MATTHEW LOWES

It’s interesting to me how casually we accept things like climate change, unchecked population growth, and environmental destruction. Not to downplay the many worthwhile and important steps one can take to help control these problems, but as a whole, humanity seems to sense that certain things have a momentum far greater than themselves. It is [...]

Read Full Post »

In martial arts there is a saying: “you can live or die by anything.” It means there is no single principal or movement that is guaranteed to save you. For example, it’s good to breathe, essential for survival, but if you try it underwater you will have serious problems. It’s not surprising to find that [...]

Read Full Post »

Liz Engstrom‘s science fiction story weekend at siltcoos station was a lot of fun and a real whirlwind of creativity. I met a bunch of fantastic writers, made new friends, and got to hear some great new stories. I stayed up until 3am Friday night writing my story, “One Breath and the Deep.” At 3:30 [...]

Read Full Post »

I’ll soon be heading to a science fiction writing workshop on the coast with Elizabeth Engstrom, the author of When Darkness Loves Us and The Northwoods Chronicles. The pre-workshop meeting focused on conceptions of science fiction, ideas for world building, and meeting a great group of writers I’ll be spending the weekend with. We’ll all [...]

Read Full Post »

It’s almost time for my July writing intensive and I’m gearing up to get a big chunk of my new book written. Last summer I wrote 32,000 words in July and finished the first draft of Journey to Elara. This summer I will be pounding out a big part of book 2: Dark Mage of [...]

Read Full Post »

I do a fair amount of general research on all kinds of things from vulcanism to piano tuning, and I use the internet a lot. Google image search and Wikipedia are awesome for getting up to speed on all kind of topics. But the internet isn’t always everything it’s cracked up to be. Information on [...]

Read Full Post »

What a relief! All the files from my crashed hard drive were recovered and I have gotten them back on an external hard drive and backed them up twice. I still have to get my primary computer fixed, but now at least I can get back to the work of writing without having to worry [...]

Read Full Post »

The saga of the lost chapters continues. My computer hard drive, which suddenly ceased all vital functions several days ago, has been sent to a data retrieval center. I received a call today which I hoped would bring news that my files had been recovered. Instead, I found out that my drive needs to be [...]

Read Full Post »

I’ll be the first one to admit that I messed up. I made a mistake. I hadn’t backed up critical files in about a month. But I’ve had a new computer since August and it’s been working like a charm. I guess I got complacent. My work was going so smoothly I just didn’t think, [...]

Read Full Post »

If you’ve ever tried to write anything with a complex plot, you can probably relate to the struggle of figuring out how to make everything fit together like magic. If you haven’t, I assure you it can be quite perplexing and laborious. It can also be wonderful, like when you finally figure out that troubling [...]

Read Full Post »