Illustrated medieval manuscript from Depositphotos.com.On the copyright page of the hardback edition of Leigh Bardugo’s novel King of Scars there’s this little story:At the foot of the Petrazoi lies a small swamp that smells potently of feet and rancid cooking oil. It is known as the Armpit and its fumes cause dizzy spells, vomiting, and […]
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There are some days when I delay working on my writing, putting it off for hours before finally opening up my manuscript. Sometimes I feel as if I don’t have anything exciting to write. Other times I’m not in the mood to write the next scene, or I fear it will take too much out […]
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The first draft of my current manuscript was written only from the hero and heroine’s points of view (POV), which is typical for me. I like to get the basic story down before I add additional POVs. Now I’m going through and adding secondary character POVs. That includes adding POVs for the villains. A recent episode of […]
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I saw an announcement recently for a class on how to write conflict into your stories. The description said something along the lines of how as writers, we often want to protect our characters from any type of conflict.Um. No, I don’t. Anyone who’s read my books knows that the last thing I want is for […]
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One of the weird things about writing fiction is how real the events in my stories feel to me. When I hit a snag in my story and realize that I have to change an event or a character’s personality, I sometimes feel reluctant. A part of me can’t let go because I remember the […]
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The other night I was writing a chase scene for my latest book. The hero had stolen a box from the bad guys and was running away from them on foot. I’d planned to have an exciting chase through the streets, with the heroine joining in at some point. I was writing this just before bed and […]
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I’m in the process of re-formatting my books for print. I’m using a different software and unfortunately, it doesn’t allow me to import the font that I licensed for my current print books. So I’m trying to decide which of the fonts offered by this software will best suit my books. I want the font […]
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If you like books, like to travel, and would be interested in hearing authors talk about the places that have inspired their writing, then you might want to check out the Books and Travel website. There are articles about interesting places, as well as a podcast so you can listen to authors talk about the places […]
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Writers like to talk about writing in a cave. But until recently, that was only a metaphor for me. Lately, though, I’ve found that my creativity flows better if I pull the shades tight and keep the lights off. Then I open my manuscript in Scrivener’s composition mode. This way I only see my text document […]
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I sometimes get asked why I set my current series, WAR, in West Africa. Back in 2014 I wrote a blog post about this for Cynthia Woolf’s blog. I have a link to a PDF version of this post on the WAR series page, but I’ve pasted the full text below. One of the ironies of […]
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