Why don’t you do a collection of Enchanted Forest short stories, like Book of Enchantments only all Enchanted Forest? Well, mainly because I’m a novelist. Short stories are really hard for me; in thirty years as a writer, I’ve written roughly fifteen publishable short stories. Ten of
Read more →I asked Caroline to do a guest post on her view of writing Kate and Cecy, particularly The Mislaid Magician. And this is what she says: — Pat said, “You’re going to kill me.” That’s the way I remember my first encounter with THE MISLAID MAGICIAN. Pat
Read more →Alex asked “how you felt about the stand alone getting a sequel with the Kate and Cecelia books. I think you did an amazing job with escalation with these books, but did you have a hard time creating the right level of escalation?” Well, for starters, “getting
Read more →The comments on the last post started getting into endings and the escalation of threat, particularly as related to series books, and I discovered I had quite a lot to say on the subject even though I haven’t written a long-running series myself. The first thing is
Read more →There are a couple of ways of looking at plot, ranging from the bird’s-eye view at a macro level to the order of scenes, and events and incidents within scenes. The one most people run across first — and one of the most useful ways of looking
Read more →In the comments on the last post, S.A. Cox said “Historically, however, with both writing and teaching, one of the main keys to my development has been trusting my instincts about what is working and what isn’t, and then working like a dog at what isn’t.” My
Read more →Every writer has something – some part of writing, however tiny – that comes easily (or at least, more easily than the rest of it). For some it’s action scenes; for others, it’s deep characterization; for others it’s plot or dialog or structure or theme. But there’s
Read more →Just for fun, I thought I’d put up some of my favorite quotations about writing, writers, and publishing. Feel free to chime in with yours! “There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” — W. Somerset Maugham “There are nine and
Read more →So last weekend, my brother and his family came to visit. We had a lovely time, despite the fact that they all had colds. You see where this is going already, don’t you? But to really understand this, you have to know that when I get a
Read more →Every once in a while, I run across people who are baffled and frustrated by the behavior of certain talented friends of theirs. “They can write great stuff; why don’t they?” “Their fanfic is great; why don’t they try to submit stuff professionally?” “They’ve sold a bunch of books;
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