Short Story Challenge begins
Something new today. I’ve decided to do a Short Story Challenge this year, which works as follows: I read and analyse a classic short story each month. I take what I learned and write a short story of...
View ArticleTechnique: Parallel Stories, Slow Reveal
I review books from Netgalley, and I recently got two significant short story collections: Writers of the Future Volume 30 and Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight. So far, I’ve...
View ArticleWorldbuilding for Urban Fantasy
I've been writing the Gryphon Clerks series, which is secondary-world fantasy, for a while now. I did a lot of worldbuilding for it upfront (originally, I planned it as a game setting, but it kept...
View ArticleSpec Fic and Comedy
Like millions of other fans, I'm saddened to hear of the death of Sir Terry Pratchett, one of my favourite authors. It seems like a good occasion to reflect on humour in SFF (science fiction and...
View ArticleTreble and Bass: A Metaphor
I woke up at two o'clock this morning and started thinking about fiction. (This is normal behaviour for a writer.) In the nonlinear way that brains work at 2am, my brain came up with a metaphor that...
View ArticleThe Convenient Eavesdrop
The Convenient Eavesdrop is my name for a trope that's particularly common in fiction for younger readers. (There's probably a TV Tropes name for it, but I dare not risk my productivity by going to...
View ArticleWriting Two Stories at Once
I recently read C.L. Moore's Judgement Night (review here), and it got me thinking. Moore was writing in the pulp era, very successfully. She and her husband Henry Kuttner (whose first contact with her...
View ArticleLost Books
As I gear up to publish Beastheads, the next Gryphon Clerks novel, and my short story collection Good Neighbours and Other Stories, I've been reflecting on the books I haven't published. It's sometimes...
View ArticleStakes
I thought you might enjoy the latest chapter from the nonfiction book I'm working on, Writing Short: The Craft and Commerce of Short Story Writing. It's one of those ones that turns up at four in the...
View ArticleSettings and Stories
I've worked on books in three different series, with three different settings, in the past few months. This post is a reflection on how the writing experience differed between them, and how the...
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