The year is now half over.
At the time of writing this, I’m also half-vaccinated.
On Oppression and its Misrepresentation in Fantasy Fiction
The character Magneto from X-Men
I’ve been thinking about how magic is often represented in fantasy.
I’ve written previously about how many SFF stories (poorly) represent post-racial societies. My issue with magic is a close cousin to that topic.
The Many Ways of Reading a Book
I recently learned that some readers start a new book by first reading the end.
To clarify, I’d always heard that some people do this.
However, it wasn’t until I read the comments on a recent Twitter post about content/trigger warnings vs. spoilers in books and whether they represent the same thing that I came to realize just how many people do this, and also some of the reasons why.
Starting the Year Off Right When So Much in the World is Still So Wrong: My First-Quarter 2021 Goals Check-In
The first quarter of the first full year of the Covid-19 global pandemic is now over.
Setting and achieving your goals during a pandemic is a delicate balance. Always with goal-setting you want to find the sweet spot between ambitious and realistic, between things that will challenge you but you’ll still actually be able to do.
On Drafting Sequels Out of Sequence of Traditional Publishing
Drafts of all three books in my proposed trilogy (and a single sheet of paper to spare!)
Experts are adamant that you shouldn’t do it.
When you’ve written the first book in a series that you want to have traditionally published—or rather a book that has “series potential”, to use the correct querying parlance—they say you absolutely should not write a sequel (or sequels) until the first book is sold.
On Becoming a Well-Read Slow Reader
Can a lifelong slow reader nonetheless become a well-read one?
For 2021, I’ve once again signed up for the Goodreads reading challenge.
One Last Remembrance of a Year Best Forgotten: My 2020 Year-End Goals Recap/Accounting
Never was a day planner’s title so unfitting for the year 2020
It seemed to take the better part of a decade, but the year 2020 is finally over.
Indeed, once December hit, the year seemed to make up for its previous glacial progress due to Covid-19, at once jetting by and forcing me to likewise race to try to finish my outstanding resolutions for the year.
Beautiful Things Take Time: My 2021 New Year’s Resolutions
I chose the cover quote of my 2021 planner with extreme care.
This wasn’t just to counteract last year’s wildly inaccurate “Grand Plans” amidst a year that proved to hold anything but for the whole world due to Covid-19.
On Plotting a New Novel By Pantsing It
It was supposed to be a beat sheet I was creating for my next WIP.
I’ve always considered myself a plotter. I’m very fond of pantsing my way through revisions, rewriting a scene five times in quick succession if need be rather than taking the time to outline the most feasible approach.
The Hardest Part of Writing
Writing is hard. No one is going to disagree with that.
Often, writers don’t even know which aspects of writing they struggle with the most; those unknown unknowns of writing, which by nature are that much more difficult to address.
A Frame Around Infinity 