Like so many creative people, I struggle with depression. I’m one of the fortunate ones in that I received help for the problem early on in my life and have been able to learn the warning signs of when things are bottoming out. That doesn’t mean anything’s been fixed. You don’t fix depression. You learn…
I’ve commented before that there are some parts of my beloved genre that just bore the shit out of me. “New” is really “The same but from a different persecptive.” How can you tell? Because our titles sound like they came out of a sausage maker. Fantasy in, delicious sausage out. One link looks much…
It’s not a good idea to wait on inspiration, but when it strikes, you grab that shit and hold on. It can be a winning lottery ticket, and if you tell it to wait until later, you might never get to scratch off those numbers and hit the big score. /simile I was leaving work…
When I first started writing in a professional manner, I would have to take breaks every few months. I would take two weeks off and just read, letting my brain cool off and my creative juices to replenish. The more I wrote, the less frequently I had to do this and for shorter amounts of…
What makes Epic fantasy Epic fantasy and not just traditional, urban, or any other sub-genre is a well-worn conversation. One that I’m kind of bored with, actually. It’s been discussed enough that the informed have come to a general consensus (scope of setting/cast/stakes, etc), the uninformed bumble in that general direction, and the hair splitters…
Being a digital generation, it’s easy to get trapped in the notion that who people are online is who they are in real life. And not to say that they’re liars or phonies, but when we’re on Twitter or Blogger or Facebook, we only see a fraction of that person. I never “market” myself, meaning…
I was reading the sample ebook of READY PLAYER ONE on my nook this morning, and I ran across a phrase you see pretty often. “You can’t take it with you.” A few weeks ago I was editing the crypt scene in PRINCE OF CATS. Traditional royal burial of millennia past where they were given…
I watch people. I consider myself an extroverted misanthrope, if that’s allowed. I love to talk and joke and laugh, but that’s usually when I’m the center of attention. Drop me in the middle of a crowd where I don’t know anyone, and I’m not like a real extrovert that goes around introducing himself to…