Tag: writing

Shaman Rises cover

Writing Wednesday: Outlining a Series

April 8, 2015

Beth Cato, author of the splendid CLOCKWORK DAGGER books, said she’d love to know more about my outlining process(es) for series. bahahahwoooohahahahahaha ahahaha bahahah hee hee hee *wipes eyes* Okay. No, seriously. *laughs* Seriously, it’s an excellent question/thing for me to think/write about. The truth is I’ve become much more serious about outlining in the past few years, but I haven’t yet taken it to the series level that I’d *like* to. (I should, in fact, be looking very hard at REDEEMER and perhaps MAGIC & MANNERS in those terms…

Continue Reading→

Six years!

April 6, 2015

Six years ago today I started a writing chat room colloquially known as the War Room. Its purpose was to create a space where the writers I knew could log in and encourage one another to write. The idea is basically a chat room where you don’t chat, you just shut up and write, but in the presence of others, so that there’s some accountability. It’s a way of creating a work environment for a job that often expects you to get it done with nothing but your own self-discipline…

Continue Reading→

Writing Wednesday: Elevator Pitches

April 1, 2015

A fellow writer over on Twitter was asking for example elevator pitches to show to some of her friends as examples, and since I’ve got, oh, eight or seventeen of them that I’ve been using for years, I threw several of them at her. An elevator pitch is what you want to have prepared for when you find yourself in an elevator with the high-powered head editor of your favourite publishing house and she says, “Oh, you’re a writer? What are you working on?” This is not the moment to…

Continue Reading→

*incoherent squeeing*

March 27, 2015

KIM STANLEY ROBINSON WILL BE IN DUBLIN IN APRIL *DIES OF EXCITE* Seriously, you have no idea. Meeting him is like bucket-list material for me, and I was SO HAPPY to get to meet him at Loncon, because I figured it was a once in a lifetime chance. And now he’s gonna be doing a thing in Dublin in TWO WEEKS and I’ll get to meet him AGAIN. #diesofexcite In fact he’s doing an entire week of teaching and lectures in Limerick and Ted was like “Are you going to…

Continue Reading→

Recent Reads: Citadel of the Sky

March 24, 2015

Make room, GRRM: Chrysoula Tzavelas knows how to bring on the pain. I’ve just finished CITADEL OF THE SKY, which Chrysoula is in the midst of Kickstarting, and, like, whoa. This is not GRRM-style fantasy, let me make that clear. You don’t spend every turn of the page in fear that your protagonists are all going to be dead on the next one. It’s a cast of several, but not thousands. It’s also under 300 pages, which is like a quarter or a third of the length of a GRRM…

Continue Reading→