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...
by mike | Mar 26, 2013 | Books, Editing, Horror, Native Americans, Psychological Thrillers, Publishing, Research, Writing |
Last year, in a post titled, “Writing Novels For Fun And…Fun?” I made the following observation: When I made the commitment to start writing novels a long, long time ago I began by sticking to one of the basic tenets: Write what you know. I knew Edgar Rice Burroughs,...
by mike | Mar 19, 2013 | Movies, Science Fiction, Writing |
In addition to the serious coaching and editorial work that I do for my writers, I also engage in a lot of good-natured banter with them. Hey, why even bother if you can’t have fun! Some of our back-and-forth emails, both text and pictures, often border on the...
by mike | Feb 20, 2013 | Books, Editing, Publishing, Writing |
Okay, one more post on how writers engage their readers with a strong opening hook, and then I’ll get back to other important matters, such as bad horror movies. Actually, this is the only topic about writing to which I’ve devoted three posts, illustrating just how...
by mike | Feb 14, 2013 | Books, Editing, Publishing, Writing |
In Part One of this series I wrote about how important—how necessary—it is for writers to engage their readers immediately with an element of the story called the narrative hook. Both literary agents and, ultimately, readers want to get into your story quickly, or you...
