Today is wet, rainy and cold. A week ago, everyone was wearing short sleeves. There’s a saying about Texas weather — if you don’t like it, wait a minute and it will change. The same should be true of weather in fiction. It’s easy to overlook weather and default to sunny and temperate weather throughout, […]
I’ve been re-watching an old 80’s sitcom that recently popped up on one of the streaming services I subscribe to. One thing I never noticed while watching it when I was a kid was the unusual use of the passage of time. This probably wasn’t so jarring watching episodes sporadically, but watching them back to […]
I know this is something I’ve talked about before, but I just want to re-emphasize the need to be kind to yourself when it comes to judging first drafts — especially if it is one of your first projects. It’s easy to discourage yourself, right at the time when you should be proud of finishing […]
This section of my novel writing class at UTA is covering techniques for writing different kinds of scenes. Often, when I teach this class, students will insist that their book doesn’t need one of the scene types — typically either action or relationship building scenes. I think new writers tend to shy away from whatever scene […]
Here it is, the night before the final book in my trilogy comes out. Very little about this is the way I imagined it would be. I never intended to become a hybrid author. I never intended to launch a book in the middle of a pandemic. And I still feel like a tiny voice […]
In real life, we resist change. But our characters get pushed to change by the plot. Some characters embrace change, and are more than ready to undertake a hero’s journey. Typically, though, protagonists don’t like change – especially difficult, painful change — any more than you do. But you have to ignore their protests and […]
Here’s a running list of posts on my blog tour. I will update this list as the rest of them get posted. March 4 — My Blog March 5 — Interview for Paul Semel ‘s Blog March 6 — Interview on Anna Kashina ‘s Blog March 7 — My Favorite Bit on Mary Robinette Kowal ‘s Blog March 7 […]
“Reading is just staring at a dead piece of wood for hours and hallucinating.” – reddit. Maybe. This is all over the place as a meme with no clear attribution. Here it is, the day before my second book launches, and I’m trying to take a moment to step back and think about what being […]
Part of worldbuilding – whether you are writing an epic Sci-Fi story or a quiet romance – comes down to designing people. Everyone is shaped by their surroundings, be they a small town in Montana or the confines of a space station. Clothing, customs, economic structures – all of these were designed by people for […]
I hope everyone survived NaNoWriMo. How’d you do? Even if you didn’t hit 50K, I hope you enjoyed the experience, especially if it was your first time. And you now have more words than you started the month with. The thing I love about NaNo is the need to meet a deadline, which forces you […]
