This week marks one year since I entered isolation. The pandemic has changed everyone's personal and work lives, and it has definitely changed my writing life. …
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One of the many writing “rules” that I always hear about—and one that seems to be raised and relitigated on Twitter ever so often—is never use second-person point-of-view. It’s difficult to write, difficult to sell, and difficult to read. Allegedly. …
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Sarah Gailey’s latest novel, The Echo Wife, has a straightforward premise: brilliant scientist Evelyn Caldwell gets left by her husband Nathan for her more docile clone, Martine. When Nathan ends up murdered, the two women have to work together to cover it up…
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Fictional maps are closely associated with fantasy novels, from Tolkien's famous illustration of Middle Earth to more recent ones in The Name of the Wind, above. I came across a map in my recent reads…
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No longer just my favorite tune by the Pet Shop Boys, It’s a Sin now also refers to the new HBO Max miniseries chronicling the lives of a group of young queers in 1980s London as they thrive and survive the AIDS epidemic. Yes, that sounds very bleak…
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I’ve been thinking about superheroes a lot lately, and how my favorite characters are almost always the ones with “utility” powers. They don’t have the pew-pew offensive abilities, but they can do a lot of nifty things…
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Experienced writers have often said that "you only learn to write the book you're writing." That no matter how many books you finish, drafting doesn't get easier…
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I’ve just finished reading Ring Shout by P. Djéli Clark, and it made me feel so many things in so few words. It’s a novella that has the depth and breadth of a novel, a really meaty one at that…
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It’s Pitch Wars showcase season again, and while my instinct is to say “I can’t believe it’s already been a year!”, I also know time no longer has meaning. As a quick recap,
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This week, I picked up Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses, and reading it has been both a breath of fresh air and a sobering experience. As a new and self-taught writer, most of my instruction comes from craft books, and…
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Wandavision represents the entry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe into our living rooms, and features two lesser known heroes from the twenty-movie franchise. Four episodes have been made available on Disney+ so far and I’ve seen all of them…
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One of the occasional pitfalls of writing time-travel stories is ending up in the past and then having to research history. It doesn’t require a different kind of researching muscle, but…
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There’s something serendipitous and surreal about reading Moby Dick at the same time that the Internet blows up in sea shanties. I definitely appreciated…
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This week I finally got my hands on the Story Engine Deck! I’ve been waiting for it for two months, and I’m so pleased that it was worth the wait. Ever since I…
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