Artist2Artist conversation with Marissa Meyer
Last month I sat down with the New York Times best-selling author Marissa Meyer to talk about writing, Tacoma, and more, for TVTacoma. It was a fun and likely conversation, and particularly because I have so enjoyed her books. (The Lunar Chronicles are a sort of sci-fi, steam-punk, fairy tale mashup that works really well, with very strong central characters in all of them. I definitely recommend them.) Here’s the feature: Talking shop with another writer was a lot of fun–so much so, that I’m working on a project that I hope will allow me to do it more often. More Read more…
The Third Degree
Here’s something fun I’m trying out. I was invited to work with two other authors to package our mysteries together into a single bundled download. We called it “The Third Degree Bundle.” The idea was that you get three books for the price of one. And maybe find some new authors to check out! It’s a low-risk way to fill your Kindle with 885 pages of mystery and thrillers! Here are the three books: The Saints Go Dying, by Erik Hanberg A computer hacker turned detective is hunting a serial killer in Los Angeles targeting modern day saints. Project Moses, Read more…
Six habits for writing (and finishing) a novel
I wrote my first “novel” when I was in the seventh grade. It was 80 pages long and I thought it was a masterpiece. I was going to be the first middle-school bestseller. I later wrote a sequel in eighth grade. Then another sequel in ninth grade. Finally I realized I had an actual novel, and put it together as a single book. Since then, I’ve written another ten novels, and self-published four of them. Having been through it that many times, I think I’ve discovered that the biggest challenges with writing are not about the writing itself, but the Read more…
The Queen's Gambit by Walter Tevis
Normally I post book reviews on Goodreads, but I wanted to make an exception for this one, since it fits with the posts about games this year. The Queen’s Gambit [that’s an affiliate link, btw], by Walter Tevis, was just a joy of a book. A young orphan named Elizabeth Harmon is discovered to be a chess prodigy at age eight, and the book follows her story as she developers her talent. You don’t have to know chess to enjoy the book, although I was glad to discover it while in the midst of several games. If you’re familiar with the Read more…
Adding Primes to a Story
Thanks to Robin Sloan and his always-interesting newsletter, I discovered an interesting idea about stories: it’s the primes that really matter. The stories that have stayed with us for years (or centuries or millennia) have not stayed with us because every word or every scene is important. There are key elements that are important: a scene, an image, an idea, a certain archetypal character. In other words, these are the prime numbers, the tentpoles for the rest. If the key elements in the story are the prime numbers, then the rest are just regular numbers, and you can move and Read more…
The Legacy of Technology
As I continue to work on Book II of The Lattice Trilogy, I am writing more and more about the legacy of old technology. Writing about “old” technology in 2081 means writing a lot about current times (and the next few decades). But there are so many examples of legacy technology today. We are surrounded by it. We often think of technology as this march of progress, but a better image would be of geologic strata. New technology is layered over older technology, but the old technology doesn’t go away. It’s just not as visible. It’s a much more accurate Read more…
To Title or Not to Title
It’s hard to title a book or a movie. I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words, but it’s usually those first couple of words that are the hardest. Truth be told, I’m still not 100% happy with The Lead Cloak‘s title. It has just the slightest tinge of fantasy, when it’s really a pretty straight sci-fi adventure. One of the most common things people try with titles is to adapt a famous quote or line from the Bible or Shakespeare. Sometimes this can be devastatingly effective. Other times, pointless or pretentious. After seeing numerous titles adapted from Hamlet’s famous soliloquy, Read more…
After all that …
Way back in 2011, I was putting the finishing touches on The Marinara Murders and didn’t have a new project to work on. I had an idea for the next Beautyman mystery, but my head was full of a science fiction novel. I’ve never written science fiction, but I couldn’t get it out of my system. So I took a leap and started writing. It ended up going really really well. The book gathered dust during my election campaign that year, and then I picked it up again. Hannah’s arrival the next year actually helped me pick up the pace, Read more…
Every sale still amazes me …
The first day of every month is a hard one for an independent author. All your sales are wiped clean. However well you did the month before, all those sales disappear, and the counter resets to zero. This is what the sales report for Kindle looks like when you haven’t sold any books. No matter how good previous month sales were, this is the bar you see before you sell anything this month. Ugh. Back in 2010 and early 2011, there were some months when this bar wouldn’t go away until the end of the month. Now it usually goes away pretty Read more…
Sneak Peek
Things are moving along with my sci-fi adventure novel! I’m thinking October, but the hard and fast date is not fixed yet. There’s still a lot to be done, which is why I’m not sure of the date. So until then I want to share a small slice of the cover art from Tacoma artist Chandler O’Leary. It’s just a small hint of what is to come. So very excited to share the rest soon!
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