We Write!
[--- Karen Myers ---] Almost all my writing is long form (not just novels, but series), and it's almost all Fantasy vs SciFi. In addition to one stand-alone SciFi story (Second Sight), I have a vague notion of an eventual compilation of SciFi stories (There's a Sword for That) sharing the common theme of "unusual... Continue Reading →
[--- Karen Myers ---] When I was in college (in the 70s) I visited the London Zoo in Regent's Park during a summer vacation. They had a wonderful indoor nocturnal exhibit, all sorts of critters in dark terrariums who were awake during visitor hours because their normal schedule was reversed. It was, not surprisingly, dark... Continue Reading →
[--- Karen Myers ---] Worldbuilding is a very large topic -- for this post I'm going to focus on some of the fundamentals of how cities and armies work, since getting that wrong usually includes screwing up basic economics, logistics, or even gravity. If you can't make that stuff seem real, you're in trouble. And... Continue Reading →
[--- Karen Myers ---] That's an easy one for me to answer. I'm an obligatory reader. If my eyes are open and not otherwise occupied, I'm reading. It's always been this way. My older brother and I had organized conspiracies vs the parents, and so I wouldn't rat him out when he took their other... Continue Reading →
[--- Karen Myers ---] It's wintertime, there's a helluva lot of snow on the ground, and my 4WD car is in the shop. So, when it comes time for groceries and the liquor store, we have no alternative but to take our big old Ford F150 pickup truck, with its snow plow attached, down off... Continue Reading →
[--- Karen Myers ---] I prefer long-form fiction (novels) over short stories, and long series are even better, the kind that follow the same group of people over a long time (as opposed to separate entries that just happen to inhabit the same world or which follow different generations). So why not produce the sort... Continue Reading →
[--- Karen Myers ---] As fiction writers, we are the magicians who mesmerize our audience and keep them from remarking on the improbability of finding a rabbit in the hat, or at least that's how it's supposed to work. Far too often, the rabbit ends up in the wrong place and everyone notices. When I... Continue Reading →
[--- Karen Myers ---] Strong words of encouragement for all new writers from Ira Glass, so let's give some thanks for them. I can personally vouch that it also works this way for music, photography, and all the other arts one starts from scratch (which is all of them, of course).
[--- Karen Myers ---] Rhetoric has fashions, just like anything else, and some fiction genres use a sort of conventional rhetoric, a tool box specific to the genre. Not everyone is good at that... I was plowing through yet another Jack Reacher book (Lee Child, lately co-authoring with his brother Andrew Child) when I was... Continue Reading →
[--- Karen Myers ---] It's a constant debate, whether people shape stories or stories shape people. I think it's a chicken-and-egg issue, myself. Terry Pratchet had his own opinion. We're biased. As writers, we are people, and we are shaping stories. But we're not the people that count: that would be our characters. Just as... Continue Reading →
Mad Genius Club 