Joe Beernink
Author of NOWHERE WILD, NOWHERE HOME
Monthly Archives: May 2011
Before Susan Collins’ career caught fire with the Hunger Games, she wrote a series of books about a boy named Gregor who falls through a grate in the laundry room of his New York City apartment building, and into the Underland, a place where a few humans have chosen to live amongst giant cockroaches, bats, rats and spiders. Gregor’s fall doesn’t hurt him, but it does leave him and his sister, “Boots”… Read More
As I wrap up the first draft of my fifth novel, I’ve come up with a list of lessons I’ve learned from writing them. Some of these are mistakes that have cost me a lot of time. Some are things that have really helped me to become a better writer as I’ve moved from book to book and scene to scene. I don’t mind making mistakes. They teach you a lot. But… Read More
Progress on my work in progress came in big chunks since my last post. At the start of my writing day on May 15th, I had 48577 words. Today I ended the day at 62137 words. That’s 13560 words in 9 days or an average of 1506 words per day. My low was 428 words and my high was 2921. The 2921 words I wrote last Saturday while sitting in a perfect… Read More
That is not a typo or a joke. I actually read Twilight. And I read 450 of 498 pages in a single day. Before you lose all respect for me, let me explain a few things. First, I write Young Adult Fiction. For a long time, I didn’t know that I did, but I do, and that means, as I writer, I have to read from the genre that I write. Why?… Read More
After reading the previous book in this series, Shadow Puppets, I was a little reluctant to pick this book up. I did it because my wife said it was better, and I have a nagging case of OCD which means no series goes unread once I start it. Shadow of the Giant is the completion of the Julian Delphinki (aka Bean) storyline in the Ender’s Game series. There is a power… Read More
Getting back on the train has paid big dividends for me for writing this week, as has having a reliable computer to work on. I’ve gotten used to the keyboard on the new laptop, and when the words are coming, the computer is completely unobtrusive, which is exactly how it should be. Word count since last Sunday, by day Sunday: 2142 Monday: 1253 Tuesday: 1398 Wednesday: 1506 Thursday: 2315 Friday: 1228 Saturday:… Read More
First off, this is obviously not the normal kind of book that I review here and doesn’t signal a change in the subject matter of this blog. This is also not some signal that I am in some kind of parenting crisis or having trouble coping with two four year olds running around the house. I am also not falling into some cult of parenting that will require me to belittle everyone… Read More
I’ve been having a lot of issues with my ACER-1420P laptop that I got from attending a Microsoft conference back in 2009 (yes, some conferences have better swag than others). In the last few weeks it started to freeze up completely, right in the middle of writing, requiring a reboot. The audio card had self destructed a few months ago, and the USB plug I’d replaced it with was making a ‘Zurp-Zurp’… Read More
This was just one of those weeks where real writing (as in increasing word count) didn’t happen. The world was conspiring against me. I will now begin to list my excuses reasons why writing did not happen: 1. My writing laptop has been acting very strange, and I spent a lot of my ‘writing’ time either trying to diagnose the issues, or shopping for a new laptop. It started going funny a… Read More
Joe Beernink 