Welcome to the blog of Mary Brock Jones, SF author.

I also have a website, here


I write science fiction. Some dark, some not so dark. Some short, some longer, some very long. Some have a happy ending, others definitely not.

I also write NZ historical romance novels.They always end happily, even if the journey can get quite bumpy.

It's a nice mix.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Procrastinating

I'm currently in caught-between land. I've just sent off my latest assignment for the screenwriting paper I've done. Hathe, prts 1&2 are finished and waiting for me to get some time off, to spend a day printing them off and post off in submission. No short stories pending. So it's time to get back to my Gorge Creek book and start the 1st edit. Which is why I'm in classic writer phase of 'what else can I do'? Anything, please, anything to put off me opening up and starting the editing. Not that I don't enjoy editing. Just have my head space elsewhere at the moment, still caught up in other stories, and not quite ready to jump into the Gorge Creek space. Maybe I better just dive on in - rather like swimming in Lake Taupo as a kid. There was only one way to do it. Dive in and swim vigorously until the water temperature actually felt enjoyable. So I'm off to dive into Gorge Creek. Honest, really and truly. Maybe.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

ConText 2011 programming conflicts

I've just checked out the programme for this years NZ con - ConText, to be held in Parnell over Queen's Birthday weekend. See con website here http://context.sf.org.nz/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

There's such a lot of good stuff there, and the organisers are really making Catherine Asaro work! But they have scheduled too many great events at the same time. What to go to, what to miss? There are clashes with guest of honour talks and talks from NZ writers such as Grant Stone and Ripley Patton. Not fair.It's all too hard.
 I'm also going to the writing workshop that Catherine Asaro has wonderfully agreed to give in the 3 days beforehand. Her Skolian series is my current absolute favourite SciFi series. A brilliant mix of innovative hard sci ideas with real human interest and a touch of romance to make it perfect. It's all about the people, the family at the heart of the stories.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Writing in the inbetween

My writing life has been a bit scrappy lately. I had an assignment to finish for the Massey screenwriting course I'm doing, and a story to complete for the ConText con competition. Plus everyday life rearing it's usual mucky head. But the assignment got done and just last night I pushed the send button for the short story contest entry. A straight scifi story, with the dark overtones that have been creeping in to all my short stories the last few years. I seemed to have developed a pattern of light historical NZ romances alternating with dark, even dismal, scifi & contemporary short stories. The SF novels fall somewhere in between. Hathe is a romance but is also pretty dark in places, and the latest one that is still in limbo is definitely darker. It deals with the farming of humans by an alien species. And yes, I know Ann MacCaffrey has done something similar in her Freedom series, as well as  the amazing  novel The Sparrow  by Mary Doria Russell.  But hopefully mine is different enough to still be original. I'm pretty sure neither of them first got the idea of their book by watching lambs watching the stockmen in a freezing works yard one day. So at least I can claim a degree of authenticity.