I have the privilege of belonging to a close-knit writing community.  This is awesome.  I suggest you find a writing community and join it too, because they are invaluable in many ways. What I have found, though, is sometimes things can get too familiar.  We’ll be celebrating our fifth anniversary in a few months, and [...]

I belong to a prompt community.  I joined, oh, four years ago or so with the idea that I’d be able to use the prompts to stir the creative juices.  It hasn’t really worked out.  Oh, it’s not the community’s fault.  They are awesome, talented writers and the prompts are usually very interesting.  Something about [...]

My mother recently read Leviathan and Behemoth (books 1 and 2 of the Leviathan Trilogy) by Scott Westerfeld.  For those who haven’t read them (and you should) they are kind of an odd mix of steampunk and alternative history.  But she liked them and asked for recommendations of other books similar to them. “The steampunk [...]

Can’t talk, have Australians. (I love to say this, people’s first reaction is almost always complete befuddlement.) Blogging shall resume with Friday’s post, but to tie you over, here’s a picture of a landsquid and a turtleduck.

Early on in this blog, I wrote a post wondering what the deal was with short stories, why everyone insisted on telling you to write them when they do not prepare you for novel-writing (and vice versa), and whether or not there was any sort of point. Well, I figured it out. Life’s been weird this [...]