By Karen Grigsby Gates #30days30authors Octavia Butler used to say she remembers exactly when she decided to become a science fiction writer. She was 9 years old and saw a 1954 B-movie called Devil Girl from Mars, and two things struck her. First: “Geez, I can write a better story than that!” And second: “Somebody got paid for writing […]
Read More Octavia Butler: Writing Herself Into the StoryWritten by Nancy Kress #30days30authors One of the scariest statements I ever heard came from a young relative of mine: “All the science I know I learned from your books!” To which I replied, gasping a little, “But you know I make it up, right?” But not entirely—which raises a critical question. While much has been […]
Read More Science and Science Fiction: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly#30days30authors I’m presenting a panel at the Virtual Fantasy Con #VFC2017 this October on “Realism in Fantasy Warfare.” It’s a stick in my craw that a lot of fantasy writers, especially writers of high fantasy, do not give enough consideration to the battles and wars that their characters are embroiled in. If you’re going to […]
Read More Novel Excerpt: A Game of the Forever Throne#30days30authors Writer’s block? No problem! Fix it with randomization! #amwriting By Jami Gold I’ll probably jinx myself by saying this, but I have more than enough story ideas to keep me busy writing for the rest of my natural life and I haven’t yet suffered from writer’s block. But I know others do struggle and come up blank. […]
Read More Writer’s Block? Use a Random GeneratorBy Tracy Lawson #30days30authors I’m a dance teacher and choreographer-turned author. Writing is my main focus, and I’m retired from teaching in a studio setting, but I satisfy that passion for dance by choreographing middle- and high school musical theater productions. My daughter observed recently, “Mom, your choreography has improved since you started writing.” Writing […]
Read More 8 Tips For Writing Explosive Action Scenes#30days30authors An Important Memory As you can probably imagine, being geeky and likely neurodivergent, I was bullied a lot in school. In some cases people treated me very badly, and I have some anxiety issues and PTSD around that to this day. I don’t tell you that because I want sympathy; I tell you that […]
Read More Swimming Against the Tide#30days30authors I have always tried to grasp why it is that women are regarded as somehow lesser than men in our culture. It never made any sense to me. Even now, some people seem to feel it’s okay to disregard my opinion on everything from science to politics to warfare, simply because I was born […]
Read More A Change in World View#30days30authors What else would you add to this map?
Read More The Map of Space Opera MythologyI am not a fan of this current fad to strip all dialogue tags! This is the current wisdom in editing. It’s believed that things that are not “said” or “asked” are distracting and should be cut. It is “justified,” for example, by the conventional wisdom that you can’t “growl” a sentence; a “growl” is […]
Read More The War on Dialogue TagsFood on Their Table by Diane Morrison I can’t rate this one because I wrote it, and naturally I think it’s awesome, but I have a conflict of interest here. This dystopian novelette was written for the Kindle Storyteller competition. It’s based somewhat on a dream I had as a pre-teen. I wrote a version […]
Read More Book Review: Food on Their Table by Diane Morrison
