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Falling in (and out of) love with fantasy
Occasionally, I still have moments where I look at a scrap of dialogue or a descriptive phrase, and I feel a little self-conscious, writing what I’m writing. It’s fantasy, sure. It is epic? Sometimes. It is heroic? Yeah, a bit. Does it have magic and all that? Of course. Am I way hung up on defining it? Not really. Okay,…
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So, that finally happened…
If you follow my Twitter feed, you’ll know I was on something of a writing binge this weekend. Every few months this happens. It’s like my own personal NaNoWriMo, where the book I’m writing takes on an absolutely powerful life of its own, and I’m kind of strung along. While it sounds kind of cool, and in some ways it…
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A wee story @thaumatrope
I thought this was cool! I recieved a little DM this morning to find that my micro-short story, on a steampunk theme, that I had submitted to Thaumatrope was accepted. How very neat. You can read it here.
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Nothing to see here, move right along.
Yeah, haven’t been posting much. I just have this thing, see, where I like to be interesting when I post, and honestly, I don’t have a lot of interesting stuff to say at this particular juncture. I’ve started and stopped a handful of posts, and they all just feel rife with ‘eh’ to me. Having been blogging about writing for…
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Interview with Joe Abercrombie
I interviewed Joe Abercrombie for GeekDad. The interview is up! Joe is a really great guy, and a very witty fellow, as well. For anyone who’s read his books, the witty part’s not surprising at all. Currently Michael and I are fighting over Best Served Cold because I made the suggestion that he read it before I’d even finished it.…
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The not so secret secret to writing a book.
About two and a half years ago, I saw an Oprah special on the Secret. Wait! Don’t go away. I know it’s bullshit, but bear with me a second here. I promise I’m not going to go all hormonal on you. So, I watched the episode. I was home with a baby, and contemplating Existence and Everything. I had yet…
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The words that linger… so you can laugh at them later
I used to have a rule: never throw away writing. For some reason, I believed that the writing of yesteryear was more important than just about anything else. So, if I dig through the boxes that still remain from college, high school, and elementary schools, what remains is lots and lots of writing. Last night I was stricken by a…
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(re)writing blind
I’m in the process of a complete rewrite, the most extensive I’ve ever done. It’s true, first novels aren’t the best novels. And my first novel was written three times before I put it away for a while. But it kept pestering me until I realized that the characters, the story, and the plot (if tweaked considerably) were still worth…
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New writers and the lure of self-publishing
Sure, we hear a great deal about self-publishing from established writers, agents, and editors. Most tend to agree that it’s not the most brilliant idea to go bandying your first ever work about. At least if you intend to make a career out of it later. (For a good idea of when it is/isn’t a good idea, you can check…
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The self-conscious fantasy epic.
This morning I read a piece in the Guardian called When the Lord of the Rings doesn’t cut it: Confessions of a fantasy junkie, and found it rather amusing. In particular this bit (which makes us all sound a bit like Gollum, I think): I understand the pain of the addict. At the turn of a page, weeks of total…
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Notes on the woman warrior, fantasy literature style
The first woman warrior I remember reading was Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings. That image of her standing before the Nazgul Witch-King, her sword brandished, her blond hair spilling down her shoulders and catching in the wind is probably one of the most vivid early memories I have of fantasy literature. And I remember feeling a swell of…
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Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, Eight Years On
I can’t express how excited I was when I heard they were making The Lord of the Rings into a bona fide film. I had suffered (and enjoyed) through the Rankin-Bass and Bakshi versions in my childhood, and had always hoped something great might come of Tolkien’s trilogy beyond cooky songs and scary vibrato. In 2001 I saw The Fellowship…