by mike | Jun 12, 2013 | Adventure fantasy, Books, Fantasy, Writing |
The answer to that is a great big YES. At least I do. I’ve been thinking about that a lot in recent months for a specific reason. Let me explain. I just reissued one of my long-ago adventure fantasy novels, The Beasts of Zammar, the fourth book in the Ro-lan series....
by mike | Jun 5, 2013 | Adventure fantasy, Books, Editing, Mystery Novels, Publishing, Writing |
What? No, not me. Before I ever write word one of a new novel I must have a title. More on that in a moment. During my quarter-century or so as a writing coach and editor I’ve had many fiction—and even non-fiction—manuscripts come to me without titles…books that the...
by mike | May 23, 2013 | Books, Editing, Fantasy, Myths & Legends, Native Americans, Psychological Thrillers, Writing |
Holy cow, a semi-retired guy isn’t supposed to be this busy…is he? I’ll soon be evaluating a manuscript for a Buddhist monk (a novel!), and doing a re-read of a 176,000-word epic fantasy novel. I’m writing a new ending for my fourth and final Ro-lan novel (more on...
by mike | Apr 29, 2013 | Books, California, Myths & Legends, Native Americans, Research, Writing |
Writers who, like me, work in genres such as horror and fantasy often mine the rich folklore, myths, and legends of different countries, cultures, ethnic groups and so on to enrich our stories. I thought it might be fun to explore some of the individual entities drawn...
by mike | Apr 23, 2013 | Books, Publishing, Science Fiction, Sword & Sorcery, Writing |
I’ve learned a lot in life through trial and error, or by accident. More specifically, this can be applied to writing. We could say, in paraphrasing a familiar adage: To err is divine. Case in point: in the ’90s, after a long run of writing and publishing sword &...
by mike | Apr 10, 2013 | Adventure fantasy, Books, Publishing, Writing |
Having been a teacher, coach, editor—and, of course, a novelist—for the past couple of centuries, I have heard it all from wanna-be writers about how difficult it is to make themselves sit down and begin writing a book, which at the least should be 70,000 words in...
