Arekan’s Blog: Not Another Feline Overlord

(Arekan’s Blog) Arekan: Scribe, what is THAT doing here? Beth: (Innocently): What? Arekan: Don’t give me “what.” After three years of blissful peace, the brown cat returned. What? It couldn’t find another sucker to feed it, so it came back to you? Beth: You are confused. Arekan: I have...

The Craft of Writing: Creativity, Neurochemistry, and the Writing Journey.

What Makes a Writer? The making of a writer involves both nature and nurture. Scientists have found highly creative people’s brains are structured differently from those of less creative individuals. The building blocks of creativity in writers are often hardwired, influenced by how their brains process neurochemicals even before...

A Trade in Betrayals at MileHiCon!

 Yesterday I finally had a chance to hold a copy of A Trade in Betrayals in my hands! I'll be down at MileHiCon in Denver this weekend for its release. I have a few panels I'm on, and I'll be hanging out at Guardbridge Books' vendor table a bunch...

An Author Interview With Kelleen Rynin

(Beth Turnage) I recently took a writer’s workshop, Young Adult Novel Writing with Emily Colin at Authors Publish. One of the exercises was to write an interview with your character. Since I’m working on Master’s License, I chose 14-year-old Kelleen Rynin, the protagonist of the story, which was very...

A Fantasy World That’s All Grown Up

There’s a very clear traditional idea of what a fantasy world is supposed to be like. It has warriors riding horses and wielding swords and axes. It doesn’t have them travelling on planes and operating computers. It just doesn’t. But why not? After all, our world has had all...

Author Interview: G. J. Dunn is Going Fourth

Cover ofGoing Forth(Beth Turnage Blog) Going Fourth by G. J. Dunn is a delightful fourth-wall-breaking fairy tale farce. Here’s the story:

When Brian starts hearing an incredibly mean voice in his head, his attempts to get rid of it set him...

"A Benthic Myth of the Deep Sea" in The Pink Hydra!

 A short flash fiction story of mine, "A Benthic Myth of the Deep Sea," recently came out in The Pink Hydra. Lots of other stories and poems in that issue, as well, so plenty of excellent things to read.It's a stealing-fire-from-the-gods story. Wi......

The Aryan Fallacy

Note: This is an updated version of a post on my old blog from 2015. Recent events suggest that it may need saying again. In 1938, J.R.R. Tolkien received a letter from a German publisher who proposed to publish a translation of The Hobbit. According to the laws under...

Doctor Who Series 1 — or Series 14 — or Series 40

The most recent series of Doctor Who finished a couple of weeks ago. Due to Disney’s dictates, it’s officially described as Series 1, which has angered a lot of fans, who insist that it’s actually Series 14. Whereas, as us old-timers know, it’s really Series 40. Whatever it’s called,...

The Dangers of an Echo Chamber

So … I’m sure most readers are familiar with the idea of an echo chamber: a person surrounding themselves only with people who agree with that person, so that the only ideas the person hears are similar to their own—you know, echoing back their own opinions. It’s often brought...