An agent asked me at the end of last year, “Do you have any sword and sorcery?” I love sword and sorcery. Okay, I love Conan. I have extolled the greatness that is He-Man and Thundarr the Barbarian here before and they’re both just rip-offs of Conan. If you say sword and sorcery, I think…
If you haven’t been following the story from the beginning, here’s the summary. In 2009 I challenged myself: finish a novel or give up writing. I had way too many starts and way way way too few finishes. So this was it. I had a new job. I had a long commute with dedicated writing…
What what? Two posts in a week? That’s crazy! The Mayans were right! Run for your lives! …wait, never mind, that last post was on Friday, so this is technically a new week. Move along. Nothing to see here. I used to post much more frequently. Technically I’m supposed to be past my busy time…
I’m not a huge Neil Gaiman fan. I do not dislike him, but in the scale of fandom that belongs to him, most everyone I know falls into the “I would give him a kidney if he asked for it” category, and I’m not there. Not all his stories resonate with me. And while my…
First let me apologize for my absence. I’ve been fiddling with more personal, non-writing specific posts. That was fine and all, but there was one topic I’ve been trying to tackle for awhile that is difficult because it involves another company owned by the company that owns mine. In other words, there’s a lot I’m…
Have you seen Veronica Mars? Let’s assume you have. If you haven’t, go watch it so my assumption will be correct. You can thank me later. Okay, now that we’re all up to speed, who is one of the best characters on the show? Keith, the dad, played by Enrico Colantoni. If I could rent…
When I was growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money. “Attention K-Mart shoppers” was a frequent phrase uttered over the PA system, to give you a frame of reference. (Younger readers, K-Mart is like Wal-Mart before Wal-Mart was Wal-Mart.) Unfortunately, the quality of goods to be obtained there was not always the best.…
Suzanne Johnson posted today on Roni Loren’s writing blog, Fiction Groupie1. Suzanne is discussing picking names for your characters. This is a topic relevant to EVERYONE and a particular challenge to fantasy authors who so often create cultures from the ground up and can’t name their protagonist Joe despite how awesome people named Joe are.…
I thought I had blogged on this before but Blogger is being difficult, and I can’t find the post. So I’m posting (reposting?) for reference, as there are some bloggers out there that still need to learn this lesson. For all examples in this explanation, we are going to use [ and ] but when…