Originally posted on Graffiti on the Walls of Time:
I’ve been wanting to write, honestly I have. It’s just that I’ve been too busy writing. As you know, The Killing Scar is drafted, but that was only the beginning of the work. First I had to edit it, which means I had to re-read it,…
By Kelly Robson I’ll always be grateful to Steven Barnes. At Orycon 2012, he passed on advice that made a huge difference to my writing. Steven said, when we get a story idea, we usually know either the character or the problem. To develop the story, we can ask ourselves the following questions: If we […]
Read More 2 Simple, Awesome Pieces of Characterization AdviceBy Shane Snow The other day, a friend and I were talking about becoming better writers by doing a “reading level analysis” of our work. Scholars have formulas for automatically estimating reading level using syllables, sentence length, and other proxies for vocabulary and concept complexity. After the chat, just for fun, I ran a chapter from […]
Read More Reading Level Analysis Will Change the Way You WriteReleasing my book trailer for the final installment of the Wyrd West Chronicles for the first year! This turned out to be a long one: unedited, it’s 45,000 words! Wyrd West publication will resume in 2019. This year, I’ll still be producing the print collection, and I’ll still be putting out the audiobook (or perhaps […]
Read More Book Trailer: The Widow’s Gambit (Wyrd West Chronicles #6)By Kristine Katherine Rusch Burnout. I’ve been hearing that word a lot in the writer community. It took a while for the word to penetrate. I’ve had my own things to deal with this year, and I really haven’t been looking outward as much as I usually do. But a friend who traveled to a […]
Read More Burnout and the Indie WriterHappy New Year everyone! I figured this was a good time to lay out my writing plans for the year for the benefit of friends & fans. To start with, some bad news: I have decided that for 2018, I will not be producing new installments in the Wyrd West Chronicles. My reasons for this […]
Read More My Writing Plans for 2018By Susan Defreitas The Pulitzer Prize winner Junot Diaz, highfalutin’ literary author though he may be, has famously mourned the fact that there will be no more Octavia Butler books. The iconic Black author, who won both a PEN Lifetime Achievement Award and a MacArthur “Genius” grant—not to mention the Hugo, the Nebula, and the Locus—died in 2006, leaving […]
Read More Octavia’s Daughters: Meet the New Queens of Spec FicBy Karen Jensen On posts, in tweets, and in my mailbox, one of the questions we – TLT – get asked a lot is “What about the conservatives?” Because we post regularly about GLBTQAI+ literature, talk about advocacy, etc., some are left with the impression that we do not care about meeting the needs of […]
Read More The Importance of Diversity in LibrariesNo Plot? No Problem! Revised and Expanded Edition: A Low-stress, High-velocity Guide to Writing a Novel in 30 Days by Chris Baty My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book is an excellent guide for anyone who does National Novel Writing Month and anyone who ever wanted to write a book but had no idea […]
Read More Book Review: No Plot, No Problem by Chris Baty (Revised/Expanded)Originally posted on s a gibson:
I confess, I occasionally fantasize about writing a book which completely panders to an audience just for fame and money. However, will the Faustian bargain result in having to discard my personal pleasure in storytelling, can I have it both ways. We all know of big best selling books…
