I’ve been asked what ZERVAKAN was about, so I thought I’d give you the “teaser” copy I wrote for it a while back. It’s epic fantasy but without the typical medieval milieu — it’s set in world similar to the American West during the mid-19th century. I wouldn’t call it “steampunk,” but my world does […]
Read MorePity City
My agent got another rejection yesterday for my fantasy novel ZERVAKAN. Once again it was a “positive rejection” — the editor said the book was good, but not great. At least I chose to see it as a positive rejection. The editor could’ve sent a form letter. Anyway, I have a four-stage process for dealing […]
Read MoreLost links
For all you Lost fanatics (me being one of them), Wired has a cool infographic showing the connections between all the characters on the show leading up to the fateful plane crash in 2004. Interesting, but where’s Ben?
Read MoreEarth pics
Popular Science Online has gathered some of the best NASA satellite photos of the Earth to celebrate Earth Day. Take a look and then go recycle something.
Read More100,000!
Today I passed 100,000 words on the first draft of my fourth novel, an alt-history/sci-fi story that I superstitiously don’t want to pitch right now (let’s just say I hope Romans + nasty alien viruses = profit). I figure I have about 30,000 more to go before the first draft is finished. Getting to 100,000 […]
Read MoreRaymond E. Feist talks about writing
Yeah, I wish I could interview a best selling fantasy author like Feist for this blog. Would you settle for these YouTube videos of him talking about his writing process? Developing Characters The Writing Process
Read MoreMusic to write by
I don’t know what I’d do with out Pandora. It’s essentially free internet radio where you can pick the genre you want to listen to by entering the name of a band or artist, and then Pandora builds a play list with similar music. I bought the Pandora One subscription so I can listen all […]
Read MoreMy internal editor is a jerk
I can write about 1000 first-draft words in an hour. How? Easy — I don’t think about it. I don’t think about it before I sit down to write, I don’t think about it while I’m writing, and I don’t think about what I’ve written after my one-hour session. I just do it. Because if […]
Read MoreD&D Night!
It’s Dungeons & Dragons night tonight — or as my 3-year-old daughter calls it, “Candyland Fighting†— and I’m looking forward to continuing the indiscriminate slaughter of marauding giants and cave trolls. My two 11th level fighters — Sturm Endrang and Tim of Krod — are doing quite well, though Sturm took nasty a beating […]
Read MoreOutlining vs. Wingin’ It
I’ve written three novels, and for each one I wrote detailed, chapter-by-chapter outlines. You could argue they were my first drafts. All three outlines were in the 40-50 page range, even the one for my contemporary mystery novel, which turned out to be 70,000 words. The reason I wrote such huge outlines was that I […]
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