We’ve all experienced it: you’re reading along and you find a scene in a book that you could swear you’ve read a hundred times before – in some other book, or in some other show. There’s a formula to much traditional storytelling, especially the stuff that’s written and/or produced very quickly. Formulas are great for […]
Trope Avoidance: How to Stop Writing What Everyone Else is Writing Read More »
I’m not much of a year-end wrap-up person. A lot of shit went down in 2011. After a whole lot of years of writing, my first two books – GOD’S WAR and INFIDEL – were published. I blogged most weeks over at The Night Bazaar with some great debut authors. I settled into a great
Typing into 2012: What’s Happening This Year in the Writing Life Read More »
Writing is a lot of work. Oh, I always knew that, of course, but writing a book over 2, 3, 5 or 7 years stretches all that work out and makes it feel like a lot less. Or at least a lot less all at once. I was about halfway done with RAPTURE when I
“A writer is someone for whom writing is harder than it is for other people” Read More »
Today, I’ve got a guest post up over at The Ranting Dragon reviews site. Stories From Another Country When I was growing up, the holidays meant family gatherings over rich food slathered in buttery sauces and familiar stories of life during wartime in another country. My grandmother grew up in Nazi-occupied France, and met my
Stories From Another Country: Tales of wartime, immigration, and assimilation Read More »
For my first book, GOD’S WAR, I had two rounds of copy edits. One from my original publisher who ended up dropping the series right before it went to layout, and a second round from Night Shade. Both were sent to me in dead tree form. They were bulky, heavy things, but ultimately quite satisfying
It’s not the strongest who survive… it’s those most adaptable to change Read More »
When I first starting writing (yanno, back when I was twelve), I didn’t know much about writing point-of-view (POV), so everything was just omniscient, the way it seemed to be in most myths and fairytales and a good deal of older movies with narration attached. The narrator could just tell you what everyone was feeling,
Whose View? Unpacking POV Book by Bloody Book Read More »
In case you missed it yesterday, I’ve gotten official word that Night Shade Books will be publishing the third and final book of the Bel Dame Apocrypha, RAPTURE in late 2012. This is wonderfully great and rather surreal news. It also means I now have a book due March 1st (eeeeeyyyyaaaaah). My mom recently asked
RAPTURE: The End is Nigh! Read More »
I guess it shouldn’t be odd that such a high percentage of the people who buy books are people who want to be writers. After all, there must be a pretty big percentage of video game players who think it’d be a lot of fun to create video games. Loving an art form often means
Is Novel Writing Really Just a Pyramid Scheme? Read More »
I was strangely broken up this morning to hear about the death of Steve Jobs . It took me a good long while to work out why the hell I’d be upset about some corporate toy maker dying. Then I realized why I was upset, and it kinda pissed me off. On the face of
Steve Jobs and the Trouble with Investing in Junk Read More »