How do you describe a book like Her Body and Other Parties to people? The book is a collection of long short stories and the collection as a whole is perhaps best summed up by the two quotes Carmen Maria Machado puts at the beginning of the book. My body is a haunted house that … Continue reading Book Review – Her Body and Other Parties
I was tagged in a thing about inspiration on Twitter but instead of replying there I decide to write a blog post. Here's the original tweet: https://twitter.com/IngaMBeck/status/995990530608828417 These have recently inspired me in my writing: Book The Long Goodbye and The Silence of the Lambs. I'd read Chandler's first book, The Big Sleep, a few … Continue reading What Inspires You?
Theodore Sturgeon is not a household name by any means. But he was a fantastic writer. Here is the first paragraph of his book, More Than Human. The idiot lived in a black and gray world, punctuated by the white lightning of hunger and the flickering of fear. His clothes were many-windowed. Here peeped a … Continue reading The Amazing First Paragraph of MORE THAN HUMAN
Here you have the first part of the second half of my novella-in-progress. In it, we are introduced to a new character and a new place in the novella's world. You do not need to have read anything else in the as-yet unpublished novella to read this, and I would really love for you to … Continue reading Talek Finds His Rage
Here are the first 600 words I wrote for NaNoWriMo this year. Warm out of the oven. (My brain, I mean my brain.) Are you doing Nano? Add me as a buddy, or come chat on Twitter. Chapter One Heethe sped down the street, threading the motorcycle between cars as bullets whished past him. More … Continue reading The Dreamkeeper – NaNoWriMo has started.
I'm doing NaNoWriMo again. This time I have a full outline ready, a system in place, buddies and plenty of coffee. I'm pretty sure that I'll manage to get the 1660 daily words done, or at least close enough to have a novel written in a month. This is the novel cover I'm using to … Continue reading NaNoWriMo 2017, Here I Come
Scott Hawkins, the author of the excellent The Library at Mount Char answered a question over at Goodreads about his writing schedule. Since I've been spending my weekdays getting up at 5:00 to write recently (thanks, #5amWritersclub!) I found this very interesting and motivating. It reflects well my own thoughts about writing a book as a … Continue reading Scott Hawkins’ Unbelievable Writing Schedule for The Library at Mount Char
I was scrolling trough my Kindle Highlights (you know you can see all your highlighted passages from Kindle books online, right?) when I came across the following highlights from The Exorcist. I don't remember highlighting anything from it but I read it at the beginning of the year so maybe that's normal. Horror has a … Continue reading Adventures in Unexpected Great Prose – The Exorcist
Nick Mamatas wrote a post on Facebook today about how writers can go about finding an agent. As someone who will hopefully start shopping a book around soon, this was a godsend. Straightforward, no nonsense. With Mr. Mamatas's permission, here is the post as he wrote it. This is *one* method of finding a literary … Continue reading Nick Mamatas’s Simple Guide to Finding a Literary Agent
I'm writing again. The following is a single-sentence paragraph that I think works, mainly due to the emotions involved. Let me know in the comments (no worries, this is first-draft material, so be brutally honest). The argument was mundane, a been-married-for-twelve-years banal tiff, a clichéd and overused disagreement between people who love each other, love … Continue reading Just a few words
