Deanna Hoak

My hairdryer just made a loud pop, shot out a massive spark, and died on me while I was using it. Then it decided to come back on while I was staring at it in shock, but I dropped it like it was a demon and then it was truly done for. Left a nice [...]

I had read about these exoskeletons before, but I hadn’t seen a video of them in action and assumed they were much more unwieldy than they look here. I’ve read so many novels where such armor was imagined. Amazing.

Time has an interview with Stephen King in which he discusses our culture’s fascination with gossip over the serious news that truly affects us. I know Dave Edelman posted on this type of thing not long ago, and I thought others might find it interesting too.
One could argue this case in a lot of ways: [...]

Brenda Coulter has an interesting post over at Romancing the Blog about mistakes authors make when their characters are addressing British peerage. A lot of fantasy uses the same titles, so I think many here will find it enlightening.

I already knew of a few folks in SFF who play WoW, and I’ve learned in the past month of three more. Now I’m wondering who else plays that I’m perhaps unaware of, because I’d love to be gaming with people I actually know IRL.
If you play, drop me a line here or in e-mail [...]

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving and hope everyone else did too! Bill’s family (mom, niece, sis and her fiancé) came down for the feast and to enjoy the gorgeous Florida weather. I made mashed potatoes, creamed peas, brandied cranberries, homemade bread, coleslaw, sage dressing, candied sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, and pecan pie. Bill fried two [...]

Cooking tip: Save the water in which your potatoes boiled for the turkey gravy. Yum!
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

I got the funniest e-mail ever through my contact page today:
Hi Deanna,
Hope you are doing great.
This is [name redacted] from Delhi, representing a company, which provides publishing service to Education and magazine publishers, including Sage, Pearson,
Elsevier, Taylor and Francis.
May I propose you to outsource your all work so that we can work for each [...]

You guys know what muni is? Mountain unicycling. You know what Kris Holm is? Amaaaaazing.

I said a long while back that I’d talk about my preference for “copyeditor” over “copy editor,” and now seems as good a time as any to do so.
For my field, “copy editor” as two words has never made much sense to me, for a number of reasons. First, nothing I edit is referred [...]