Next up on my opening page series is from The Omega Game: Quaid Loman woke up— or at least became fully aware of his surroundings— sitting on the edge of an unfamiliar bed. His hands shook, sweat dripped down the back of his neck, and he needed a drink more Read more…
I recently started following a new group writer blog, Kill Zone, featuring a bunch of thriller writers. They’ve recently had a series of posts critiquing first pages submitted by their readers. I thought this a cool idea, and it inspired me to do my own series of posts on openings, Read more…
I’m literally in the home stretch of Messiah now, a few thousand words from capping off ten books and seventeen years worth of work. This is where I’m getting all sweaty and nervous. Especially since I’ve spent 250K+ words so far continually upping the ante, I’m hoping that the climax Read more…
UPDATE: (3/31/2011) Fixed a typo someone pointed out on Reddit. I’ve written enough about authors that have shown very public displays of ill judgment that it seemed to be almost mandatory that I talk about Mr. Patrick Roscoe (his name is not a link because you absolutely must hear the Read more…
It is the nature of prose that it is linear. There’s a beginning, a middle and a end. That has been a fact of life for storytellers since the beginning of time, and the rules of drama have been around since the ancient Greeks, and are still taught in scriptwriting Read more…
Well, you probably know by now I didn’t win the PKD award, but I still had a fun time at Norwescon, and I thought I’d post a few pictures: Me and my book: Daryl Gregory, Ian McDonald, Daryl Gregory #2 (inside joke), David G. Hartwell: Me and Cory Doctorow:
I just got author copies of the audio version of Wolfbreed. While I can’t live without mp3s now, and the first thing I did with this was rip it into iTunes, I must say there is something way cool about having a physical object to point to and say, “That’s Read more…
This Saturday March 20th between 1 and 3 PM I will be joined by fellow authors Mary Ellis, Linda Robertson and Casey Daniels at the Borders Bookstore at 335 Howe Avenue in Cuyahoga Falls, across from Chapel Hill Mall. We’ll be talking about writing, signing books and all that wonderful Read more…
The blog’s been falling by the wayside a little while I work on the climax of the Apotheosis Trilogy. It’s a little hard to shift gears for me after spending thousands of words destroying the universe I’ve been building for the past fifteen years. To say all hell’s breaking loose Read more…
Another quick tip while I’m buried in the middle of this novel: Tropes and clichés are a great tool with which to surprise your reader. Wait, you might say, how can you possibly surprise the reader with a cliché? Well what exactly is a cliché? It is a situation that’s Read more…