Postal difficulties

First things first...Invasion! at Forbidden Planet. It's tomorrow, okay? Thursday. I know I've banged on about it here and on the Book of Face, so pardon me if you know the details by heart, but I'd hate anyone who really wanted to go to miss it.

Second thing: post. Due to a variety of factors, including the phase of the Moon, the mean annual rainfall in Guatemala, and the elasticity of Roger Federer's socks, the Clones have fallen behind on this website's post-bag chores. Many apologies. It isn't helped by the fact that the mail box is also...now I'm sure there's a word for it...oh, cock-awful, that's it. Totally counter intuitive and user unfriendly. So answering post is a gazillion* times more complex than it needs to be. Then the mail box froze on me and, well, post was lost. There, I've said it. So if you've mailed me in the last six weeks or so, and I haven't replied to anything that needed a reply, I'm sorry.

As a general round up, if you were emailing me with a nice comment, thank you so much and keep on corresponding. If you were asking for some favour or work-related thing and I haven't got back to you as you might have expected, please mail me again. If you were selling me viagra or the chance to accept funds from Nigeria, I'm good, thanks.

If you were asking me to check out your writing, please understand that I get that a LOT, and I can't read your submission. With the best will in the world, I don't have time, and if I did it for one person I'd have to do it for everyone. Really sorry, and good luck. As far as general writing tips go, I'll always try to help, though I'd probably draw the line at inventing names or storylines for you to get you started, or listing what source material to read to get 'into' things (clue: the answer starts with "all the 40K rulebooks and supplements..."). If you were or are after a very specific piece of writing advice, re-mail your question. As far as writing tips in general go, I have wibbled about that before, at length, and would point you in the direction of my most recent round of comments on the subject, the posts entitled "Dear Ryan" (parts 1 to 3) back in February. Go read them, then see if your question still stands.

On that same topic, may I take the opportunity to point you all at this blog post by the splendid Chuck Wendig, which makes some extraordinarily useful and cogent remarks about the FREELANCE CIRCUMSTANCES surrounding the twenty-four hour party that is writing for a living. If you want to write, in any serious way, it's as important to know about this stuff as it is to know about words and the order correct go they in.

So, are we all good? Magnus and Viktor, I've replied to you. Niels, the reward is on its way. Steve, a podcast response is coming to you. Anyone else?

Okay - back to the twenty-four hour party, everyone, and see you all in Forbidden Planet tomorrow night.



*technical term of mail complexity measurement.