Blog – Page 2 – C.R. Francis

October 28, 2015May 3, 2017

Love the Company, Forget the Misery

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club. – Jack London

You want to write a book. Of course you do. Everyone wants to write a book. You’ve thought about it. You have the bones of a plot laid out, some characters, a few situations already mapped. And I can tell you right now that it’ a good idea, because you are an intelligent and interesting person and you have things to say. I can also tell you why you haven’t done it yet: it’s freaking Continue reading “Love the Company, Forget the Misery”

October 23, 2015May 3, 2017

In the Beginning

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. – Logan Pearsall Smith

Way back in the mists of the Before Time, when a telephone was attached to the wall with a wire and had a real bell inside, before the tubes of the internet, before TiVo or Netflix or personal computers, we were young.

The men in my family have all had to be pursued by the women they married. My mom, being a traditionalist, got pregnant. My sister-in-law, if I have the story right, used her iron determination and played D&D with a bunch of dorky college guys because one of them was my brother. And my daughter-in-law pretended an interest in working on greasy muscle cars (which is hilarious) to Continue reading “In the Beginning”

October 17, 2015May 3, 2017

Where Is Geordi LaForge When You Need Him?

Yes, I love technology
But not as much as you, you see
But I still love technology
Always and forever
– Kip’s Wedding Song (Napoleon Dynamite)

My laptop is unreliable. The sound is cutting out intermittently. This is super frustrating when I am trying to watch SciShow on the YouTubes. We’ve tried about a hundred things to correct the problem, and as Mr. Edison might say, we’ve discovered about a hundred ways how not to fix the sound on the Continue reading “Where Is Geordi LaForge When You Need Him?”

October 11, 2015May 3, 2017

Steely Eyed Missile Man

The Martian. My review? Brilliant! All thumbs up. Great book, but this is one of those stories where visuals can tell the tale even better. The movie is breathtaking. Well, plus Matt Damon is perfect (not in general, just for this role. Or maybe he is perfect. Whatever). He’s always been able to give life to a loner character, make the smart sad man charming and kind of adorable. And since this is basically Castaway In Space, the leading man is the movie. Though the supporting cast added a lot. Everybody gets a gold star today.

Read the book? You’d probably like it even if you don’t like speculative fiction. There’s a good bit of salt (that means swearing, do I have to tell you Continue reading “Steely Eyed Missile Man”

October 5, 2015November 10, 2020

Preparing to Launch, or What about Defenestration

I’m writing a book. I’ve got the page numbers done. – Steven Wright

Here we are – launching out into the Great Unknown. It is almost time to publish. Finally book one is done and going out to our friendly neighborhood beta readers; book two is in editing and books three and four are written enough to know how they’ll go and that they can be finished in a reasonable amount of time.

So now for the launch. Rick and I have talks while weeding in the front yard over minor problems in the plot. We talk cover design over breakfast. We spend the evenings quietly beside one another: him finishing reading through my next to last edit of book one (I will do the final grammar and spell check) and I edit and rework scenes in book two or research which authors are most similar to him and try to hunt down where their fans are living on Goodreads.

Continue reading “Preparing to Launch, or What about Defenestration”