Okay, so I'm a debut author.  It's as amazing as it is anxiety-provoking:)  I'm at that stage of my debut author process where my ARCs (that's Advanced Review Copies) are about to be unleashed upon the world, meant to be read and reviewed by book bloggers and other varieties of advanced readers. Based on this exercise, the publisher gauges potential interest for the book and can even ask the author (yep, that's me) to revise some aspects of the book.  Meanwhile, I'm due to engage in what's called "1st Pass Pages" stage of the manuscript which means I have to review the book ONCE MORE after it's been laid out, etc. After that, there's the "2nd Pass Pages" stage which is, like, almost IT. I think. I'm learning this as I go - one step at the time.  This is all very exciting... but I thought I'd share some thoughts on how you - yes YOU, dear reader - can help your humble debut author friend/acquaintance/Twitt...

Back in August, I got an email from NaNoWriMo (that's National Novel Writing Month ) organizers, inviting me to guest-blog for them. The theme was writing tips and/or motivation, but it was open to interpretation. I quickly said 'yes, please' (that's my usual tactic where writing is concerned) and got to work. The use of visuals for inspiration and motivation emerged as a topic for me to write about and NaNoWriMo folks liked my pitch. So here's me reblogging this piece (all images are licensed under Creative Commons and you can find details in image captions on the original posting available here ). I'd like to thank NaNoWriMo for reaching out and for running my guest-post on their blog. Can a picture inspire a thousand words? Can a picture inspire a thousand words? NaNoWriMo investigates the power of images in our writing lives. Author Katya de Becerra describes how using an image board brought her novel’s setting to life: For me, a book begins...

In case you didn't know but I am a huge SF fan and would (almost) *always* prefer a SF movie to a non-SF movie. A drawback (or more like a perk?) of my SF affliction is that I find myself thinking every time I watch a SF movie that's a new take on the old SF tropes - how much of  real science is actually in it? Could that really happen? What does it mean? Film directors are likely to hire real-life physicists as consultants now, which is great as it means science fiction is closer to real science and then the fiction side of it comes out more realistic too. But then, of course, there's always a place for some mind-bending storytelling that uses realistic scientific ideas to prove its fictitious points. Contemplating on all this, I decided to write about three SF movies which I thought  had some truly great ideas at their core, brilliantly mixing science with fiction, and creating a mind-blowing experience for the view... and a few for...