Usually when I sit down to write a blog post, I spend a lot of time running through possible ideas. My response to most of these is: no one will care about that. Since I spend a lot of time writing about office supplies and stupid crap like that, I'm probably right most of the time. Which is why I've been trying to spend more time writing about book stuff, since I figure if you're showing up at my site, you're at least vaguely interested in my books.
Read MoreSo...Ghost's book is pretty dark so far.
I know, I know, I should probably be talking about Tobias, and I will, for about half this post, but the only reason he's part of this conversation is because he's crucial to the feelings I'm having about Ghost right now.
Read MoreYou could say I have a bit of a bone to pick. Which might explain why this is really long.
Damon Suede called romance "The literature of hope." Some folks might say that that's an inflated description for dinky little love stories; those folks don't know what they're talking about. I'm not saying that to be rude so much as to express that they are working from a fundamental misunderstanding of the genre, one that is usually based in some mixture of sexism, superiority and an unfamiliarity with the texts in question.
Read MoreSometimes it's hard to draw a line between writing healthy relationships, realistic relationships, and the sort of conflict-based relationships that are crucial for page-turning fiction.
Let me give you an example with some mild spoilers. In Bad Judgment, my two heroes get into an argument. They're both tired and pissed off and neither one is getting what he wants from the other and they're too emotionally involved at this point to walk away. Neither one has any good options. There's no obviously right answer. It's just a shitty situation and they don't know how to handle it.
Read MoreRevision is a long, unwieldy process full of insecurities, small setbacks, and large improvements. It is, to be frank, the emotional equivalent of the tilt-a-whirl. In the micro sense, the process is different for every book because you always manage to screw up in new, colorful ways.
Read More