The #Writer’s Craft: Word Counts, Story Length & Story Structure

(Beth Turnage Blog)  I’ve written several posts on Quora on writing and thought I’d curate some here. You can call it laziness, but really it’s a lack of time since ghostwriting is keeping me very busy. Really. 😉 How do word count limitations affect what you can fit into...

The Both-And Cake

I’ve begun to notice more and more a disturbing pattern in which ideas that don’t coincide are automatically assumed to be in direct opposition to each other. This leads to either/or thinking, often on topics that are far more complex and cannot be generalized into just two opposing camps....

The Craft of #Writing: Grabbing the Reader

(Beth Turnage) I’ve written a number of posts on Quora on writing, and thought I’d curate some here. You can call it laziness, but really it’s a lack of time, since ghostwriting is keeping me very busy. Really. 😉 When writing, how do you grab your reader’s attention as...

"Six Views of the Wall" in Dear Leader Tales anthology

I'm thrilled to have a story in this new anthology, Dear Leader Tales. Here's the write-up for the book:2020 has been a very trying year for humanity. In addition to a barely-checked viral contagion causing widespread economic distress, there are ......

A Jens By Any Other Name

My first name is incredibly common and yet most people I meet have never heard it or know how to pronounce it. I guess my parents wanted me to experience the double benefits of having a recognizable name and also deal with the constant battle of teaching others how...

On life in 2020

Hello, Long time no see. Sorry about that. It’s been an odd year — not just for me, of course. Life has a habit of getting away from me, and crazy times encourage that habit, so I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the state of the...

“The Huntress and the Conveyor Worlds” is out now in Mythaxis

"The Huntress and the Conveyor Worlds" is a story I wrote quite a while ago. It never found its right market, but I kept taking it back out of the trunk to revise, tinker with it, revisit its improbable world of lived-in technology that no one understa......

Reviews Tell the Tale

So … I entered Rumble in Woohollow into this year’s SPFBO (Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off). If you’re not familiar with that, the SPFBO takes in 300 books and divvies them between ten book blogs and review sites. Each blog picks a finalist and the ten finalists go head-to-head and a...

De-grading the AP Lit classroom

One of the first things I tell new students that come into my classroom each year is that I don’t care about grades. For years, I’ve worked to de-emphasize grades and so hopefully to promote learning. It works for some students, while others never quite get beyond that need...

The Mauler, out 28 Aug!

I’m a bit late updating this here (as I’ve done it on social media) but The Mauler, the second book of The Holly Sisters, will be available on 28 Aug (preorder for Kindle link here, paperback link coming). It’s the second book to have a cover done by Jessica...