Where Crime, Horror, and Science Fiction Meet – Discussing new discoveries, old mysteries, creepy tales, and dark storytelling
Some people ask, how do you know you’re a writer? Answers vary: when I’ve finished the first draft of my first novel; when I’ve been accepted by an agent; when I’ve been published; when I’ve sold X amount of books; when I’m an answer on Jeopardy! I think the answer is more simple and more…
The lovely folks over at Inefective Ink have loads of prompts that you can pick from. However, for this week’s Saturday pages, I offer you my favorite: The seance was a far greater success than any of us were prepared for. Check out their full list of prompts here.
Something you’ll notice very quickly when you read Pratchett is that, for a lot of his books, he doesn’t stay in one place long. Pratchett likes to skip around POVs. The question is, why? (Jenny may chime in on this one, because this bouncing is one of her pet peeves with Pratchett.) Sometimes, authors use…
Hello Tuesday and writer-friends! Time to be held accountable for our writing actions…or lack thereof. Unfortunately, I fall into that “Lack Thereof” category this week. And I blame baseball. Not the major league kinda baseball – the way-more-intense world of Babe Ruth League baseball for children 9-10 years old. The world of baseball that my…
Read more Blame it on the Baseball: A Tuesday Post of Accountability
A couple weekends ago, I attended an event hosted by the Pikes Peak Library District called the Mountain of Authors. It is exactly that: a mountain of traditionally published authors and self published authors all crammed together to listen to panels, talk about writing and publishing trends, and sell books. There must’ve been about thirty…
We all know how fantastic Terry Pratchett is, but today I’m going to give some kudos to his illustrators. Over the years, Mr. Pratchett has had a number of different artists do Discworld pieces, and then, he started working with Paul Kidby. Paul Kidby’s style is a superb fit for Pratchett’s tone. Look at these…
Perhaps you have heard of the ‘Rule of Three’ in comedy writing. For those that haven’t, I point you to a really down-and-dirty quick definition/explantion by John Kinde: “The first two items in the triplet set the pattern (the “straight” line) and the third item breaks the pattern (the curve/the twist/the derailment). Breaking the pattern…
Underwater New York wants you to write a piece in 500 words or less that is inspired by one of the items on their list. Here’s the call for submissions. The list is definitely an eclectic assortment of items and I’m sure you can find at least one that gets your writer brain ticking. Click…
Hello writer-friends. It’s Tuesday, which means that it’s time to be accountable…which I wasn’t last Tuesday. Quick reason for no posting last Tuesday: My grandmother died on March 31. It was rather an emotional week that manifested some strange things. The first of which – Last Monday (the Monday after her death) I decided to go…
Novels and short stories, by their nature, are word-based. According to this article from the New York Times, “Your Brain on Fiction,”: “Brain scans are revealing what happens in our heads when we read a detailed description, an evocative metaphor or an emotional exchange between characters. Stories, this research is showing, stimulate the brain and…
Other Worlds, and This 