Happy Halloween, Squiders! If we look at the entire Harry Potter series as a whole, where Order of the Phoenix is the Dark Moment and Deathly Hallows is the climax, then Half-Blood Prince is the lead-up. Sure, it has some
Subgenre Study: Superhero Fiction
Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s…well, it’s a Sky Shark, but we will ignore it for the time being and pretend it’s Superman to go along with today’s entry. Superhero fiction is somewhat unique among
The Social Aspect of Nanowrimo
Writing, as so many books and other sources like to tell us, is a solitary activity. We think of the “great” writers, holed up in their studies, never seen for days at a time, chain-smoking and drinking their absinthe and
Editing: Breaking Everything Down
I’ve been taking an editing class, not necessarily because I feel like I don’t know how to edit, but that I am ridiculously inefficient at it and can probably use all the help I can get. This class’s point is
Subgenre Study: Fairy Tale Fantasy
Once upon a time, there was a writer who wrote a writing/reading/scifi/fantasy blog, and she and her pet Landsquid and the Landsquid’s nemesis the Alpaca all decided to go to a coffee shop to get some peppermint mochas. All seemed
Putting the Pep Back Into Nanowrimo
Continuing our October Nano-prep series, today (tonight, I guess, technically at this point) we will discuss what to do when the initial excitement of doing Nanowrimo begins to ebb. (Don’t worry if you have no idea what I’m talking about.
Scheduling
I talk to a lot of people who tell me that they’d like to write a novel (or short stories, or anything) but they just don’t have the time. You know what that says to me? It’s not really a
Subgenre Study: Military Science Fiction
A fairly major subgenre of science fiction is military science fiction. I bet you can name at least one book or movie in this subgenre off the top of your head. Starship Troopers. Ender’s Game. The Forever War. Military SF,
Nanowrimo Prep and Avoiding Plot Death
Nano looms ever closer, my friends. (Also, it’s my birthday!) I talked last year about Nano Zen and Plot Death — this cheats Nano Zen a bit, but I do think it’s important. It’s hard to experience Plot Death if
Harry Potter Re-read: Order of the Phoenix
Oh, Order of the Phoenix, longest book of the series. Perhaps annoyingly so, because it’s the first book to break the mold of school-year specific plots. Harry spends about 75% of the book whining and yelling at everyone and at