So the big and obvious news is Siana’s War is published, or more accurately put Volume One of my Siana trilogy in published. It is available for purchase here: Siana’s War Kindle ebook version: https://rb.gy/lejrdpSiana’s War paperback version: https://rb.gy/z0s8m3 I am really excited to share a story that has been a huge part of my life for […]
During the process of tightening up Siana’s War for publication I went on a crusade to eradicate what I came to call “junk phrases”–phrases which added nothing to the prose but increased the overall word count of already long novel. Once I identified a new junk phrase, I was generally chagrined to discover how frequently […]
As a writer I’ve hit a milestone: my first fiction publication (pending with Kindle as the image shows). So at this milestone, I’ll pause to summarize the journey (so far). Siana as a character was once Eolia, part of my imaginative life circa age 13. She wasn’t the most significant of my childhood writing ideas. […]
I find coming up with names for characters from scratch really difficult. Perhaps the most memorable name in sci-fi for me is Howdabeen Churry, from Sheri Tepper’s novel Raising the Stones. I’ve never forgotten that one! I don’t know how Ms. Tepper came up with so many weird and noteworthy names, but my process has […]
I’ve written in a prior blog that the *feel* of Lovecraft’s mythos (though none of his concrete details) was a huge influence on the world of my fantasy novel Siana’s War. But I added to that mythos a most un-Lovecraftian thing: a female protagonist, who has pluck, sass and a penchant for swear words. She […]
Is it cheating to use visual aids for writing? Absolutely not…a solid analogue being artists using live models to get correct anatomical proportions and realistic foreshortening. Here are three quick examples of my use of such aids in the writing of Siana’s War: I’ve had the character of Twilight, acrobatic warrior, kicking around in my head […]
There are lots of writing workshops about crafting a plot. Protagonists, nemeses, crises, moments of revelation and choice – and overall story arcs – are discussed. For better or worse, I didn’t think of any of those principles consciously when I began the task in late 2003 of turning a childhood short story into what […]
Trying to manage a 600,000-word novel series definitely compelled me to check out a variety of writing tools. What I found was no one program did it all (despite the claims). I ended up patching together a lot of individual softwares to make a sort of Mega-Program. And this works well….just leave all the tabs […]
We’re told that writers should read constantly. I’ll admit I did this a lot more of this when I was a tween and teen. I struggle now to read voluminously, and I gravitate toward what I like best, rather than stretch myself and read things outside of my comfort zone. Regardless, Siana’s War (my novel series) […]
An article Leviathan author Scott Westerfield wrote about Buffy the Vampire Slayer (A Slayer Comes to Town) made me conscious of a prevalent theme in sci-fi and fantasy: who is “In the Know”, versus who is not. Of course, as Scott points out, we’ve all been seeing or reading this dynamic in multiple stories all […]