It has been more than two weeks since I came home from my first Balticon. I wanted to take some time to really absorb all the things I saw and did before I spent any time talking or writing about them. Let me begin by saying Balticon was something special. Someone very accurately said, “It is like coming home.” As odd as it may sound she was absolutely right. It was home for so many different reasons. Let’s start with the people. I have met many people online over the past year or so. Facebook, Twitter, email. I’ve gotten to know many of them reasonably well. I’ve even had the chance to talk with many of them via Skype for […]
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Hitting My Stride
I have finally gotten to the point where I have some reasonable expectation that editors and publishers will read my stuff and not say to themselves “That sucked. Next!”. I’ve been told enough times by people in the know that I can write so I don’t have quite the doubts I used to. That doesn’t mean I expect every single thing I write to be accepted but it has given me the confidence to write stories I wouldn’t necessarily have attempted in the past. A great example of this is GalaxyBillies. I love reading the SciFi and Fantasy with Comedic tropes but I never felt good enough to do it myself. Now I’m doing it and, while it may not […]
Read moreFace-to-Face Meetings
I must confess to a little nervousness as I attended my very first Balticon. On one hand I was REALLY looking forward to meeting all of my online friends (at least the ones in attendance) but on the other that little affliction that affects many writers known as shyness was rearing its ugly head. I took a brief wander through the con, saw a few of the people I recognized and kept going. I was on my way to my room for the first time when I stopped myself. It was time to take myself to task. I asked myself the hard question: why am I here? Now before I go any further, I hope you don’t find it too […]
Read moreDeveloping New Writing Habits
Many of us have some bad habit in our writing that we need to fix. It may be that we do too much telling of the story or too much dialogue. My personal bad habit is skimping on the descriptive elements in the story. I think it has something to do with being in too big a hurry to tell the story. So what do I do? Well, for starters, I start adding more description. There’s the no-brainer. But how? I’ve never been a fan of description for descriptions sake. It has always felt like padding the story. No, I’ve got to spend more time using the character’s various senses for one thing: sight, smell, taste, touch and sound. Now […]
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