Sidney Carton was one of the first characters I really loved (after Winnie the Pooh and other childhood favorites), and the one who set me on a multi-year Dickens-and-other-classics phase that lasted through middle school and high school. Charles Dickens isn’t known for his rollicking adventures or his page-turning plots. Even in the most-obsessed time of my classics phase, I struggled to get through every word of Bleak House and David Copperfield without skimming, looking for the good parts. Generally I believe the book is better than the movie, and that’s probably true in this case as well. However, sometimes […]
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Today we have a guest post on animals in fantasy from Jennifer Priester, author of the Mortal Realm Witch series. Thanks to her, I’ve added about 15 books to my To-Be-Read list, and I hope you will too! I’ve added links throughout the post. The links on author names to go the author page on Goodreads, where you can find reviews of the books as well as easily find other books by the same authors. The links on individual titles go to the Amazon page for that book. In the case of series, I’ve linked to the first book in […]
There’s been some ongoing kerfuffle across the internet about spec work, with one website mentioned that I’m actually familiar with, 99designs.com. A lot of good arguments have been made on both sides of the issue. Spec work definitely has its dangers and downsides. But having used 99designs, I wanted to let you know some of the arguments on both sides, and why I don’t think spec work is always a bad or immoral thing. What is spec work or “work on spec”? Spec work or work on spec is when a designer or artist of any type submits finished or […]
The Marquis de Carabas of Neil Gaiman‘s Neverwhere is a fascinating character. Dangerous, charming, insulting, and heroic, he’s full of contradictions and larger than life. For a fantasy reader, I was embarrassingly late to discover Neil Gaiman. I had read very little urban fantasy, and I bought Neverwhere on impulse, not really sure what to expect. I loved it! Problem: Neil Gaiman set my expectations for urban fantasy almost impossibly high. The back cover reads: Richard Mayhew is a young man with a good heart and an ordinary life, which is changed forever when he stops to help a girl he […]
This is a guest post by Carson Craig. Carson is a student and author with a steampunk novel coming out later this year. I invited him to write a post on tech tools for writers. Thank you, Carson! As a sidenote, I (C. J. Brightley) also use and love Scrivener. If you’re a writer and you ever write out of order, or write with multiple points of view, or write anything that requires lots of research (such as hard SF or historical fiction), Scrivener can be a lifesaver. Keeping track of multiple storylines, lots of characters, lots of research, or […]
Caveat: I don’t believe in rules for writing. This post isn’t meant to be a list of things you must do, or must not do. Fantasy can be as realistic, or as unrealistic, as you wish. Neither is necessarily better; they’re just different. This post is meant only to serve as a brainstorming exercise. It is meant to raise questions that might help you as you think about your story and your world. You are more than welcome to throw any or all of it out for any given story. As a fantasy writer, it can sometimes be tempting to […]
Jean Valjean is the protagonist of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. I first read the book in high school and immediately had to watch the movie – the first version I saw was the 1998 version with Liam Neeson playing Jean Valjean. I haven’t seen the 2012 version with Hugh Jackman yet, but I’ve heard it’s good. Les Miserables is a hard book to get through. If you’ve read Victor Hugo before, you know what you’re getting into. I read the unabridged version, and it is a slog. But much like one of my other favorite books, Charles Dickens’ A Tale […]
One of the first scenes was posted here (you may wish to read it first). This is a slightly later scene in the urban fantasy / supernatural thriller I’ve been working on. I skipped a bit because… well, there is excitement that I don’t want to post online yet. I am looking for a few beta readers for this series, so if you’re interested, please let me know. I may not be able to accommodate everyone, but I’ll see. ***** Aria spent the next day inside. She had plenty of books full of sticky notes and highlighting and she stared at her […]
But wait, you say. Isn’t self-publishing just vanity publishing? Not exactly. Self-Publishing is not Vanity Publishing Self-publishing is when an author pays for the expenses of having their work published – editing, cover art, formatting, etc. That’s a pretty broad category, and it includes a number of classic works. You see, publishing has always been subject to the whims of a number of gatekeepers – agents, editors, publishers, and bookstore owners, to name a few. Sometimes those gatekeepers hit a homerun – they identify and back a truly worthwhile book by a magnificent author. That’s great! But sometimes, for whatever […]
I love Reepicheep. Reepicheep is a talking mouse who appears in three of the seven books in the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and The Last Battle. Reepicheep is brave, but sometimes a little too touchy about his own dignity. Eustace, who begins The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as a horrible little pill, picks on Reepicheep unmercifully, and Reepicheep fights back, taking great pleasure in embarrassing Eustace. Perhaps because he’s small, surrounded by larger, stronger animals, he takes himself perhaps a little too seriously, unable to laugh at himself because he’s offended. Brave, […]