Публикация

I fucking love Camaro Bob. His name is Greg, but can h fucking Chilton's a Camaro.

Camaros Bob is an outlier and should not have been counted

My writing groups so far have been amazing for this sort of thing, but I know they don’t capture every field. I’m trying to be a less shy person, but it’s a challenge. If I’m ever going to actually sell books, I need to be, though.

We're overrun with friends named Bob: Trucker Bob, motorcycle Bob, car Bob, hiker Bob, fighter pilot Bob, musician Bob ... and we love them all for their enthusiasm and expertise. Fun guys!

An old boss of mine put a note on the department notice board that went something like (it wasn't in English, so this is my attempt at translating) "Great is he who knows, greater is he who knows whom to ask."

I needed to know what would happen to a biofuel-burning helicopter engine in a higher-oxygen atmosphere. Fortunately, my dad, a guy who rebuilt stock cars for dirt-track racing, was right there to give me a useful answer.

My ex nannied for a Known Fiction Author and a year after they stopped being her nanny, they answered a bunch of questions for her about working in Legal Aid to provide background for a book she was writing. My ex's reaction was "Oh cool, I get to info dump and also get an update on the kids!"

Do they call him Camero Bob because he bought so many Cameros, or did he buy so many Cameros because his parents named him Camero Bob?

This is the way, but it makes my kids/wife laugh. Most recently when I told my hatchling to give me a couple of days, I can ask my lead guy.

Please include Camaro Bob in a cameo in your next book.

Suddenly a lot of people hope there really is a Camaro Bob.

I never finished my novel, but I surely enjoyed the research! Friends put me in touch with a guy who knew about amateur rugby in Australia and with the wife of the drummer in a rock band, and someone sent me photos of flooding during the Venice Carnevale. I keep thinking I should revisit that MS.😏

Plus you can ask weird and intrusive questions with impunity if you tell people you're a writer and they're delighted to help you.

A friend who once described me in an endearing Spoonerism as “a use of mindless information” 😀. Of course, he remains a trove of practical knowledge for which I’m always grateful.

I wanna be Camaro Bob.

"let's ask Camaro Bob, he's got like 12 Camaros" this is how it was growing up in a small town in Connecticut (as a Canadian immigrant I was definitely looking in from the outside but gearheads or motorheads were a thing) The point is, you have to talk to humans Offline (it's hard for some of us)

Man, now I gotta' make friends? I'm never gonna' be a writer.

"Or his archrival, 2012 Steve'

I do love some of the obscure questions @benaaronovitch.bsky.social asks though.

Or in the case of my writer friend V, she just asks me. Her writer friend who is the gun-tactics-science-sea-microspoes-chloroform-history-guy.

Yes! This is why it was so fun to write a novel in a month, when that was a thing. A bunch of us would get together and write, and if you didn't know a thing, you could just ask the room in general and *someone* would know it, or solve your thorny plot problem.

Hey John I'm here if you need a pumpkin guy

It's like Jonathan Maberry says: "There's no case of writer's block that can survive being in the room with other writers".

I know Camaro Bob... Here's a recent pic