When I find a story, it usually has a straight line plot that takes a lot of words to fill out. And when I write, I almost always write straight through, skipping nothing and doing no major revisions until after I hear from my readers. I do not usually have doubts about the overall structure [...]
Go to post pageI read Ken Rand’s From Idea to Story in 90 seconds. I think he could have written it in 5 pages, but nobody would want to pay much for such a short book. But in it, I resolved my schizophrenia about writing prompts. (1) Writing prompts are stupid. You should know what you’re going to [...]
Go to post pageK. D. Wentworth died yesterday. She was the coordinating judge and first reader for the Writers of the Future contest. I met her while standing outside John Wayne airport, waiting on a car to pick us up. We hit it off immediately, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that she found it that easy [...]
Go to post pageI told you about the plot of The Cornerstone of Night. When anyone in this world dies, they go through Jareth’s Iron Door, into the World of Spirits. Priests of Silas, the God of Night, are trying to create another afterlife for his followers, to increase Silas’ power and dominion. That is, they’re trying to [...]
Go to post pageIt sank almost 100 years ago with 1,500 people aboard. Get over it, people. It is not that interesting.
Go to post pageI recently saw this quote. “Progress usually is a result of people who take an unpopular position. ‘Well, we’ve always done it this way is the worst excuse we can use.’” This is 99% garbage and 1% correct. The reason we do things in the ways we currently do them is that those ways work. [...]
Go to post pageHere is my first attempt at a cover for my short story, Refiner’s Fire, a previous Writers of the Future finalist.
Go to post pageI am a nerd. This should not surprise anyone. A PhD economist must be a nerd. A speculative fiction author must be a nerd. But before getting the degree and starting to write I was a nerd. In my little country school, I was a favorite target for jerks. Though plenty of their scorn applied [...]
Go to post pageI wrote a novel in 2007. I think the novel was good enough. A friend who was no fan of fantasy literature took a few chapters of hard copy home to read it. He figured he’d report to me that he liked the first few chapters and would get to the rest later. But he [...]
Go to post pageI put my own attempt at a cover for The Conqueror’s Cat on Facebook. My illustrator friend, Greg Gunther, saw it and said he’d help out. I love what he did with it. By the way, The Conqueror’s Cat was a semifinalist in Writers of the Future’s 3rd quarter of 2011.
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