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How to Create a World
Fantasy authors get to do something that few other genres offer. We get to create our own world. There are probably as many ways of doing it as there are fantasy authors, but there are certain common questions that are worth considering before you launch into your epic task. Because there’s one thing you…
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Errish — A Vertical City
Generally speaking, I don’t do bizarre worlds. That doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate worlds that are carried through space by a turtle, or whose inhabitants are giant insects. Occasionally, I even create a bizarre setting for an individual short story. My main secondary world, though, is very much in the “exactly like ours except…
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This Thing Just Keeps Growing
I have an octalogy of novels to write, only one of which is actually finished. I have a list of “stories with beginnings” that stretches to five pages. It’s obvious I’m not going to take on another major project. Except that, of course, I did. That Was a Start It wasn’t planned. I do…
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Writing Goals for 2026 — Same as 2025, Really
About this time a year ago, I was setting my goals for 2025, and I was pretty sure what I was going to achieve in the following twelve months. After finally finishing the first draft of The Empire of Nandesh, the second novel of my octology, in the dying days of 2022, I’d spent…
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Fiction (and other) reading in trying times
The world feels fragile these days. In all this chaos, corruption, and lack of empathy, the arts are as important as ever. So what do you need? I don’t know–maybe it’s to just breathe and find some way to steady yourself. Maybe it’s to take in some (n…
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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 …
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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 that and much, much more,…
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My Writing Goals for 2024
New Year is a terrible time for resolutions. We make them because we feel under pressure to do so, not because we really want to. We “ought” to go on that diet or join the gym, and the commitment quickly runs out because it comes from outside. Far better to make the resolution at…
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AI Secrets To Kick Start Your Writing: #2—Outline Your Chapter
What’s the biggest obstacle a writer faces? Even if you have outlined your book. Staring at the page for the start of that new chapter. Endlessly. All writers do this—even famous ones. Take, for instance, Sylvia Plath: Sylvia Plath (from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath) Monday, July 7 (1958): …But I have no idea…
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Witch World by Andre Norton — A Retrospect
Back in the 1970s, after reading Lord of the Rings had changed my world, I naturally went looking for similar books. Lin Carter and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series proved invaluable, not only for the old classics they reprinted, but also for the many other authors and series Carter name-checked in his various introductions.…