Archive for December, 2010

David B. Coe December 23rd 2010

You Can’t Teach Passion

I have volunteered to teach a brief writing workshop at the school my daughters attend.  The workshop will take place on three successive Friday nights in January.  Each session will be ninety minutes long, and I plan to touch on some writing basics:  character development, point of view and voice, pacing and narrative.  It’s part [...]

James Alan Gardner December 21st 2010

The Skill List Project: Punctuation and its Discontents

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. This time around, we’re looking at punctuation. Chunking and Timing Like grammar, the point of punctuation is to help you and your readers make sense of what you’re [...]

Marie Brennan December 16th 2010

Responses and reviews, criticism and critique

Remember the “book review” section of the newspaper? I don’t. Partly because I’m a fantasy reader, and fantasy has often been neglected by such enterprises, but more because I’ve never been a newspaper reader. Put one in front of me while I’m cooling my heels at the dentist’s and I’ll read it — look, I [...]

S.C. Butler December 15th 2010

What Is SF?

As if you haven’t sat through this panel at least twenty times at some con or other, right?  But that won’t stop me.  Not when I’m eighteen months into writing my first SF novel after years of writing fantasy.  Besides, what’s the point of blogging if you can’t write about whatever you want? I must [...]

Alma Alexander December 5th 2010

What’s on TV tonight…? (and what isn’t…)

Here’s the thing. It’s all about character. What matters most about a piece of written work seems to do precisely the opposite when it comes to television. With a very few honorable exceptions, the moment you get some intelligent TV show, which features *actual character development*, it lasts a season. Or maybe a little longer, [...]

Mindy Klasky December 1st 2010

‘Tis the Season (for Feasting!)

OK, so maybe I’m only thinking about food because I finished the last of my Thanksgiving leftovers for breakfast this morning.  (What?  You don’t think that cranberry sauce goes in oatmeal?  Then you haven’t experienced the best oatmeal of your life!) But thinking about food made me think about food-in-writing.  My novels tend to have [...]

Author Information

David B. Coe

David B. Coe is the author of eleven fantasy novels, including the books of the LonTobyn Chronicle, Winds of the Forelands, and Blood of the Southlands. He has also written the novelization for the Ridley Scott production of ROBIN HOOD, starring Russell Crowe, that is due out in May 2010. In 1999 he received the Crawford Fantasy Award, given annually by the IAFA to the best new author in fantasy. He has a Ph.D. in United States environmental history and lives on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with his wife and daughters. Visit site.

James Alan Gardner

James Alan Gardner got his M.Math from the University of Waterloo with a thesis on black holes...and then he immediately started writing science fiction instead. He's been a finalist for the Hugo and Nebula awards, and has won the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award as well as the Aurora award (twice). He's published seven novels (beginning with "Expendable"), plus a short story collection and (for street cred) a Lara Croft book. He cares deeply about words and sentences, and is working his way up to paragraphs. Visit site.

Marie Brennan

Marie Brennan is the author of more than thirty short stories and the Onyx Court series of historical fantasy novels, concluding in the upcoming With Fate Conspire (due out September 2011). Visit site.

S.C. Butler

Butler is the author of The Stoneways Trilogy from Tor Books: Reiffen's Choice, Queen Ferris, and The Magician's Daughter. Find out what Reiffen does with magic, and what magic does with him... Visit site.

Alma Alexander

Alma Alexander is a Pacific Northwest novelist whose new YA trilogy, "Worldweavers", debuted with "Gift of the Unmage" in March 2007 ("Spellspam" follows in 2008, and "Cybermage" in 2009). Her other books include the internationally acclaimed "The Secrets of Jin Shei". Visit site.

Mindy Klasky

Mindy Klasky is the author of eleven novels, including WHEN GOOD WISHES GO BAD and HOW NOT TO MAKE A WISH in the As You Wish Series. She also wrote GIRL'S GUIDE TO WITCHCRAFT, SORCERY AND THE SINGLE GIRL, and MAGIC AND THE MODERN GIRL, about a librarian who finds out she's a witch. Mindy also wrote the award-winning, best-selling Glasswrights series and the stand-alone fantasy novel, SEASON OF SACRIFICE. Visit site.

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