Recently, I've suddenly found myself mentoring a few other writers who seem to trust that I have some inkling that I know what I'm talking about. I'm flattered and humbled that they've placed this trust in me. I was chatting with one…
As I said in a recent post, I've been working on rewriting my buddy Steve's story "Knight of the Living dead." We've had a couple of conversations about the piece before going into it, both in person and via IM and email.…
I've been in a bit of a funk the last few days. Don't know why, but I made some progress getting out of it. A while back, my good friend Steve of Myth and Magic ask me to help him rework his story, "Knight of…
Let's go back to starting a story in a tavern, that dreaded opener that editors dread, and how that relates to one of the two greatest lessons I learned in pursuit of my BA. (Yeah, I'm going to mention that from time to time. I'…
I haven't been feeling well the last week or so with some head cold/ flu thing that completely kicked my ass and knocked me out. I've been fiddling with some stuff here and there, but I haven't managed anything major. Projects that I'…
I've let some ideas stew in my mind over this last weekend, sometimes on the back burner, sometimes right up front. One time, I almost jumped out of bed near midnight to make a post. But that was at about midnight, and I had to work the next…
I've been working on a separate blog post for a few hours, following up on where I left of last time. Lost in a train of though, I went back to review what I'd already written, and wow I think I sound pretty arrogant. Here I…
Magazines and websites that publish fantasy fiction have wide and varied guidelines. I believe this is because fantasy fiction itself is a wide and varied genre. A writer is free to explore pretty much anything he or she wants. Different publishing venues have different visions of where they want to…
At the moment I am reading SCIENCE FICTION 101 edited by Robert Silverberg. It contains some of the stories that shaped him as a young writer, and he analyzes these works as to why they are not only brilliant stories, but brilliant Science Fiction stories. The Forward of this book…
In my experience, to be a writer is to live in a near-perpetual state as Schrodinger's Cat. For those who are unfamiliar with this concept, it is a thought experiment in quantum mechanics. Way back in the 1930's, Schrodinger wrote: One can even set up…
