This week is the 77th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That wasn’t the first military action of the Japanese during WWII. It’s just the event that finally got the U.S. to join the war. If you’re looking ...
Historical fiction author John Thorndike shares five considerations he’s learned to keep in mind while writing novels about historical figures. Not everyone from the past carries equal weight, notariety-wise. Some characters are far more ...
Taboo topics… and a POST removal question Background… I’m not sure, but think I’ve had a reply post removed. I may have made a mistake and the post not actually attached to the thread. Am pretty sure I checked it, but I was ...
We’re smack in the middle of NaNoWriMo, and some of us are probably a little bit behind on our word count—definitely, definitely not me, but you know, some of us. Cough. Right. Anyway, it’s time to pick up the pace: This piece from t...
Agents have to consider where your work fits in a crowded marketplace. By including that information in your query letter, you’re making their job easier—and what stands out about your manuscript even more evident. 3 Ways to Find Your B...
Good evening from Nebraska where I’m visiting my good friends Kris and Beth Still. Some of you may remember that Beth was the person who organized the NECC Newbie Project back in 2009 to get me to the NECC (now called ISTE) conference...
Genre: Urban FantasySetting: Modern day America My antagonist is a Catholic priest who has the limited supernatural ability to know that Hell is a very real place and damnation can happen. He’s furious that that people treat the trapp...
I recommended some books to Theglasshouse but not to everyone in the forum. So, since these books would probably be helpful in developing good prose style, I thought I should share them with you. One is called “Building Great Sentence...
Using examples from William Peter Blatty’s iconic horror novel The Exorcist, Dustin Grinnell explains how to craft truly frightening horror fiction by blending the believable and the unsettlingly extraordinary. In the novel The Exorcist ...
I once deceived myself with an accidental homograph in my writing. When I read back a sentence I noticed that a word could be pronounced two different ways with different meanings, but then I realised that both made sense within the context...