We often talk about writing as being a solitary pursuit. We celebrate the lonely artist in a garret, poring over the work. The image of the scribe using their own blood as ink features prominently in the mythos. Then there’s NovelRama. If you missed it, you missed a four-day party of people at all stages…
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Deep POV Lesson 8 – Anchoring Words
One inherent problem with DEEP POV is the possible awkwardness of being deep in Scarlett’s POV and having to add what’s going on in Rhett’s head. Of course, Scarlett is not omniscient, and neither is your book’s POV. So Scarlett can only interpret Rhett’s thoughts through her five senses: Scarlett knew Rhett was angry. His…
What’s in a (pen) name? A whole lot!
Hi, I’m Julie Kazimer, also known as J.A. Kazimer. Soon to be known as yet another name. Welcome to the world of publishing. Sometimes in this industry, a writer is forced or wants to create a new pen name, for a variety of reasons. Some good. Some terrible. The good are easy enough. The author…
The Death of the Mass Market Paperback
I read Publisher’s Weekly every week as part of my job. There’s always a little graph showing the ups and downs of book sales. Sometimes there is good news and overall sales are up. Sometimes sales are down. But almost every week there’s one figure that constantly declines, and it’s been doing so for years….
Plotting Whiplash
I remember reading Stephen R. Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever as a teen and feeling frustrated. At the time, I didn’t have the experience to define the source of that frustration, but later in life I was able to put my finger on it. I was reading good-sized books about epic fantasy adventures,…