John Scalzi's Blog

This November, you know, after you’ve picked up The Shattering Peace and enjoyed the heck out of it, I’ll have another new thing for you: A short story called “3 Days, 9 Months, 27 Years,” which will be part of The Time Traveler’s Passport, an anthology of stories about time and/or travel, edited by John Joseph Adams, which in addition to my story will feature stories by R.F. Kuang, Peng Shepard, Kaliane Bradley, Olivie Blake and P. Djèlí Clark. That is a hell of a line-up, if I do say so...

I have followed CultFlav on Tik Tok for a while now, enjoying their thorough reviews of cooking products as well as cookbooks. For all the reviews of theirs I’ve seen, I’ve never really been tempted to buy anything before. Most of what I have seen are things like pan reviews, a comparison of knives, talking about stand-mixers, basically a bunch of stuff I already have and don’t need to replace any time soon. So while I like their content, I have never felt compelled to buy anything they’ve talke...

Move over, Shakespeare in the Park, today we’ve got poet Gary Jackson and the Big Idea for his newest collection of poetry. Follow along to see how small lives speaks to the reader in an unprecedented way.

GARY JACKSON:

It’s no secret that I love persona poems. When I teach my intro to poetry students about voice and speaker, I routinely ask: Who is talking to whom about what? I pose the question hoping to prompt them to consider how a poet employs pronouns, point of view, and psychic distance ...

Travel today to Portland for Rose City Comic Con, and I’m doing an experiment to see how compactly I can travel with all my tech and four days of clothes (three days of the convention, one day of travel back; obviously for the travel today I am already wearing my clothes). Before you is the current attempt: A mini travel backpack designed to fit a Mac Air plus various tech accoutrement, and a small travel bag with four days of clothes (plus an extra day of underwear and socks, because som...

Stories are there for us through good times and bad times. They can comfort us, perplex us, or connect us. Follow along in author Rich Larson’s Big Idea for his newest book, Changelog, where he seeks to connect us all to his grandmother.

RICH LARSON:

What’s the point?

That’s the only Big Idea that comes to mind as I watch my grandma gasping in her sleep. What’s the point of writing an essay to promote a book full of stories barely anyone will read? What was the point of me writing all those sto...

I was reminded via a recent Metafilter post that this year marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, and consequently, the 20th anniversary of me writing my “Being Poor” post about it, which was my way of answering the question, sometimes asked sincerely and sometimes less so, why some of New Orleans’ poorest citizens did not leave the city when a massive storm was bearing down on it. The piece was written in anger and sorrow and frustration, and was in many ways was a life-changing p...

First the M4 Mac Air and then the Pixel 10 Pro, because, I don’t know, we’re going from largest to smallest.

M4 Mac Air: The first thing I note is that I think I forgot how much I enjoy this particular form factor for a laptop. Don’t get me wrong, I really am happy with my Mac Pro, but it is an actual beast of a machine, big and heavy and kind of a pain in the ass to take places. Again, I bought it more or less as a desktop replacement, so I’m not faulting it for these facts; it’s doin...

And what, you ask, is “California Sober”? Two things: One, it’s slang for the sort of person who doesn’t drink alcohol or use other drugs but might partake of weed. Two, it’s a comedy short written by Yamini Nambimadom and Isabella Zanobini, and directed by Juliette Strangio, that I was an executive producer for, which is now available on YouTube for general viewing. The plot: “After an unexpected drug test puts their blowoff mall jobs at risk, best friends Lola and Tyler spend an after...

Sometimes, books require a lot of planning and outlining, and sometimes you just need to start and it ends up revealing itself along the way. Such was the case for author Charlie N. Holmberg, much to her type-A dismay. Follow along in her Big Idea to see how she skipped the outline entirely for her newest novel, The Shattered King.

CHARLIE N. HOLMBERG:

I literally wrote the book on magic systems.

Okay, I wrote a book on magic systems. Charlie N. Holmberg’s Book of Magic, to be precise.

But this...

Meet (again) Saja. The name is Korean for “lion,” and also, of course, fans of K-Pop Demon Hunters will catch the reference to Saja Boys, the demonic-but-terribly-cute boy band from the film who sing fizzy ditties about wanting to consume your soul:

In this regard the name is doubly fitting because a few days ago, when we decided to keep the kitten, I spontaneously started singing to him, to the tune of “Soda Pop”: You’re my little kitty/So furry and so pretty/You’re my fuzzy butt/M...