‘Where Stories Are Made‘ is a new feature here at Book Chick City. It’s where the author takes us on a tour of their writing place, be it an office, coffee shop or park and tells us about their writing day and rituals.
My guest today is urban fantasy and science fiction author, S. A. Swann…
Where do I write? Pretty much anywhere I can. I’m in so many different places, one of the most important tools I have is a USB drive. I tend to keep my working documents on a USB drive that follows me around everywhere I go, and I keep backups of the contents on the various computers I do my work on. In the first picture you see a few of the old workhorses that have served me in the past. I don’t know if you see the printing on the one in the center, but it reads 20MB, not 120. The current one, in the second photo, carries a whopping 2 gigs— which is more than enough to carry just about everything I’m currently working on, stories, novels, proposals, blog posts, research, and have about a gig and a half to spare.
I need these because I have a full time job as a database manger in addition to the writing, so in order to have the time to my writing every day, I have to get up at 5am and go to work, so I have a few hours to write before people need me. The picture shows the desk at my office, it’s not a cube, which is nice, but it doesn’t have much of a view. The dual monitor setup is because I do a fair bit of software development in my day job, and I need that kind of screen to work on. So, weekdays I spend the early morning hours and lunchtime writing here.
Weekday evenings, and on the weekends, I write in my office at home. Here, I have a much smaller monitor, but a much cooler computer. I built that one myself. (And I blogged about changing the motherboard here.) The view from that office is much nicer. The dogs aren’t ours, my wife does pet sitting and we have several dogs in our backyard every day. The horse, on the other hand, does belong to us. Also, not seen, two goats to keep the horse company.
Of course, in both places, during the wee hours when I write, there’s really not much to see but dark, especially in winter. I generally sit down in the morning with a caffeinated beverage, often Diet Coke, though I’m switching to tea now to avoid the NutraSweet. I also, almost always, have some music playing. I’m partial to Alt-Rock stuff when I’m writing, bands like Garbage, Evanescence, and The Birthday Massacre. My favorite new thing though is my new iPod touch, and at home I run streaming music from Pandora, which is way cool. (Not something I’d do at work, since using the office network Wi-Fi to stream radio is a great way to have our network guy walk down the hall to smack me for bandwidth hogging.)
S. Andrew Swann is the pen name of Steven Swiniarski. He lives in the Greater Cleveland area. He has published over 20 novels over the past 18 years, and the latest, MESSIAH (DAW books, Feb. 2011) is the culminating volume in the epic space opera, APOTHEOSIS. Prior to that was WOLF’S CROSS, a dark werewolf fantasy set in medieval Poland. (Spectra, Aug. 2010)
Wolf Cross: Out Now
You can find out more about this feature HERE
7 Comments
How fun to see an article written practically in my back yard pop up on my favorite Brit chick's blog! I've been a fan of Mr. Swann/Swiniarski's since I discovered The Dragon's of the Cuyahoga and Forests of the Night on my library's shelves. I'm very much looking forward to Messiah; in fact, I've had it reserved for over a month and it looks like I'm first on the list.
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We discover new people every day ,, that was very refreshing checking out where the stories are made !!! I must say shame onme I havent heard of this author but after today am off to facebook and make some enquiries
Wolfs creek looks interesting;) but alias will be chcking out what this author has 
thanks for the post
Kat
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Greytfriend: Thanks for the nice comment! Glad you're liking the Apotheosis Trilogy.
Kat: Happy you found me! You might want to start with the first book, WOLFBREED. WOLFBREED and WOLF'S CROSS are independent novels but WOLFBREED comes first and some people like to read things in order
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I've read both Wolf's Breed and Wolf's Cross and highly recommend them! A fresh take on werewolves.
–the part about the guy at work smacking you for bandwidth hogging cracked me up!
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Linda: Yeah, they'd be really harsh on me since I work in the IT department and I should know better. Thanks for coming round and saying hi.
(Oh, and you all should also check out Linda's books too, those also come highly recommended
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Another great creating place!
Looks like its very comfortable and busy. 
Thanks for sharing!
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Melissa: To be honest, the day job is a little busier than I'd like
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