We Write!
It's OK. Deities happen to the best of us. There you are, standing by the corner of your desk, minding your own business, when ZOT! a character gets religion. Oh dear. How awkward. Now what? For a while, science fiction in particular was supposed to be faith-free. Oh, the character might use a deity name... Continue Reading →
Alma T. C. Boykin So, you found a cool place in history and want to play with it. What if . . . Roland had not been killed in battle? What if . . . Charlemagne's grandsons had not divided up the empire? What if . . . the internal combustion engine had not been... Continue Reading →
No, not the so-called authorial Mary Sue/Marty Stu school of fiction, where the reader realizes that the protagonist is the author, just perfected in every way. I can think of one, maybe two people who got away with that for one book, possibly two. Stan Lee slipping himself into the comics on occasion doesn't count,... Continue Reading →
Pulling a Book Out of Stubborn Researchers? Author Photo, Swabisch Hall, Germany, June 2018. "Stop when you have what you need." It's the sort of advice that makes writers want to pull out any remaining hair, or to take a large, blunt object and apply it to the head or rump of the oh-so-helpful individual.... Continue Reading →
So, you have a sci-fi or fantasy world. You know that the atmosphere is more or less like Earth's so you are not going to have to do a lot of research into what sort of xeno-biology would be needed. Your fantasy world has the usual dragons, maybe a unicorn or two, exotic birds (or... Continue Reading →
So, I'm assuming that you are doing science fiction, but this is also true for fantasy. Some worlds grow over time, until readers realize that "Wait, there's more than just this country!" in the world - see Velgarth, where Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon created what seemed to be separate worlds, then over time readers... Continue Reading →
I’m at FantaSci 2022 this weekend, reporting from Raleigh, North Carolina. Even as I speak, with only Thursday for Precon, and Friday of the con, I’m having a blast, and I have two more days of this to go. This post isn’t going to be about the con, necessarily, as I plan a full AAR... Continue Reading →
Has been written down... somewhere (as the Peter Sarstedt song said.). I set out to write original stories. To break new ground. I got smartarse one day... Ok more than one day. Most days. You'd think I'd learn, but I plainly don't. It's hereditary, I think. I got it from my children. Anyway, various pantsers... Continue Reading →
I have managed to get the paperback of Cloud-Castles up (the text is a link on which I get a few pennies of commission. I was going to hold back on announcing it until I had my author copies in hand and could check that they were all right, but I got some dear soul... Continue Reading →
'The walrus said, to speak of many things, of shoes, of ships, of sealing wax, of cabbages and kings...' It is entirely possible to confuse the latter two, so it is probably wise to avoid both because regicide is generally considered socially acceptable but regiphagy can give you gas, just like cabbages... eh. forgive me.... Continue Reading →
Mad Genius Club 