This post originally went live on Fictionvale in 2014 and was reprinted in Short Story Writer Magazine. Unfortunately, Fictionvale has since closed and the article is no longer available online. I’m taking the opportunity to repost it while I’m moving to my new apartment and have less time available to blog. While it’s focused on…
Category: Blog Posts
“Of the Generation” in Heroic Fantasy Anthology from Flame Tree Publishing
Flame Tree Publishing has posted the Tables of Contents for its new Gothic Fantasy anthologies: Time Travel and Heroic Fantasy. It’s pretty unreal to be on the same list as the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The full ToC for Heroic Fantasy is: A Matter of Interpretation by M. Elizabeth Ticknor Burned Away by Kate O’Connor Dragon…
Living with Imposter Syndrome
This post originally went live on Fictionvale in 2014. Unfortunately, Fictionvale has since closed and the article is no longer available online. I’m taking the opportunity to repost it while I’m moving to my new apartment and have less available to blog. If you’re currently battling a bout of imposter syndrome, I hope it proves…
“John Kosichev” in Storyteller magazine
As I said in my last post, it turns out that when you send stories regularly in answer to calls for submissions, you sometimes get stories accepted! I’m very excited to break my long publishing silence with a release in a new magazine, Storyteller, with a story that’s been a particular favorite of mine (even when…
2017 already!? (On second thought, thank goodness)
It is with considerable chagrin that I realize I haven’t published a new blog post since March of 2016 (though it is with some pleasure that I work the word “chagrin” into a sentence). 2016 was not the most productive of years, and that’s the kindest thing that can be said for it. My feelings toward it…
12 Words to (Almost Always) Cut
Strong stories are not necessarily short. They don’t need to be Hemingway-esque masterpieces of bare prose (even Hemingway didn’t always write that way). And it would be hypocritical to argue for only short sentences or short paragraphs when I have to make a conscious effort to write either. But in a strong story, every word…
The Big List of Writing Writing Resources, Part One
You can write your story with nothing but a reasonably flat surface and something that leaves a mark, but it’s a lot easier when you have the right tools. Happily, there are a lot of useful resources out there. Here are some of my favorites. I encountered a few while writing The Starter Guide for Professional…
“The Grace of Turning Back” at Beneath Ceaseless Skies
“The Grace of Turning Back,” the final story of the Curse-Strewn World sequence, appears in Beneath Ceaseless Skies Issue #179, which can be read on the BCS website or in the Kindle store. The Tynesi merchants, who traded everything from the silver rice of Timru and perfume leaves from Simrandu to chips of ivory off the Keld’s temples, had…
“Arnheim’s World” in Analog Magazine
In the May 2015 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact, alongside fiction from Rajnar Vajra, But Sparhawk, Robert R. Chase, Aubry Kae Anderson, and J.L. Forrest, my story “Arnheim’s World” explores the economics, ethics, and (anti)sociability of terraforming. Environment, economics, ethics, all stewing in a high-tension dilemma. Exactly the kind of thing you’d expect…
Common edits to improve your writing
A lot of editing and rewriting involves relatively minor mechanical and technical changes. A lot. Not that I’m complaining; making these simple changes is a routine part of my work, and if nothing else it keeps me steadily employed. Many of them are changes I make to my own writing on a second draft! However,…