Category: The Craft
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ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
Jimi Hendrix was one of the greatest guitarists ever, and one fine musician. I think a lot of folks miss that great musicians are also great writers. Sure, their style is more poetic and concise than say, a lengthy and involved novel, but the appreciation and skill of the Craft is there nonetheless. I thought…
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Crossover Characters
Ever since I was a kid, my friends and I would play games where we asked what would happen if characters from different fictional universes met. What would happen if Batman met The Green Hornet? What if Captain Kirk and the Doctor from Doctor Who shared an adventure? Who would win if the Predator and…
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Nothing to Say
“How the hell can a person go to work in the morning, come home in the evening, and have nothing to say?” – the late great John Prine. There are many reasons why this happens in a relationship, most of them unpleasant when it applies to couples. But it only applies to my book writing…
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The Misogynist
Welcome back to my series on the influencers of my writing style. The second face on my personal Mount Rushmore of mentors is John Frederick Lange Jr., or to use his more familiar pen name, John Norman. As well as being a writer, Norman was also a professor of philosophy with a particular focus on…
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Universal Expansion
Have you ever looked back one day as an author and realized how your world ballooned? I just did this morning. I’ve been writing for nine years now, mostly in the lane I call the Legacy Universe, a fictional realm wherein superhumans were made in the 1870s and this caused history to change in big…
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Going Back to Horror’s Roots
A good case can be made that science fiction and horror were born together during a retreat in May 1816 and two of Britain’s great poets were there for the occasion. The poets were Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Lord Byron’s doctor, John William Polidori, and Mary Godwin, who later married Percy Shelley, accompanied…
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I Heard I Was In Town
Late the other night, when I was cruising the mean, dark alleys in my home city’s bustling nightclub district searching for my next victim, I overheard an interesting remark that a certain reputed predator was rumored to be back in town. The source was a ‘woman of the night’ who was expressing discomfort regarding her…
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The Historian
“The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug.” ~ MARK TWAIN I think I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m no longer a writer, so what am I doing administering a writing site? Well, that’s a leftover from a former life…
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TROUSERS
Have you ever been a pantser? Not the German tank, and this is not about whether or not you prefer jeans, slacks, or skirts. I’m asking if you’ve ever just been the kind of writer who just, you know, wings it. If you haven’t heard, there are traditionally two types of writers. Plotters, who outline…
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The New Penny Dreadfuls
This post is not supernatural or steampunk ‘dark’ in the manner of many other posts here. But I think this topic has ‘dark’ real-world implications, and it’s something that’s been on my mind lately. “Move fast and break things.” – Mark Zuckerberg “Yes, why not? What is the worst that could happen?” – Cloacina Thus…
Threads that Bind 