So I spent the last two weeks doing a self-imposed Boot Camp, writing a flash or poetry piece a day from a list of prompts I collected / generated.  My prompt from Day 12 was "She watched the bloodstained dress burn."  (Not necessarily to inc......

Pro-Writing Aid, an online program that analyzes your writing and gives you recommendations to improve it.As I was looking at a report on a piece it gave the number of adverbs and recommended that I remove three. I must have missed this before but I do tend to use...

So more fresh madness for you all—I’ll be at Myths and Legends Con in Denver this weekend. I’ll be selling and signing books, and I’m on loads on panels. There’s a link at the bottom for anyone interested in coming, plus my panel schedule: Fri, 5:00 PM-5:50 PM, Writing...

Wow, I checked and I haven’t done one of these random updates for a long time–like eighteen months.  I didn’t realize it had been quite that long. Well, whatever.  I’ve been slacking, actually.  I took about a month off from writing or doing much related to writing, so I...

Outside the realm of fantasy, the Prologue is a perfectly acceptable way to foreshadow, show an unrelated or only partially related event that sets the scene, or otherwise provide a frame for the book to follow.Inside the realm of fantasy, the Prologue......

Thanks to a fellow harper, I have a beautiful new early music tune to work on, a Middle English song entitled "Byrd One Brere" - according to her, the first known love song.  Here's the Mediaevel Baebes' take on it:Byrd One BrereGorgeous, haunting......

A few months ago, the organizers for my harp group (which believe me when I say it is like herding cats) met to discuss repertoire.  We also exchanged music.  One harper offered a packet of Irish hymns and mentioned, "They're all pretty easy.......

So a long time ago, I wrote a story to a prompt from the wonderful The 3am Epiphany (Kiteley, highly recommended for an author of any genre) to write about an article of clothing.  The resultant story took just a smidge of inspiration from this so......

(The Serpent's Tale by Ariana FranklinMy rating: 4 of 5 starsMurder, mayhem, rebellion and forbidden romance clash in medieval England, dragging the clear-eyed, analytical Adelia Aguilar into their midst. Adelia is what we would call a forensic doctor,......

Today, I want to talk about a character trope that particularly annoys me, one you see nigh-constantly in television media:  the genius is an a*****e.  I'll use the term jerk from here on out to avoid having to self-censor myself, but really:......