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Posts by Pam Uphoff

Jan 17

8 Comments

The Disorganized Muse

 

I’ll be out of reach when this goes live, so I’ll ask my fellow Mad Geniuses to add helpful suggestions and answer questions.
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In an orderly Universe the ideas for stories in a series would come sequentially, in proper order.

Unfortunately, Chaos rules this Universe, and is concentrated in my subconscious, where my Muse usually resides.

So, how does one deal with a minimum of three ideas (a new one pops up every time I get to a scene I don’t want to write, but really need to) at once? Well, since hitting your desk with your head has never worked (for me, give it a try if you want) I generally try to force some degree of order to the tangle of my imagination. Read more

Dec 20

23 Comments

Hi There!

How Do You Do?

So . . . what’s the best way to introduce a new character?

“Whatever works” is unhelpful. So I went spelunking for some examples out of my own stuff, to try to analyze.

A recent addition to my usual:

~~~

Rael spotted the four of them, with an interesting mix of body language. Joke stiff and affronted. Lenny’s head swinging back and forth, trying to watch the others. Tall blonde and handsome grinning. The younger one with brown hair had his hand over his face. Talking.

“Ice, swear to The One I can’t take you anywhere!”

“Not my fault I keep getting accosted by beautiful women . . .”

~~~

 

So, Ice is tall blonde and handsome, used to attracting women, and brashly responding in an inappropriate manner. His so-far-unnamed companion is younger, brown haired, and gets embarrassed moderately easily.

This all works because of the emotions on display. Joke, who is female, affronted and stiff. Ice grinning, his friend embarrassed. It doesn’t read like bare descriptions. Read more

Nov 15

21 Comments

Fire

The flickering light of the flames, the pulsing red of the coals, the sheer sensuous pleasure of the radiant heat.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the first major change to their environment early Hominids made was the taming of fire. And then they evolved to better take advantage of that warmth in the cold, the delicious food that happened when things were exposed to fire. The safety from predators in the night, a relatively safe way to drive animals over a cliff. Read more

Oct 18

16 Comments

Indie Publishing for the Raw Beginner

 

So, how many of you have finished a book or short story, and gotten cold feet?

This is a primer just for you. It’s based on MS Word, and publishing an ebook on Amazon.com’s KDP system. If you’re on a different system, you’ll need to hunt for the equivalent commands. Read more

Oct 11

23 Comments

Almost November!

Are you ready?

Yes, it’s almost NaNoWriMo time!

National Novel Writing Month is an old favorite of mine. Of eight years, I only crashed and burned once, and six of the books I wrote have been published.

https://nanowrimo.org/what-is-nanowrimo

Now, that doesn’t mean my reaching the goal of 50,000 words written in November means I’m ready to publish! There’s always editing! Last year’s effort wound up getting interwoven into something else—and published. After a lot of polishing.

But how would you like to have a 50K rough draft on December One?

I use NaNo as a yearly tune-up, thirty days of writing and never stopping to edit or polish. Thirty days of pushing to write regularly.

If you’ve never tried it, do. It might work for you, too.

Oct 3

New Release!

Xen Wolfson is a powerful dimensional wizard. With no idea how he wound up in a wilderness, bereft of magic, with what looks a lot like a lightning strike burn.

If he doesn’t get killed and eaten by the wolf, and learns to make weapons, and hunt without magic, he can survive until someone finds him.
Hopefully a friend . . .

A cross-dimensional war is brewing, and Xen’s kidnapping was the first shot fired. As the unknown enemy continues to grab the strongest of the dimensional cops, Xen’s friends try to find him, and at the same time locate the enemy so they can stop the hostilities before it turns into open warfare.

Sep 20

22 Comments

It’s a Mystery to Me

I’ve had a few of my SF/F books veer off into the mystery genre before, but they weren’t what you’d call “well crafted.” Fortunately, I’ve read enough mysteries that my subconscious had a good grasp of framework so I didn’t make a complete hash of it.

But now I’m trying to do it on purpose, and I’m finding it heavy going. Read more

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