I don’t know about you, but I crave feedback.  Feedback about my writing, feedback about my job, feedback… well you get the point.  And yet, that thing I crave seems to be one of the hardest things to come by. I’ll admit, I haven’t always been as forthcoming with it myself, so maybe I shouldn’t expect others to provide it either.  Still… When I submitted my book the first time, I purposely chose a publisher that asked for the entire manuscript up front.  My reasoning was, if they were going to read the entire thing, they would be more likely to comment on what worked and what didn’t.  What I didn’t consider was that they had to read the entire […]

I’ve got to admit, the weather around here is really beginning to get on my nerves. In the past 60 days we have had the snow completely melt with temperature highs of 18 Celsius (68 Fahrenheit for those of you who care), only to have it turn around and drop copious amounts of the white stuff (4 – 16 inches) and get cold. It’s now done that 7 times. I like winter, but enough is enough. And what do I do when the weather is like this? Naturally, I stay inside where it is warm and dry. I might get the fireplace going, make a cup of tea and sit back in my favorite chair reading a book. Pretty exciting […]

Yup, you heard it here first, folks.  The tank is dry, the muse is shot.  This week I don’t feel like I’ve got anything worthwhile to say. Huh?  Is that really Mike talking?  The man who can wax poetic about a loaf of stale bread? Once again… yup. Sean and I met a second time in less than a week to “Work” on our first chapter contest entries.  I managed to distract him for more than 90 minutes by talking about writing without actually ever typing a single word.  Pretty clever, wouldn’t you say? The truth of the matter is, I managed to get my book submitted again (yes, it was rejected once more; for those of you keeping track, […]

Have you ever read a story where the character seems too good to be true?  I actually can’t recall too many off the top of my head.  I suspect it’s because within a chapter or so of reading the character I’ve dismissed the story as crap and moved on.  Honestly, I can only think of one character who was without faults (as we mortals know them anyway) and the book he appears in is FULL of flawed characters. Anyway, preaching aside, my point is, for a character in a story to actually be interesting (in my opinion, at least) the character or characters must have some flaws.  “But why?” you might ask.  “Why MUST a character have flaws to be interesting?”  […]