I got up the courage to join the Insecure Writer’s Support Group. Yeah, how silly is that? I’ve been thinking about it for a while because it seems like a great group of people. But another commitment? Seriously? I didn’t want to flake out, so I just didn’t join for oh… months. An embarrassingly large number of months. But here I am, and here’s my first post. I had a major bout of doubt and frustration a few weeks ago. I spent real money, as in triple digits, on a number of advertising and publicity efforts. Nothing really panned out. […]
why
19 posts
This is a deleted scene from The King’s Sword, the first in the Erdemen Honor series. There are spoilers for The King’s Sword in the discussion below about my goals for the story and the reasons why this scene was deleted. SPOILERS BELOW! This scene was written with the idea that maybe Kemen and Hakan’s victory was “too easy.” Some of my beta readers thought that the physical conflict was too simple and there wasn’t enough intrigue and betrayal. I saw their point, and I did make some edits in response to that critique. But the story isn’t fundamentally about the […]
I have never been a comic book fan. The art isn’t really my style (at least the art I saw way back when… I’ve seen some fantastic newer art that I’m more drawn to.*). The superhero genre didn’t appeal much to me, since I mostly saw it through the comic book lens. However, I love the recent adaptations of the Avengers. I especially love Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America. If you’ve been following this blog series on characters I love at all, or if you’ve read any of my books, you can probably guess that I love good guys. Specifically, […]
I’m hosting guest authors through most of April and May, as I am swamped with Awesome Con DC and welcoming Baby Boy Brightley into the world. This guest post was written by AC Smyth, the author of Crowchanger and Stormweaver. Mentors with a Twist Think of a mentor in fantasy and where do your thoughts go? I’d take a bet that for a lot of people the first person they think of is someone like Gandalf, or Obi-Wan Kenobi. Maybe Albus Dumbledore. The mentor is a grey-haired man in a long robe, right?Well, maybe that used to be the case, but I think […]
I’m hosting guest authors through most of April and May, as I am swamped with Awesome Con DC and welcoming Baby Boy Brightley into the world. This guest post was written by LJ Cohen, the author of The Between and Future Tense. Deciding What’s Important I came to writing relatively late in my life, after a successful 25 year career as a physical therapist. It’s not that I had never written before. Even during my health care career, I wrote, though most of my work was non-fiction, including research papers and text book chapters. However, I did find time for […]
While I was at Awesome Con DC, I didn’t have the chance/inclination to do a lot of walking around. My back is feeling a bit better now that my parents are here waiting for Baby Brightley to arrive and helping with all the day to day stuff. But at the con, I was hurting, I was tired, and I felt like I needed to be at the table at every moment. It probably was unnecessary, but I tend to feel extra-responsible about things like that. So I didn’t get a chance to see any of the media guests or celebrities. […]
I’m hosting guest authors through most of April and May, as I am swamped with Awesome Con DC and welcoming Baby Boy Brightley into the world. This guest post was written by Mike Reeves-McMillan, the author of Realmgolds, Hope and the Clever Man, and Hope and the Patient Man. How to be Optimistic Dystopian fiction is in at the moment, as is the closely related genre of post-apocalyptic. Everywhere you look (especially in the YA market) you see people struggling in a world where things have gone substantially more wrong than usual. I could talk about sociological reasons why this might be so, […]
No, this isn’t going to be a blog post about all the wonderful things I would do with a billion dollars… travel the world, devote tons of money to various worthwhile charities (some personal favorites are Gospel for Asia and WorldVision, but there are others I would support too), pay off our mortgage (buy a new house) and grad school loans, and all the other standard things most people would do. This is a “what would I do differently in my writing life if money wasn’t an issue” blog post. All those things I listed above are great, but this […]
One of the concepts I’ve found myself exploring through my writing is heroism. What makes a hero heroic? What makes a hero believable? What makes him (or her) interesting, charismatic, courageous, or just stubborn? I don’t mean just a protagonist in the literary sense. A protagonist can be a hero, an anti-hero, or anything in between. I enjoy reading about all kinds of characters, but I find myself drawn to the heroes… the ones who do something truly great, even when it costs them everything. So what makes a hero heroic? Courage? Love? Self-sacrifice? Physical Courage It’s hard to imagine […]
A Althea and Markon B Sir Percival Blakeney C the Marquis de Carabas Sidney Carton D Edmond Dantes (The Count of Monte Cristo) E F G Samwise Gamgee (Sam) H I J Jack K L M Althea and Markon N O P Puddleglum Q R Reepicheep Steve Rogers / Captain America S T U V Jean Valjean W Andrew “Ender” Wiggin X Y Z