We Write!
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 →
'World to end on Monday. Women and minorities most affected.' Anyone ever worked this one out: besides that it is the reliable Grauniad headline... this time too? It only works, of course, if the men aren't there. And, oddly, that is the case in this 'writer income ' Graun piece too. But let me explain.... Continue Reading →
I have recently had an alpha reader asking me details about something, and I ended up noting that yes, there's a whole larger reason and history that would build into why that detail was, "but that's another story for another time." Fortunately, the alpha reader didn't take this as reproof, but cheerfully noted that while... Continue Reading →
What? Your objective is not to stop readers buying you? Well, mine neither. And to be fair, the author who failed to sell to me yesterday probably thought that he was enticing me to buy. Which is why -- besides the fact that I found the stupidity unedurable -- I'm writing this post. No, of... Continue Reading →
It's a genre that waxes and wanes in popularity, although dramatizations of kings and queens seems to be very popular at the moment. Historical fiction goes back to the first time someone tried to imagine what it must have been like when . . . In a way, the Illiad is historical fiction, because the... Continue Reading →
'If ye ha' been wa' I ha' been, ye wouldna be sae swankie-o' (The braes o' Killiekrankie) No, this is not about bondage or even zip-ties (It could be either, but they're just aspects. It's actually about common ground, shared experience, and how that works to bind us to people we have never met, and... Continue Reading →
Last night, when I should have been writing this post instead, I was finishing a chapter on what was supposed to be a short story but isn't anymore. At least I declared it a short after I'd given up on it being a scrap of a vignette that was unrelated to anything while I tried... Continue Reading →
Alma T. C. Boykin I confess, I no longer read thrillers. I used to read Frederick Foresyth, (Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File), Alistair Maclean* (Goodby California, The Satan Bug, The Guns of Navarone) and novels like The Wild Geese, Hunt for Red October, and so on. At some point, I either lost my... Continue Reading →
A comment from an Indy writer on Twitter caught my attention. She had just got a quote for editing her book. $6500. Was this reasonable? I asked the question: did she have any real idea how much she was likely to earn from her book? (I was not being nasty and all of this was... Continue Reading →
The avoidance of the pantry inventory continues! Last night, I made pumpkin pie, but instead of using the usual spices, I used garam masala instead. Today, we had pie for breakfast, and my husband (who professes not to like pumpkin pie) made half the pan disappear, as well as helping use up all the whipped... Continue Reading →
Mad Genius Club 