Software Architect, Author, Musician, Dude.
Writing and Self-Publishing
Or, Why Hulu is Keeping Me Up at Night I love Hulu, but their “mature audiences” advisory bothers me to no end. Specifically, the position of the word “only.” Every time the announcer reads these words, I mute the audio and look away. Don’t get me wrong; odds are I’ll commit a passel of crayon-worthy constructions before reaching the end Read More …
Immerse or Die is a tough-love book review project begun by Canadian author and editor Jefferson Smith. Page Fight, this reader-reaction companion app, is a collaboration between Jefferson and myself. He was the consulting editor for my first novel, and came up with the idea for the project. Together, we’ve spent a lot of time thinking about Read More …
Google has some great free tools, am I right?
The Rule Regardless of premise, prose, or point of view, there is one rule for creating “page-turning” fiction: Pay out action and character development at equal rates.
I never realized it, but I think secretly, I always wanted to utter the words “And the winner is…” to someone other than my cats at salmon-time. Sadly, I was never asked to run a pie-eating contest or to give away an Oscar. I think I would’ve been great at it. Recently though, and quite Read More …
When writers include real places in fiction, they now have more tools than ever for making sure they get the description right. Services like Google Maps & Street View, Bing, Flickr, and countless others make it easy to catch glimpses of your target location from many angles. Without ever having been there, theoretically, you should be able Read More …
It was the best of lines, it was the worst of lines. Most writers are aware that the first line, paragraph, and page of a story must be perfect. Compared to the rest of the words in the work, these demand an inordinate amount of attention. And with good reason. If the cover of Read More …
Since you are the writer, why not play God? In a previous post on deepening POV in fiction, I focused on the third person limited mode, wherein the point of view is limited to a single character for the duration of a scene, chapter, part, or the whole story. The gist of that Read More …
As a lifelong polygeek, I’ve found that toolset and workflow are key things to sort out before you can really get serious about doing productive work in any creative field. For Recording… You need software and devices for composing, generating sound, capturing sound, recording it, mixing it, converting it to digital and back to analog, filtering Read More …
The Ending: Sweat this above all. So, you have crafted a terrific book with an engaging plot, memorable characters and settings, and prose that flows like honey. But after asking a reader to spend several hours of her valuable time with your characters and their ordeals, delivering an unsatisfying ending would be a deeply-felt affront. Particularly in Read More …