Telling Your Story: As Fact or Fiction?

You've lived an interesting/horrible/painful/amazing life and you want to share your story with the world in order to entertain/warn/help others. Cool! But you need to ask yourself a simple question (or two) first. The answers won't be simple, but the questions are. Will you be telling your story as a fictional tale? Or will you...

Genre-Hopping on One Foot

Hi. My name is Tim. I'm a writer with a problem. Hi Tim. My problem may seem simple to some, irrelevant to others, and overwhelming to one or two of you. You see, I can't pick just one genre to write in. So far I have published novels in Urban Fantasy, Paranormal Romance, and Fantasy;...

5 Tim’s Writerly Secrets

Well then. Robert Bose thinks that because he’s challenged me to reveal five author/editor secrets that I’m just going to give away my treasures for free. Ha! Not likely! I’m just going to make some crap up and hope that makes him happy. 1. If YOU don’t love the story you’re writing, then no one...

Mostly about Beta Readers

I had hoped for a big weekend of writing but decided that naps were important, too. I managed to clear the 70,000-word hurdle, with 5 days left to reach 80,000, though. Yah. No problemo. One of the harder parts of writing the first draft of a mystery novel is fighting the temptation to go back...

The Brilliant Banner for Writers…if I say so myself.

Most writers I know are on a limited budget for advertising and promotion, especially the self-published ones. Even the writers with traditional publishers may have to foot the bill for some or all promotional supplies. I, myself, am both self-published (4 books) and traditionally published. When I've done book signings in the past I had some...

The Porn of Writing

We delve into our own souls and the world around us to find depth and meaning which will give our characters and tales life and spark the imaginations of our readers

Write or don’t write… there is no ‘try’.

If your stories suck, don't stop writing, just stop showing your work to other people until you think it's ready.

Shanghai Steam (a Wuxia Steam Punk anthology)

By blending actual martial arts with the mythical and science-fictional, and then setting it all in a real place in a specific time, I tried to make ‘The Ability of Lightness’ feel like a true story that no one had told before.

End the Glorifying of Serial/Fame Killers

RANT & Rhetorical Question TIME: Does knowing about horrific crimes deter us from committing anything similar? Or does it just titillate and entertain us? What if there was an immediate publication ban on the names of all fame/serial killers so that they can't achieve ANY degree of fame or infamy. We don't learn from past mistakes...