I’m writing The Owner’s Tale a little little differently than I usually work. I generally just do my first draft from beginning to end, but this time, because of the complexity of this story, I worked out the stages in the life of the Longview’s owner, and am having the owner tell the story of each stage as one short chapter. … Continue reading →
My daughter Rebecca and I get together every Sunday to talk. Knit. Show our goofy cats to each other. We do this online, because we currently live about 600 miles apart. But we also talk about writing. A lot. And at one point a couple months ago, we were having this really animated discussion and bouncing ideas around on the … Continue reading →
In spite of everything (and there’s a lot of “everything” going on right now), I took the entire day off yesterday to play a video game. Not just any video game, though. The one for which I went out and bought a Playstation several years ago, and the one for which I dug out my X-Box and bought a NEW … Continue reading →
There was a point in my writing career where I was blogging as I wrote. I’d do a starting wordcount and the day’s objective, post little snippets of something I wrote while the letters were still glowing from the heat, build a new post as a digression from my worldbuilding or research (research was the origin of a lot of … Continue reading →
It’s done! It feels like I’ve been working on Vipers’ Nest forever. I can’t believe it, but it’s finally fully and completely revised, and I LOVE the way it came out. This has been a brutal project, because it hit in the middle of personal chaos, website chaos, GDPR chaos… And for the longest time, I couldn’t find the ending. … Continue reading →
Got everything set up yesterday. So for the next week or so, I’ll be doing the revision of the 30,000-word Vipers’ Nest, and following that each day, building the curriculum for my next new writing class, How to Write Short Stories. My Patreon folks will get the inside look at the Vipers’ Nest revision with marked-up revision pages of a … Continue reading →
I’m doing some rearranging of the site. I’ll be adding links to what I’m creating. Aside from semi-regular posts in the blog and the occasional new writing article or fiction snippet, I’ve been running the blog along for years without doing much with it. But here’s the thing: I’m back to writing new fiction every weekday. I’m back to writing … Continue reading →
After a gruelling two years in which I’ve written very little fiction but have: Built a stellar team of folks to help me run my writing site: Dan Allen – Developer Kirsten Bolda – Site Designer Cat Gerlach & Amy Padgett, Forum Head Moderators Carol Englehaupt – moderator Karen Lynn – moderator Chris Makowski – moderator Tom Vetter – … Continue reading →
The objective of writing science fiction, fantasy, (and fiction in general) is to explore the world of what could be, what should be, what should never be — to challenge your own assumptions, to discover, uncover, or invent new ways of thinking about life and new ways of seeing the world, humanity, and life, to expand beyond what is. Standing … Continue reading →
Before I review No Man’s Sky, you need to know two things about me. Well, three, but if you’re reading my blog, I’m assuming you already know I’m a professional SF novelist. So, two. ONE: Back in 1970 when I was nine, we moved from Ohio — where I’d spent my entire life to that point — to Alaska, and … Continue reading →
