Help Wanted Up-and-Coming Villain Seeks Competent Help Qualifications: Applicants must be committed individuals willing to invest themselves completely in world-changing enterprise. Intelligence, drive, and real-world skills required. All applicants will be tested for critical thinking skills. Example question: If you are pursuing an escaped hero, and you pass by trees, pillars, large boulders, unlocked closets,…
Category: Writing
Character Profiles: The Spoiled Princess
Gleamdren sulked. She was good at sulking, whether she knew it or not. Her face fell naturally into all the right grooves, letting anyone with eyes know exactly what she thought, which was that the world was not behaving as it ought. What was this fascination with mortal women? First, Rudiobus falling for the glamourized…
Nemesis and the Deus Ex Machina
Today I am going to follow up my review of Heroes Proved with a few thoughts on the ending. This post will be specific and spoiler-heavy – not a review for those who haven’t read the book, but commentary for those who have. While I was looking at the Amazon reviews, I saw one that…
Save the Exclamation Point (!)
Today I am going to talk about punctuation. No, wait! Come back! This is interesting even if you don’t read grammar books purely for amusement.* The punctuation marks I want to discuss are the exclamation point (!) and the ElRey (my keyboard is not equipped to reproduce this mark). Fortunately, there are graphics.** I learned…
Doings
As I begin this blog post, I frankly hope that it won’t take me long.I have other things I need to get to, such as working through the edits for The Valley of Decision. I am reading the manuscript behind my editor, making my own changes and incorporating her suggestions. Nearly all of them, anyway….
Character Profiles: The Too-Powerful Sidekick
She wanted to scream. There were so many blasted ships and no way to stop one little boat from escaping. Though she was terrified of the sea dragons, she prayed that they would rise from the water. She prayed for another of Artham’s sudden, dashing arrivals, but she knew he was on the other side…
If the Reports were True …
Speculative Faith is holding their winter writing challenge (follow if you wish to participate as a reader, or writer, or both). This challenge’s opening sentence is: If the reports were true, Galen had come to the right spot. This is the third challenge, and the one that, I think, gives you the most room to…
Dragon Hopping
Last week I entered a writing challenge. It works this way: You are given an opening sentence, to which you are supposed to coherently attach one to two hundred words. You post it, and readers can add their comments and give a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. The three highest-rated entries will then be voted on. If…
Character Profiles: Guardian Angel
It was at this moment that Peet the Sock Man leapt from the rim of the gully at top speed, his arms spread wide like wings. Janner watched his uncle with awe. His socks had long since fallen away in shreds, cut to pieces by the talons at the end of his reddish forearms. Peet’s…
CSFF Blog Tour: Creative License
Yesterday I wrote that, in Karyn Henley’s Angelaeon Circle, God is not really God and the angels are not really angels. Chawna Schroeder and Julie Bihn wrote similar criticisms, going into Scripture to show the difference between Karyn Henley’s angels and God’s. Becky Miller wrote that the angels in the Angelaeon Circle are invented beings…