It is #IndieApril in the Twitterverse, and RMFW has a robust list of independently published authors. While I plan on spending all month promoting this talented group of writers, I wanted to talk specifically about how they approach the art of first lines. There are countless ways to start a story, but the best is…
Tag: novels
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,…
I did it my way (and you should do it yours)
Decades ago, a slick-covered magazine catering to the libidinous interests of some folks published a short story of mine—my first published work—for which I received 75 dollars. That publisher, as well as a couple more, said yes to additional short story submissions and, certainly proud of those achievements, I cut out the cover pages for…
Cutting a Trail Through the Jungle of Great Adventure Novels
Adventure novels, at least the really good ones like Peter Heller’s The River, take up a permanent home in our imagination. They rise up from a literary jungle of suspense, following a path cut by the best adventure books of all time. Early childhood friends helped to beat down this well-trodden path: Twain’s Huck Finn,…