Writing Update 4/4/14
Just a quick update on what I've been up to lately. Rebel Skyforce is still with my editor. I don't expect to have it back for revisions until sometime later this month. Right now I'm working on the manuscript for World-Ripper War, the third book in the Mad Tinker...
Shut Up and Sell Me a Starship
Everyone has their hobbies, their vices, their ways to decompress. Mine is gaming. I don't devote anywhere near the time to it that I once did, but there are still times when I like to get away for a bit (without actually going anywhere). Normally I look for strategic...
Outlining for Writers Who Don’t Outline
You're a pantser, a gardener, whatever you want to call it. You don't want to spend days/weeks/months spinning your wheels planning out your novel in excruciating detail before you even write the first sentence. I get that. I'm like that. The problem is that without...
Writing Update, 3/21/14
Hi everyone! Just wanted to check in and let you all know what's been going on. I don't think I do that often enough. It's been a few weeks since Mad Tinker's Daughter came out, and I haven't been idle. Actually, even before it came out, I was already well under way...
The Author’s Self-Editing Checklist
Do you make stupid mistakes in your writing? I sure do! Like unfinished lumber, your manuscript is going to be full of knots and splinters, cracks, chips, and ragged bits. You're going to send it off to your editor, and you probably pay by the word, not the error, but...
Xeno’s Finish Line
Have you ever been close to finished with something for so long that it feels like you'll never actually be finished with it? "Almost done," you say, then work another week and say the same again. A month left in a months-long project is certainly a definition of...
Has it Been a Year Already?
It's actually been a year and a month since I published my first novel on Amazon. How time flies. I'd meant to do a first-year summary of my experience, and it slipped by somehow. Instead, we'll do a baker's dozen of months. 13 Months as a Writer I write the books. My...
Worldbuilding: How Does Your World Tell Time?
Unless you write in a very strange setting, people are going to keep track of the passage of time. It's a fact of life that we take for granted, but there's a lot of history that goes into our own modern timekeeping system. January through June are all derived from...
2014 Reading Update (February)
Back at the end of 2013 I laid out a selection of books I intended to read in 2014. Having just finished the second of them, I thought it would be a good time for an update. The Name of the Wind I had always heard how beautifully written this book was, and it didn't...
How to Write a Character Who’s Wrong
One of the challenges of writing is that you have knowledge that your characters lack. When you write dialogue, you have to narrow your focus to what each character knows, and filter that knowledge through their personality to color it with their opinion. One of the...