What is a Reader?
A reader is a solitary creature by nature. When engaged in their eponymous activity, readers travel via unknown means to another place, time, or both. While in that other place, their physical bodies are often ignored for hours on end. While their bodies still require...
Fantasy Tropes: Love Them and Hate Them
Fantasy is a genre notorious for its tropes. For better or worse, they are what people who read/watch a lot of fantasy have seen a million times. Some of them are tired and worn out, but others still keep their charm despite being battered and bruised by ham-handed...
Amazon Power Tip: How to Give an eBook as a Gift
Have an avid reader of ebooks on your gift list this year? Despair not! Just because you know a voracious reader who has switched over to a Kindle doesn't mean that you can't give her a book for the holidays - Amazon actually makes it quite easy. Give an ebook as a...
How to Write Genius Characters
Who is the brains behind the mastermind? Me? (Uh oh!) It can be intimidating trying to write a character who is smarter than you are. After all, it's easy to write about a character being fast or strong. You can show that easily enough by feats of physical prowess...
20 Signs You’re a Fantasy Reader
Books can leave a mark on you, etched in your mind. They can affect the way you think, and leave you different from those around you. Those who read fantasy have their own quirks, developed over years of exposure to talk of magic, wizards, and famous swords. How many...
Sneak Preview: The Mad Tinker’s Daughter
Chapter 1 "Have a care who you choose as friends, Madlin. They are the ones who will come for you in times of need." -Cadmus Errol, the Mad Tinker "This is bad. They should've been back by now." "Cap it, Hayfield, you've been saying that for half an hour," snapped a...
The Scale of Success (As Measured by Food)
How do you measure success? Is it my salary, fame, education? How can you judge the success of others? By the car they drive, the school they went to, the clothes they wear? How about the food you eat? Here is my try attempt to devise a scale for success in life based...
4 Ways to Measure in Fantasy
How much? How far? How Heavy? How long? You've taken your readers into a brand new world, painted landscapes and cities with your prose, and devised a plot filled with magics and creatures. And then you try to describe someone, and you tell the reader that are 1.8m...
NaNoWriMo 2013 Kickoff
Well, it's that time of year again: National Novel Writing Month, affectionately known at NaNoWriMo. It's a time for writers and would-be writers to put 50k words of a novel down on paper between November 1 and November 30. This year (like last year), I'm in the...
7 Deadly Sins of Fantasy Writing
Writers make mistakes. They're human after all, and that's why there are editors. Some transgressions go beyond mere mistake, however, and reach the point of Sin. These offenses can occur either within a work of fiction or in the writer's career, but they are deadly....