other projects. All of which have been very bursty since I retired.

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  #ScribesAndMakers It's 2 am here... I''ll be back answering questions after some sleep.

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  @alpine_thistle@fandom.ink Bret Devereaux on his https://acoup.blog did some essays a few years ago on being a medieval warrior from the point of view of warriors at the time. (Translation of a Letter from a lord to his son about how to be a warrior, that sort of thing) He provides good bibliographic info and references, which might point you in useful directions.

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 27 How can we as writers support one another? Abjure AI and all its devices. Buy each other's books, boost each other's announcement and comments. If you do reviews on any of the review platforms, cast a wide net.

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  #ScribesAndMakers 07 When did you think of the idea for your current project? Do you remember how it came about? Storytelling in my head went flat in winter '18-'19, got rebooted by Tennant & Sheen in Good Omens 5/19. I played with some spun off ideas in NaNo '19 and found I could still do character and world building and REALLY hate Bishop Usher's Christo-Fascist cosmology. Started playing with a world visited by creatures from beyond time and space for...

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  #WritersCoffeeClub 22 What has been the biggest change to your style since you started out? I have no idea. I have nothing left of my writing from the 70s. I could go back and look at some of my surviving older work (90s and later), but I'm not sure how to tell what are changes in my style vs. what are differences because that was what the various story-worlds needed. I think I would be disappointed if there had been no stylistic changes over the decades. But style is not a writing ta...

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  #ScribesAndMakers 23. Have fairy tales influenced any of your creative work? Not just European fairy tales, but a lot of folkloric motifs and entities from everywhere...if Andrew Lang had produced an Octarine Fairy Book, I would have read it -- there was a time 15 or 20 years ago when I pulled ALL of the fairy books from Project Gutenberg and read through them, though I've also read collections of folktales from just about everywhere. World myths and legends, too, beginning with Homer.

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  #WordWeavers 19: If your SC was going on a trip, would they pack light or take too much? It would depend on the reason for the trip, the route, the planned destination, and whether travel will be by horse/mule-back or by water. It would also depend on whether a return trip was included in the plans. When Fritzel relocated to Karnburg to be a member of Franz-Karl's household there, packing was thorough because anything left behind in Traventi might not be easilyreplaceable in Karnburg.

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  @scalzi Happy Holidays to you as well!

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  @scalzi congratulations!

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  #WordWeavers 27. Which character would be the most fun to be around? I was going to say Fritzel, but my characters insist it is Count Valens of the North Valley in Traventi. He had a few lines in volume 2 and a few more in what I have written of volume 3. Where he shows up looking like an Asian dragon and wearing a silk scarf and a reasonable approximation of aviator goggles. I guess if Adrasteia is Everyone's Aunt, Valens is the Fun Uncle Who Parties? Don't ask me, I just wor...

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  #WordWeavers 7. Look around and describe an object as if it were a mysterious item (no name, no idea of it's purpose). A metal pole reaches skyward. Some branches are firmly attached, others, held on by friction, have migrated to the downwind side. Three of the branches support oddly shaped pendants: one tubular, one roofed and floored with a cylindrical cage between, one odd-shaped wooden frame around a flat square metal cage. (Cue the archeologists: "Probably a ritual object...

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  #ScribesAndMakers 20 Self-promotion day. Shame optional. Elsewhere in the multiverse is a World with a region and history not entirely unlike our central Europe in 1700, But besides the political and sectarian struggles we might find spookily familiar, that World has been shaped by frequent visits by eldritch creatures from beyond space and time that we have been spared. 2 novels in the Elderkin Chronicles are available in print, ebook, and library loan channels (See alt text for info).

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  #WordWeavers 14: Is selling your work for money important to you when you write? In the early 90s a big trad publisher offered to take a second look at my novel if I rewrote it to make the story-line more conventional and removed the queer content from the character- and world-building. I had friends in and around the publishing industry: from writers to retail, and I knew by then that software engineering was (sometimes) creatively satisfying and far more likely to pay a living wage. 1/

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  #WritersCoffeeClub Sometimes plot holes are where you plant the cuttings that will grow into the next volume.

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  #WordWeavers 6. If you have several stories, which one should a new reader start with? The first book of my series is Heir of the Bindings, Elderkin Chronicles Volume I https://www.books2read.com/HeirOfTheBindings Volume II, Broken Oaths & Boundaries,, is also available, but they are tightly linked, so starting with volume I is advisable. https://books2read.com/BrokenOathsBoundaries Volume III, working title: Duke of the Elderkin, is in progress and should be out sometime this year.

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  #ScribesAndMakers 8 Is there a country other than your own that influences your creativity? There's a reason I create my own worlds... The WIPs are more inspired by history than geography. But I did have a Japanese-inspired period in the late 80s/early 90s. I have a trunk novel from then that had gotten the full Tolkien: maps, appendices, etc. At some point I may do a refresh edit and publish it, probably ebook only.

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  #ScribesAndMakers 28: How did your month go? Wordcount hasn't changed much, but about 10K of the words are different words. I think I figured out how the rest of the restructuring needs to work, but at the moment I am poking at it rather than cranking along... partly due to a lack of energy on my part: too much dry weather with very strong winds is stressful.

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  #ScribesAndMakers 27 Splat? Sorry about that.... Rocs are not really elephant-sized, but you wouldn't know it from that now, would you? Could be worse: you might have been standing in the open instead of under the porch roof.