A Favorite Format I love novellas. Like, seriously, I love them. I keep a plethora loaded on my phone to keep me entertained while waiting on my work computer to boot, standing in line, waiting at the doctor’s office. They’re meatier than short stories and not as time consuming as novels (which makes them great […]
Last week I was doing some tweaking to my outline. This often happens when I get into the meat of a book. My initial plotting is very logically laid out from point A to point Z, and sometimes it ends up including steps (scenes) I can condense or eliminate. I was chatting with Claire about […]
A month or two ago, I picked up The Hero’s 2 Journeys by Michael Hague and Christopher Vogler. It was on sale at Audible for $4.95. And looking right now, it’s still only $5.95. I say it’s WORTH EVERY PENNY. This is essentially a 3 hour writer’s workshop where both these gentlemen take us through […]
This morning’s lifetrack, Follow the Flower from Under the Tuscan Sun. Because it’s Monday and I need some cheerful to balance out the fact that the AC was off in our building all weekend and my office is a sauna. Summer semester starts this week. I move on to recording all my lectures for the new […]
Okay first, I have to share the link to the FUNNIEST post I have EVER read about writing love scenes, courtesy of Delilah S. Dawson, who’s guest blogging over for Chuck Wendig. I’ll share the link again at the end because it’s a nice cheer up and belly laugh. So last night was the Bones […]
I gave up on Scott Westerfeld’s Leviathan this morning. This isn’t the first good book I just haven’t felt compelled to finish, and it got me thinking about WHY that is. What’s turning me off? It’s certainly not bad prose, poor grammar, unappealing voice (a lot of the things that turn me off of books). It’s […]
I’m thinking about analysis this morning–literature analysis, as it happens. This all started because Susan and I got into a discussion about reading non-fiction this morning, which spun into how I’ve finally been out of school long enough to actually want to read it, and from there to how English class ruined me for analyzing […]
I think I mentioned last week that one of the reasons that I avoided Lost Girl as a show was because the heroine was a succubus. A demon (or, in this case, Fae), who feeds off sexual energy. Historically I steer clear because this invariably sets up a dynamic that does not fit with my […]
I find myself thinking about short stories lately. I have thought since the very beginning of jumping in to self publishing that short stories are a nice way to introduce readers to a world. And it’s something I did with Blindsight and evidently did pretty well, as I’ve had over 80,000 downloads that I’m aware of. […]
No, I don’t mean your singing voice, although, hey, it’s the holidays–if you wanna sing Christmas carols, own it, baby! No, I’m talking about your writing voice. I’ve picked up a crapton of books this year, both print and audio, and put them down within a chapter or less. Why? Because they had no voice. […]