I ask the question not because I’m writing an essay, or because my latest heroine is going to reference all the great KHs of the past, but because I’m curious. And because I’m lazy. So why not ask the group mind here at SFNovelists? I’ve done a little googling. There are several lists in Wikipedia [...]

I know that this website is hosted by SFNovelists.  I know that, by definition, we focus on novels around here, on full-length speculative fiction.  And for all of my writing career, I’ve been a novelist. But last month, I branched out a little bit.  I published my first novella, Capitol Magic. This wasn’t my first [...]

This is another post in The Skill List Project: an attempt to list all the skills involved in writing and selling fiction, particularly science fiction and fantasy. Last time, I talked about fight scene basics. The post got several thought-filled comments from knowledgeable writers/fight savants, and I urge all you readers to check them out. [...]

I’ve written before about how my characters sometimes surprise me, doing or saying things that I had not anticipated. At times they have subtly steered by narrative in directions I hadn’t anticipated; on occasion they have taken my books in radically new directions, rendering useless outlines for the the second half of a novel, or [...]