Tweet I love my job. Have I mentioned that? Well, let me mention it here and now: I love my job. I get to write, I get to read what my Writers Tribe writes, and I get to read all sorts of books in all sorts of genres. It’s exactly the job for me, and […]
Tweet First things first, I need to take care of a little business. You might have already seen this on one of my other sites, but I’ve got three significantly different audiences across all three and, y’know, I really need to let all of them know. After all, it’s a good book. You should read […]
Tweet Five months ago, with Gods Tomorrow poised on the brink of publication, I brought my awesome photographers (Julie and Carlos of Julie V. Photography) to town to shoot some art for the cover. I made arrangements with our model, scouted locations, and put together a whole covershoot in the space of about a week. […]
Tweet I’ve spent the last month talking about books I read in a Category Fiction class and everything I learned from reading them. The class was designed perfectly to create that experience, and I knew it from the very first day, when Professor Chester said, I want you to analyze these books critically. I want […]
Tweet At last, I’m ready to talk about the books I liked. Of course there were books I liked! In fact, I mentioned some of what I’m about to say right here back in October when I first read one of them. Among them, these five books taught me one of the more valuable lessons […]
Tweet Yesterday I talked about one of my shortcomings as a writer: I pull my punches. I claimed that I learned that from two atrocious, miserable books my professor made me read. So what were the two books I hated so much? Open Season and The Dead Cat Bounce. Open Season Open Season by C. […]
Tweet This month I’ve been talking about the books I read and the lessons I learned during a Category Fiction class last fall. One of the things I admire most about the structure of the course is the way the professor managed to turn profoundly bad books into brilliant educational opportunities. So far I’ve had […]
Tweet I’ve got a nephew with Sensory Deprivation Disorder. It’s an uncommon phenomenon, and a strange one at that. Basically (as I understand it), his body has trouble recognizing the physical impact of his environment. That kinda sounds like the making of a sci-fi novel, or like some dreadful problem. It’s really not that bad. […]
Tweet Yesterday I talked about some of the things I learned about reader expectations in my Category Fiction class. By way of example, I mentioned some techniques for building suspense in Thriller novels. There was more, though. To my horror, I realized after six months of promoting my suspense series as a Thriller that it’s […]
Tweet Last week I started reviewing some of the novels we read in my Category Fiction class with a pretty brutal panning of our Women’s Fiction samples. Along the way, I mentioned a startling similarity in their plots — not just in those two books, but in all Women’s Fiction novels. I was genuinely surprised […]
