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Strong Women And Book Covers
Read more: Strong Women And Book CoversA few weeks ago I attended a writers conference (or writer’s conference, I’m never sure which is correct) and one of the topics discussed was that of book covers. The cover of a book is important and lots of attention is paid to book covers. The cover—so they tell me—has a lot to do with selling…
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Suspending Disbelief
Read more: Suspending DisbeliefIf you read much fiction, especially science fiction or fantasy, you may have heard of the phrase “the willing suspension of disbelief.” It’s used to indicate a willingness on the part of a reader to accept as real the descriptions, the materiality, the phenomena and/or the validity of a world which does not exist in this universe, and…
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All Those Humanoids Out There
Read more: All Those Humanoids Out ThereWith all the advances in astronomy over the past quarter century, we’ve learned a lot about the universe, especially about out own galaxy, the Milky Way, and even more about the area within a few hundred light years of own home planet. We’ve learned that there are planets orbiting other stars, stars relatively nearby in our little corner…
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The Capital Letter “I”
Read more: The Capital Letter “I”Of all the words in the English language, the capital letter “I” has to be one of the easiest to type. I suppose the lower case word “a” is even easier since you don’t have to use the shift button on your computer keyboard, but capital “I” is a close second. Yet, every now and…
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Truth – A Personal Definition
Read more: Truth – A Personal DefinitionSeveral weeks ago I attended a talk where the speaker made a comment I think worth repeating. I’m putting it into my own words here, but the comment was to the effect that today’s young people are more insistent than ever before on knowing the truth about what is going on in the world. Actually, I think…
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Sci-fi Worldbuilding: Anthropology
Read more: Sci-fi Worldbuilding: AnthropologyI just got back from the 2018 edition of the Pike’s Peak Writers Conference, (#PPWC2018) and had a great time. As usual. Lots of good sessions on many different aspects of writing, and had a chance to pitch my first sci-fi novel to an editor. He asked for the first 50 pages, which, by the…
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Tension And Conflict In Writing X 2
Read more: Tension And Conflict In Writing X 2During the past year (2017) I published on this blog two entries about tension and conflict in writing. If you’re a writer at almost any phase of your career, you’ve certainly heard of the dictum—in fact, almost a rule of law—that you have to have tension and/or conflict on every page of your creative writing story. …
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How Does He Do It?
Read more: How Does He Do It?As a science fiction writer, I usually find in necessary to keep up with much of the ground-breaking work that goes on in the fields of astronomy and particle physics and cosmology and all that other astronomical stuff, among others, and in many cases I wind up either reading the work of Stephen Hawking, or at least…
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Writers and Paper
Read more: Writers and PaperI’m curious. What will writers do without paper? In our growing environmentally conscious society, the reduction of paper in the workplace has already begun. We’re supposed to reduce the amount of paper we use to help save trees, and by extension, the environment. But books are made of paper. (I don’t count e-books here.) In…
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The Power Of Words
Read more: The Power Of WordsDuring this Christmas season, I listen—along with everybody else—to all the Christmas music that’s played on the radio and at the malls, and as always it brings back memories of all sorts of Christmases past. But this year, for the first time, I’ve begun to hear the music and the words, slightly differently. I’m beginning to…