We Write!
[--- Karen Myers ---] The reader is your partner after all... encourage him to invest in your story. Sure, you've got to give your reader all (or most) of the necessary clues... (You can let some of it be a surprise, but he'll complain.) Let's look at some of the ways you can involve your... Continue Reading →
Ah, Nostalgia. It's not what it used to be, you know. When I were a lad we 'ad QUALITY nostalgia. Stuff that would stick to your ribs for weeks. This modern stuff... it's like a bowl of stewed prunes through a short grandmother, so to speak. But it's what we've got, now. The bespoke nostalgia... Continue Reading →
Recently, I was trying to figure out who the original author was that was referenced in "the curtains are blue" story. I couldn't find it, but what I did find, to my surprise, were a number of angry ranting posts pushing back about how the readers don't understand that this is complete tripe and every... Continue Reading →
[--- Karen Myers ---] You know all those folks in your story/novel/series? The ones that put on a play under your direction to entertain your readers? Well, guess what... they have their own lives, too. You can't just deflate them and then blow them up again several chapters (or books) later, as if they hadn't... 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 →
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 →
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 →
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 →
Mad Genius Club 