Today’s writers and authors have to learn how to wear many hats in order to get their words in front of readers, but in my view, the worst is editing. I hate editing. I really do. Michael says I’ve got a good eye for it, and maybe that’s so for certain aspects of it, but I hate doing it […]
How do you know if you’re a writer? It’s the question every writer asks themselves. I don’t know one who hasn’t, at some point in the struggle to get words on paper, just thrown down the pen or chucked the keyboard at the wall in frustration, wondering if we really have what it takes. Well, over at LitHub Karen E, […]
We love our multitasking, multi-functional phones, tablets and e-readers, but it seems our ancestors have been rocking that “all in one” vibe at least since early modern times. Practical? Well, we’ll leave it to our readers to decide, but it’s certainly a bravura display of the bookbinder’s art. A tip of the hat on this one to Open Culture. https://www.tumblr.com/erikkwakkel/74300240443/six-books-one-binding-heres-something-special
This is an essay about a lifelong love affair with fantasy world maps. I could have written it; so could my husband have, and any of several of my friends for that matter. We who are fans of maps just generally can be inordinately fond of fantasy maps, for what can possibly be better to a cartophile than a map […]
Michael had some thinky thoughts for you last week, and started a post, but computer troubles are delaying his ability to complete it. The working title I saw was “The Cost of Everything,” and I took away from our discussion that it involves how to determine what anything might cost in your fantasy fictional setting, whether it be for literary […]
Let’s talk a little more about that “raven wing”. From the wiki: Raven Wing If you’ve read Dead Man’s Trigger, you already know how Raven got his name. If you were curious to know more about the device called the Raven Wing, including more about it’s war-time uses, please do click through to read up. It’s one of many wiki […]
It seems most writers go through periods where the words just won’t come, no matter what we do. So here we go. For your weekend: Is writer’s block real? Or is it not-real? That is the question. Some writers call this dull, dark time “writer’s block,” but others writers — more than you might suspect — think writer’s block is […]
“The universe of magic is a large place. It contains phenomena ranging from simple good luck charms to complicated systems of belief and practice such as astrology and alchemy, and it comes to us from prehistory, and from every part of the world, and it still flourishes today.” — Philip Pullman I haven’t yet read Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials, but […]
This is not another post on how writers craft stories. I’d apologize, but my best estimate is that there are sixty-three hojillion posts about that on the internet right now, and a half-assed search engine is capable of turning every one of them up for you, listed however you please. What I wanted to write about this Monday morning is […]
I don’t know how else to put this. If you didn’t know it, you may want or need to know it, so I’m just going to write it straight-up: Michael and I have found ourselves in uncertain times. We’ve spent most of 2018 dealing with the aftermath of his mother’s death and his father’s subsequent spasms of irrationality, followed by […]
