Writing fiction, specifically
Hello to all humans, creatures and robotic entities! I’ve got a little something for you! As you probably know if you follow this blog, I’ve struggled a whole lot with my health and that has meant I don’t update and produce a lot. BUT! Renaissance is running a Kickstarter campaign to finance the release of… Read More Broken Things (a short story)
This week, I wrote a guest post for Spoonie Authors Network. I was asked to talk about how I write despite my mental illness, and how I manage the days when I simply don’t have the “spoons”, or the energy reserves, to even function. My answer is called “I give myself permission”, and is about… Read More Guest post – I give myself permission
Whether you are writing a piece of fiction or planning a role-playing game, world building is a crucial aspect of the story you are building, especially if you deal with science-fiction and fantasy. I’ve written a lot about world building before (which you can read about here and here) but I’ve never addressed the particulars… Read More Building a world
So a few years ago, I talked a lot about two types of publishing roads you can undertake when you are looking to get that finished novel out into the world. I explained how to go about getting an agent, and what you can expect if you go the traditional route, as well as what… Read More Small Press publishing
Hi everyone! I just wanted to share with you three new releases of mine! The first one will be of interest to the people who have been following this post for the advice I give in it, and have been prompting me to gather it all up in one place. This isn’t exactly that, because… Read More Three new releases, and other awesome things
First drafts and not being perfect Today I want to talk about something we all experience on a regular basis, but try to pretend doesn’t ever happen: failure. If you have an ambition, a goal, if you’re striving to achieve something or walking off the beaten path, you have experienced failure of some kind or… Read More Failing forward
I meant to talk about something else, but over the past few weeks I’ve found myself explaining this method so often that I just decided to write it out so I could have a link to post. Here it goes!! The “post-it method” is, I find, the easiest and most efficient way to come up… Read More Structuring your novel with the post-it method
As some of you may know, I participated in The Conference for Canadian Content in Speculative Art and Literature last weekend, and spoke on a few panels. One of those panels was titled “No More Sparkly Vampires! Scary Monsters in Fiction, and I had the privilege of having a very lively and incredibly interesting conversation… Read More Monsters in Horror Fiction
Making sure you have the right characters If you’re a character-driven storyteller (like I am) then you LOVE characters. You have a bank of them just waiting for a story to be put in, and your stories often come from the characters themselves rather than concepts or ideas. That’s awesome, and generally leads to very… Read More Casting
The pre-writing phase, part 1 Today, I’m going to be answering another long-overdue special request. A few weeks ago, someone asked me “how do you know which ideas to pick, when you’re starting a project?” It took me a while to put it in a blog post, because this process, to me, isn’t really one… Read More How do you know which ideas to pick?
Nathan Caro Frechette's Ice Cream for Zombies 