Nicholas Bruner
Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Young Adult Author
What I’m Reading: The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress
Somehow I never read The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, despite reading Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers multiple times in middle and high school. Especially odd because at that time I tended to go deep on science fiction authors I liked, like Frederick Pohl and Frank Herbert.
Secrets, Lies, & Sighs: New Anthology from the Writers of Chantilly Released!
We all have secrets, parts of our pasts we’d rather keep hidden. Inside the pages of this anthology, you’ll find secrets uncovered. A church confessional come to life, who knows what you’ve really been up to. A happily married woman reflecting on a college romance, and the unexpected revelation that ended it. A private school principal who finds kicking a student out of school may lead to public revelations of his own unsavory past. These secrets and more lie hidden in these pages, waiting only for you to discover them.
The new anthology from the Writers of Chantilly, Secrets, Lies, & Sighs, is available now at Amazon.
What I’m Reading: The Martian
I admit I was a bit skeptical when someone loaned me The Martian recently and told me I should read it. The Martian? That new movie with Matt Damon? Isn’t that an airplane book, not real literature? (Yes, despite my devotion to comics and genre science fiction, I am quite a snob in certain respects.) Well, I did read it, and am glad I did so, despite some reservations with the book.
What I’m Reading: The Hand of Oberon
I recently finished The Hand of Oberon by Roger Zelazny, the fourth in the series of Amber novels (see here and here for write-ups on previous novels in the series). Last month I also read the third book in the series, Sign of the Unicorn, but did not write it up. Alas, I’ve been extremely busy lately and have neglected this blog!
What I’m Reading: The Screwtape Letters
The Screwtape Letters, by C.S. Lewis, is an epistolary novel containing the letters of a demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood. Wormwood is a tempter, assigned to lead a human being astray so Satan can take his soul, and he’s having some trouble with his charge. Screwtape offers his nephew advice, mostly in the form of explanations of the human mindset and human behavior, and which strategies for leading a human astray might prove effective.
Writing Goals for 2015
Here are my writing goals for 2015:
1. Work on super-secret project (more details to come in 2015, I hope!)
1a. Polish short story for super-secret project. Already written, but for some reason I just cannot get this thing edited! I really need to work on it.
2. Finish edit of novel manuscript. This is my third novel (current working title: Out of Place), which is in draft form but needs some editing and polishing. I don’t think it actually requires that much work–but I do need to sit down with it for a couple months and get it into shape.
2a. Send third novel out to agents.
3. Edit Writers of Chantilly anthology in a more timely fashion than I did with last year’s!
EITHER 4a. Edit second novel, and try sending it out to agents again;
OR 4b. Research, begin writing fourth novel. I’m fairly certain what I’m going to write about, just need to get some stuff figured out before I can start.
What I’m Reading: Nine Princes in Amber
Like the Dune series, the Amber series by Roger Zelazny is one I enjoyed greatly when I was younger and have decided to revisit. The first rather slim volume, Nine Princes in Amber, came out in 1970. I first read it in probably the 10th grade and immediately noticed it was different than other fantasy books I’d read. Although it does have kings and magic and such, it eschews the warmed-over Lord of the Rings-inspired cliches so often found in other fantasy books, as well as their flowery language. Indeed, its clipped, dry style is far closer to a detective novel by Hammett or Chandler than to Tolkien or Terry Brooks.
