Tag: writing

Process Post: on edit letters

January 18, 2024

There was a discussion going on over on Bluesky about dealing with edit letters, and this truth came up: “Editors aren’t always right about the solutions, but they’re nearly always right about the problems.” That thread went on to discuss how the person quoting it, who happens to be KJ Charles whose books I read all of last year and who is also an editor, approaches edit letters; her approach involves suggesting ideas to fix the problems, because it opens the writer’s mind to the possiblity that the book could…

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Ask the Author: writing styles

August 18, 2023

Ask the Author – The Question: What makes an author’s style of writing unique? This will sound sort of trite, but: personal experience. Here’s the thing, and this, again, sounds trite, and indeed, it’s overused, but it’s also true: no one can write the story that *you* can write. Because everyone’s personal experience shapes them differently, and they approach stories differently. I have an exercise I do when I teach creative writing classes. I give everybody the same 5 sentences, the opening of a fairy tale type story written in…

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Ask the Author: writing for Zoe Chant

July 28, 2023

Ask the Author – the Question: I am curious about how you got in on the Zoe Chant action. And how exactly does it work when multiple authors write under a single pen name? Hah! I got in on it because I have a friend who writes for Zoe and she spent years trying to get me to apply to write for them. Eventually I did. And while that sounds easy enough on the surface, it took me two rewrites of one book and then another entire book entirely to…

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Ask The Author: magic systems, sorta

July 14, 2023

I am implementing an almost-certain-to-be-erratic Friday Blog Post based on reader questions! Today’s question is a very, very old one: “What’s the most difficult part when constructing a system of magic for a world?” That is a Very Good Question. So, like, let’s take the Walker Papers and the Negotiator Trilogy, which are my two longest/best known serieseses. You would not *believe* how many books I read about shamanism, animism, and Native American cultures while preparing to write the Walker Papers. LOTS. MANY. BUNCHES. (I was frankly slightly less concerned…

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Thinks To Done: 2019

December 20, 2019

It’s coming up hard on the end of the year & naturally I’m freaking out about everything I haven’t gotten done, WHICH IS WHY I’VE BEEN KEEPING A LIST OF WHAT I *HAVE* GOTTEN DONE I wrote most of DEATH ON THE GREEN and all of DEATH OF AN IRISH MUMMY, the second two books of the Dublin Driver series (launching in January)! DEAD IN DUBLIN Book One of The Dublin Driver Mysteries American-in-Ireland Megan Malone has always enjoyed her job driving limousines…until one of her clients ends up DEAD…

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