Today, everyone gets the same rights to marriage equality under the law. This is a grand and good thing in my humble opinion – marriage is a contractual arrangement afforded privileges under the law. Inheritance, mutual property arrangements, visitation, changing countries to join one’s spouse, health insurance are only a few of the cases where matters … Continue reading
Creating fantasy fiction worlds – there are worlds inside
From the moment I decided to concentrate on fiction, my fantasy world started coming together. With every piece of writing in the world, the places became characters in the stories. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that the places started taking on a life of their own; they were not quite the Seattle I … Continue reading
Writer’s challenges – Embracing uncertainty
In the last couple of days, I wrote 3500 words in the short story. Turned out I needed to start over, make a run at the overall story arc, and then incorporate things that I’d written before. We spent part of the afternoon at the Jewelbox Cafe today, some three hours, drinking a vanilla latte and … Continue reading
When inspiration fails
What to do when inspiration fails? I have a deadline for a short story looming, with a character who doesn’t know how to get from here to there. To increase the beats, I need a challenge to throw at my protagonist that isn’t a trope. I suppose I could use a trope (evil family member, … Continue reading
Book design – adjusting to digital design
It used to be that book design was a discipline where we had defined page sizes. For print, that is still the case, but how long will print be with us? When I design for print, I decide ahead of time what the size of the end product will be. It’s either 8.5 x 5 … Continue reading
Book jacket marketing
Is it better off being red? I say that because of something a friend said once. He was working in a technical book shop at the time. He claimed their marketing boffins had worked out that they sold 8% more copies of any text book with a red jacket. I’ve been wondering if that might … Continue reading
WYRD 