Category: Nonfiction

10 Things I’ve Learnt About Querying Fiction

SandyNonfiction

There’s a genre of opinion piece infesting the darker creative corners of the internet, where an unsuccessful artist lashes out and writes a diatribe about how the system is broken, and everyone is garbage, and how they’re striking out on their own. We all look at those petulant flameouts, and we shake our heads and wonder what drives somebody to that. I know I did. Now, four months into querying without a single partial, I get it. Every unanswered submission on my spreadsheet burns. Every form letter makes me feel worse about myself as a writer and as a person. Querying is a sandpaper whirlwind rubbing down my soul; querying is a little man with a big hammer gently tapping out an arpeggio at the base[…]

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What Hacking Actually Is

SandyNonfiction

I want you to imagine a you just bought a second-hand car. Let’s say, a ‘91 Toyota Corolla. It drives fine, but when you check the internals … it’s a mess. Some madman has totally rewired it based on no plan known to god nor mechanic: there’s solder everywhere; there’s blowtorch burns so extensive you can smell them on a hot day; there’s a bunch of random LEDs that don’t seem to do anything, but if you take any of them out the car won’t start. You’re convinced that this whole thing is going to explode if you take it above 55km/h. You spend weeks rewiring it. You can’t get it to look anything like a factory model, but when you’re done you’re at least[…]

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The 2019 NZ Budget Leak: what actually happened

SandyNonfiction

EDIT: This piece has gone much bigger than expected. I’m blown away. I was editing during the day to add clarifications onto the end, but I’ve gone back and worked them into the body of the text. The Treasury data breach has been a shitshow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bigger disconnect between the experts and the pundits, and I don’t say that lightly. I’m not a security guy, for what it’s worth: I’m a writer at a tech firm, but I’m fascinated by security and over the last few days I’ve been talking to people who actually know their stuff. Almost unanimously they’re calling this a breach. Almost unanimously, the pundits are off shouting that it’s “not a hack!”. Right from the[…]

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