I eagerly await the news of the Organization Formerly Known As SFWA's response to the latest development in publishing: the traditional contract now with added boilerplate disclaiming any guarantee of hard copy format. I suspect those of the Feminist Glittery Hoo Haa will call for the smelling salts as this latest shift in the quicksand... Continue Reading →
Writing With Found Objects 2
Reader Wants Cookie! We’ll start off our series on the uses, abuses, and avoidance of clichés with how they’re really useful and in fact expected. Again, note I’m not talking about making your entire book a cliché, or making your story utterly unoriginal (we’ll get to that under abuses.) Rather, the proper use of... Continue Reading →
What were they thinking?
This past week has been odd, to say the least. Between company visiting, some medical issues for both my mother and me and trying to do a little work for NRP as well as write one handed, life has often been an exercise in frustration. And then there's the latest round in a couple of... Continue Reading →
Twelve oxen under the sea
Twelve oxen under the sea… There is some reason for twelve oxen being under the sea, but unless one knows the whole story, it is at best mysterious and more like meaningless. But maybe it sounds good… Building backgrounds into a story is one of the areas that separates great writers from the hoi polloi... Continue Reading →
In Vain I Have Struggled
This will not do. Unfortunately, I simply don't have enough spoons to write a chapter today, mostly because like a total idiot I stayed up very late last night playing with covers, now I finished the cover workshop. I haven't uploaded them yet, so I'll put them here later. AND TRULY I am very sorry. ... Continue Reading →
Writing Under Duress
No, I don't mean that anyone is forcing me to write. Frankly, my muse isn't even talking to me right now, although my Evil Muse has been trying to help. He's rather good at it, so I have flickers of productivity… Just not enough. Because the duress is outside life stuff interfering with my ability... Continue Reading →
Books and Films Where the Protagonist Dies
Following on from an interesting discussion I was having a few days ago, I’ve been thinking about stories where the key protagonist dies at the end of the book. Always a controversial way to end a storyline, it can be downright book-at-the-wall territory. I guess it comes down to what you are looking to get... Continue Reading →
The Blind Leading the Blind?
Sarah's spoken often enough about the pitfalls and muddles a group of writers who are all at about the same level can get into without at least one mentor there to guide people away from dead ends - or towards non-dead ones. Today, for reasons best left unexamined, I wound up exploring one of those... Continue Reading →
Writing With Found Objects 1
But I Wanna be Original A friend asked me to explain how a writer can use reader cookies (the things readers expect in a certain type of book, and which in fact reward the reader for reading the book) and clichés (and the use there of) as well as genre tropes and other... Continue Reading →
Adaptation
Earlier this week, a story appeared in one of the local papers about a husband and wife who opened and indie bookstore ten years or so ago. Owning a bookstore had been the husband's dream and, when he retired, he decided it was time to finally live his dream. So he and his wife found... Continue Reading →
Mad Genius Club 