Author Archives: James - Page 114
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Book Review: Farewell Horizontal by K W Jeter
Excellent thought provoking and very well put together science fiction with a little twist, which left me wanting a little more from it. Ignoring the setting for a moment this is really a story about the rat race and how it affects people. It is set in a strange, slightly unbelievable, environment on the side of a massive building in a dystopian post-apocalyptic future, probably on another planet. However none of that really matters, and the point of the story, which is well crafted, is that sometimes you need to stop and think about things rather than just striving for the next payday. The primary character is a freelancer struggling to make enough income to cover all his costs, and on the point of bankruptcy. He lives on the outside vertical space of the building while he attempts to make…
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NaNoWriMo – the end
So November is finished, although my draft novel isn't. I managed to write 44,463 words during November for it, which isn't quite the magic 50k needed to claim a win. see for how my writing progress panned out. I really enjoyed this process and it wasn't as difficult as it first appeared. Some of it is helped by the regular pep talk broadcast mails it sends out, and also the stats counter tells you how many words you need to average every day that you have left to hit the magic 50k. However the pep talk mails give you a more human view of it, and I found them to be good encouragement to keep going. So why, with all that encouragement and sign posting, did I not manage to hit fifty thousand words? Well I nearly did, and this was…
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NaNoWriMo
After seeing some posts about National Novel Writing Month (AKA NaNoWriMo) I decided that I may as well give it a go and see if I can just sit and write stuff for the month. I don't realistically expect to hit the target 50,000 words, but thought I'd see how it went. There are times when I can write prolifically, although those are few and far between these days, what with family life, work and all the other things. However if you don't try you can never So if you want to see how I'm getting along look here UPDATE: It's taking shape, there are a dozen characters, a mad US President and the threat of nukes as well as space ships, genetically modified people and a moon The Moon as seen by an observer from Earth. Some people claim…
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More Studying
After a short break I'm back studying with the OU, for two reasons, one of which is that as a continuing student before the fee increases I need to do at least one course a year to keep that dispensation, and the other is that I've found out that I can't get credit for my previous studies (a from the University of Glasgow from 1989-1992) because they were too long ago. So my idea of upgrading my Ordinary degree to an Honours is going to take a lot longer (but will leave me with two degrees as the OU degree I'm working towards is a BA(Hons) in Business Studies). Anyway, having done 90/120 points at level 3 I'm now back to level 1 and have just started the 30 point MST121 Understanding Mathematics course. This is a little late as…
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Book Review – To Reason Why, by Denis Forman
This is more than just an infantry officer's memoir. Denis Forman was closely involved in the Battle School movement that transformed the British Army's infantry training during the second world war. He then went on to serve alongside Lionel Wigram (the primary proponent and intellectual leader of the Battle School movement) in Italy. The story is as much about Lionel Wigram as it is about Denis Forman himself. However one of the stand out pieces for me is the honest treatment of how men deal with battle. The psychological impact and how unreliable things become is often not mentioned in most memoirs, there is an unspoken need not to embarrass anyone, or bring up things better left to lie. This book manages to discuss it without shaming anyone. Also, the appendices have copies of the reports into the lessons from…