Asimov's , The Skiff

Primarily this is a blog about reading but occasionally other subjects creep in - like I'm writing this in the Skiff having signed up for a day a week. Plus I went to meet a business partner re setting up a website and training business, so am now all geared up to learn WordPress, maybe even make a business of it. t

Aimov's is still good hard sci-fi, with enough interest as well as innnovation to make most of the stories intensely readable.  The Fantasy & Science Fiction story that I was reading though turned out to be a bit of damp squib - full of quasi (or real, maybe not quasi) Quaker stuff that I thought was all very worthy, but not interesting to read, and a kind of nothingy ending. There was this simulacrum  of a steampunk kind, that may or may not have had a soul imprisoned in it, and that's just as bad as slavery isn't it. Yes. End of story.

I've started to write  a bit here as well, but the laptop I am using is uncomfortable, hot (literally), and I haven't brought a keyboard with me, so my typing is full of typos.  But I think I might be able to write here. The Ivan and Alenoushka story is taking some different directions - and I'm appreciating just how much sheer plod it's going to take to make it into the novel I want it to be. I'm torn between inventing some action now, or choosing another perspective.  I think the story needs a little bit more suspense in it. What I am trying to get , to practice, is when to introduce the more savage action, that moves the story up a step, rather than the slow psychological approach of, say, a Richard Ford novel ( if he wrote sci-fi that is).  It is quite good writing here, though, I'm in this little self-contained bubble surrounded by people.