Without belittling the importance of the COVID-19 pandemic, I can say that I’ve had a productive few months. Since March, I have: finished the second Dark Age novel, The Children of the Seventh Son rewritten the second Hawaiian Storm full-length novel, Dead Man Lying outlined a completely new novel, a near-future dystopian thriller. What you […]
One of the best things about being a fiction writer is the ability to set stories literally anywhere on earth, in space, on other worlds and in world that never existed outside of your own imagination. For me, that means I can choose a setting at geographically interesting places. I’ve always loved maps. I must […]
This is an announcement I once thought I would make three years ago. Then, two years ago. Then last year. But better late than never, right? So here it is: I have finished the first draft of the second novel in the projected Dark Age trilogy. I typed FIN at the conclusion of the final […]
It’s now the—what? 6th?—week of isolation and #covisolation, and I’m used to it. I don’t mind having to stay in, and work from my house. I have a very nice house. I have put a lot of work into it. It looks beautiful. It’s got my wife, my son, and now three cats (I know). […]
This is one of those times that clarifies the word surreal. To qualify: I’m neither in quarantine nor isolation. I have no symptoms. I have not been near anyone with symptoms. I have not travelled in over a month. The whole family is healthy and safe. But life is certainly different. Driving to the grocery […]
Characters are what stories are about. Plot is essential—we had to have a story to tell. Something has to happen, something that matters to you, the readers. But it has to happen to someone we care about, or identify with, or connect to in some way. That connection has to happen on an emotional […]
Last post, I wrote about how I cut down on some of the stressors in my life. One of them was a particular freelance client for which I wrote blogs and social media content. Letting that one go was necessary for my health. My blood pressure was through the roof, and I felt wrong about […]
A lot of time has passed since my last blog post—four months. A third of a year! To tell you the truth, often during the first two months of that time, I wondered myself what was standing between me and updating my blog. I put it down to having too much other (paying) work to […]
Once upon a time, when blogging was still young and the World Wide Web was comparatively innocent, there was a thing called Six Sentence Sunday. During this epoch, authors would publish six-sentence samples of their books, either published or works-in-progress, onto their blogs on Sunday morning, along with a link to a central site called […]
This is a guest post that originally appeared on my former Blogspot blog. It was written by Scott Morgan, who at the time owned the Write Hook: Writing for the jugular blog and was the author of Character Development From the Inside Out and Short Stack. It seems that Scott has since quit the writing […]