I have survived the trials of shitty hotel wifi more or less unscathed, and had a wonderful time at the test conference. I'm also kicking myself a bit, since said conference was in San Francisco, on the harbor, and Thursday morning was picture-postcard perfect. Alas, I did not think to take any photos, and by... Continue Reading →
Writer’s Guide to Horses Part IX
Harnessing and Driving For much of history, horses were mostly used as draft and driving animals. Riding was for the middle- and upper-classes, because it’s less efficient and because horse-drawn vehicles in Europe had almost no suspension systems until 1500. It was an uncomfortable way to travel, and many drivers of horses or oxen are... Continue Reading →
It’s Only Words, And Words Are All I Have
We are writers. That means our tools of the trade are words. Most of us -- but not all -- are more fascinated with words than we should be. So, why is it most writing books say nothing about words, except perhaps for telling you things like "eschew all adverbs" (they're wrong) and for the... Continue Reading →
Burn, Baby, Burn
Welcome back, again, Writerly Friends, to the posts that never end. (Huh. That could make for a catchy title to somethin’.) I want to apologize for last week. I spent most of it driving, and the other parts sleeping. More or less. Lots of barely consciousness, at least. The first day, we got a freak... Continue Reading →
What?
Or perhaps "wut?" That's pretty much been what I've said to a lot of things recently. Everything from my current WIPs to industry news, I've been scratching my head and wondering "what?". Sometimes, it's been with a degree of amazement and wonder, sometimes sheer befuddlement. All of it has been with a great deal of... Continue Reading →
New Book Out from Margaret Ball!
More mathemagics for your reading pleasure! https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07JYBMZTY/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i0 Link: A Creature of Smokeless Flame for those of you with adblockers/scriptblockers! Thalia Kostis and her cohort knew the CIA was funding their group of research mathemagicians, but they'd never demanded results like this before! After terrorists use magic to kidnap hostages from the agency's headquarters, the Center... Continue Reading →
Tossing your reader in the deep end
‘I am a watchdog. My name is Snuff. I live with my master Jack outside London now. I like Soho very much at night with its smelly fogs and dark streets. It is silent then and we go for long walks. Jack is under a curse from long ago and must do much of his... Continue Reading →
One Hundred Short Years…
A historian and novelist's musing on history, fiction, and a milestone date. The guns on the Western Front stopped firing one hundred years ago today. I am one link away from WWI, in that I have a friend and a supervisor who both knew relatives who participated in that conflict. In some ways, the century... Continue Reading →
The problems of success
As pointed out last week, Mad Genius Club has been around for over 10 years, now. This means it's older than the average career of a fiction writer... and more than twice the lifespan of the average indie writer. The advantage of a group blog is that as writers get burned out, they can take... Continue Reading →
Lashing the Muse
So I have a problem. On one hand, I want to write, and am delighted when the muse awakens and sends tendrils of stories out into my head so I can write them down. On the other hand, when those tendrils become tentacles of the kraken and threaten to take over my brain... that’s a... Continue Reading →
Mad Genius Club 