Category: Uncategorized

A must-have for any writer going to a conference in the near future. Be sure to keep this handy abduct…er…self-defense tool nearby when agents and editors fling themselves at you to rip your sure-to-be-bestselling manuscript from your hands. Make sure they keep their distance with a few zaps until they’ve…

Alma Alexander (author of Worldweavers, first in a trilogy) gives her clear opinion on how to approach the author-agent relationship, which I found refreshing. Sometimes I think I lose a little focus in my continuing search for an agent. I get too caught up in tweaking one or two words…

I sometimes wonder where I am in my writing…er…I need an image here to relate this…let’s pick the “swimming pool.” So…the writing swimming pool. Am I still in the shallow end with floaters on, bobbing about with little clue as to what I’m doing or how I can make the…

Did you ever wonder about the mathematics behind wrinkled sheets? Or whether sword-swallowing was bad for your health? These and other questions have been carefully researched by various scientific teams around the world, and now their results are being highlighted by the Ig Noble awards, which celebrate the more frivolous…

This post is mostly to test the new video functions added to the blog, but I figured I should make it fun anyways. For those of you who have seen the Pixar movie, Ratatouille, you may remember this animated short that was shown before the film itself. I didn’t catch…

I’m sure it’s a common occurrence across the country; the season starts to change, the air gets a little chilly, and people in the house and/or office start a’snifflin’, sneezin’, and sounding like airplane engines backfiring when they cough. Why is it that seasonal weather shifts always wreak such havoc…

One of the joys of being a writer is taking your characters and throwing them into a worst-case scenario that they can’t possibly get out of, and then watch them squirm as you bring it to a boil. Of course, one of the hardest things about being a writer is…

One of the things I enjoy most while setting up a new story is the world building. It can be a long process, and sometimes it’s more a series of discoveries that I make as I’m writing the story itself, rather than something I outline and follow from the beginning.…

It’s long, but it’s worth watching. http://cmu.edu/uls/journeys/ Professor Randy Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and given six months to live. He gave his last lecture Sept. 18, 2007 on “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams.” He talks about how he pursued the little dreams he set for himself as much…

Who doesn’t want to be immortalized? Who doesn’t want their name remembered long after they’ve ceased to be? That’s a seductive dream for anyone, writers included. But what if your name became synonymous with a dastardly deed, or some otherwise undesirable term? There are a lot of words in our…