Writers, this may sound familiar. You dream up a new character, and for a while it's okay to refer to them in your head as 'the dude' or 'heroine' or 'cat', but eventually you run into that roadblock where you realize... I need to name these people. Hap ...
I should have a fairy tale for you today but that'll have to wait. I'm going to tell you a different kind of fairy tale instead. It's officially been one year since we left the US. Time flies. Sometimes it takes coach, like we did. At the time I dutifull ...
I know I said I wanted to look for unusual fairy tales, not the typical fare. But I learned a new factoid about this one over on Tor.com, which has some really great examinations of fairy tales, in their piece Charmed, I’m Sure: A Closer Look at Everyone’ ...
I was waiting until I could find my copy of Old Peter's Russian Tales--a collection of Russian fairy tales as retold by a British visitor (Arthur Ransome, of Swallows & Amazons fame) with British children in mind--only to discover that it's available ...
All day I've been on tenterhooks. The last week has had an element of the surreal. The last month even more so. Today the winners and finalists for the Young Adult Romance Writers of America's 2017 Rosemary contest were announced. My manuscript, IN HER ...
It's well established that Scrivener is a great tool for writers. You might not be aware of how well it integrates with other writing tools and systems. For this, there are Scrivener templates. A template is a collection of Binder items that are arrang ...
Holy cow, I was not expecting to stumble across this. I came across the mere mention of a "hedgehog princess" and immediately had to look it up. I didn't find a hedgehog princess, but I did find a half-human hedgehog boy who marries a princess! Yes, this ...
It's time for #PimpMyBio! Every year Pitch Wars hopefuls post fun profiles of themselves to share with the community. Pitch Wars is a contest where the prize is a mentor to help you revise your book. Learn more about Pitch Wars at organizer Brenda Drake's ...
I realize I never made an announcement here, so here goes. I'm hosting a weekly Twitter chat for writers, called #RPmyBook. RP stands for role-play, and the idea is that writers answer questions as their characters would. What's the benefit to writers? C ...
This is the second major good news of the last couple of weeks. I actually learned about it around the same time I got into #QueryKombat (Round 2 Entry), but didn't want to say anything until finalists were announced. The Rosemary is an award given by th ...
I was selected for QueryKombat! QK is a contest where queries and novel excerpts are pitted against each other, bracket-style, until the strongest query is reached. I'm on Laura Heffernan's team, competing with the query for IN HER OWN SKIN, my YA selki ...
There's a princess and a tower and a wedding, and yet this isn't one of the more popular stories. Go figure. Source: SurLaLune Fairy Tales: Annotated Maid Maleen Synopsis Maid Maleen is the daughter of a king. She falls in love with a prince, but her f ...
I've got another guest post on diyMFA! This week it's about Twitter chats. #5onFri: Twitter Chats for 5 Different Writers Writing hashtags are hot right now. There are plenty of pages explaining them and what to look for, but who are these chats for? He ...
I have a guest post up on diyMFA this week! diyMFA is a site that encourages and guides writers to educate themselves, keep writing, keep reading, and grow their communities. I've followed the project for years and I couldn't be happier to be a part of it ...
My summary isn't going to do this justice. Anderson writes evocatively of the setting and the people, and I'm just going to focus on the main plot. Here we go. Source: HCA.Gilead.org.il Summary In the countryside of France, a massive tree is felled. Th ...
I recently went on a hunt for unnecessary backstory in my first 50 pages. Early backstory slows the pace right as readers are looking to dig into your story, not get bogged down with what already happened. Thanks to Margie Lawson and her EDITS system, ...
Doesn't "donkey cabbages" sound like a kid's insult? I'm not quite sure how to even summarize this one, it is that strange. Here we go anyway. Source: The Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales (Knickerbocker Edition) Summary One day, a huntsman is walking ar ...
The above screenshot is from the January 2017 issue of National Geographic, which focused on gender. The page pictured asks, Is dressing up as princesses 'a normal girlie-girl phase' or does it encourage girls to define themselves based on appearance and ...
Not Thumbelina, but the German answer to the English Tom Thumb. You may well know the gist of this one. Source: The Complete Grimm's Fairy Tales (Knickerbocker Edition) Summary A lonely peasant couple wishes for a child. A boy is born to them, but he's ...
New project. In order to better familiarize myself with the fairy tale cannon, once a month I'm going to read and examine a fairy story. Preferably not super popular stories, I'm looking for unusual stuff. I want to do this for my own edification, and al ...
Today is Valentine's Day, but it's also V-DAY. Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues are traditionally performed around this time of year, with the end goals of raising awareness of abuse against women and girls, and raising money for organizations that prev ...
Right up front I'm going to be honest and disclose that I have a horse in this race and his name is Plotty McPlotface. It took me a long, long time to figure out how much plotting I needed to make a working novel happen, and yes, I started out pantsing. ...
I often get the question, "How is the writing going?" If I were to answer this strictly, meaning am I actually engaging in the act of writing down words, the answer would often be, "Ummmmm, I'll get back to you on that." I don't write daily and when I ...
Author Laura Brown has a new blog post titled "My Diverse Reads of 2016" where she takes a look at how many books she read in the past year that count as diverse. This seems like a worthy experiment to me, so let's dig into my data. In 2016 I read 67 boo ...
