This is a post about the genesis, exodus, and resurrection of a book. It’s for anyone who’s ever got 20K words into a project and thought, “…oh shit”, aka most writers. Gather round. Some time ago, I came up with an idea for a romance trilogy. It would be Victorian London and it would focus […]
There is a recurrent thing in discussions of romance novels which bubbles up every couple of months: Books That Aren’t Romance Being Listed As Romance. Obviously this isn’t car manuals sneaking their way in. It’s books that are marketed as romance novels (or series) when one of the protagonists dies, or they part for good, […]
Historical detail is my jam. I am not here for histrom that is modern day people in silly hats; that takes all the fun out of it. I don’t want magic horses that are basically cars with legs, or letter-carrying boys who work with the speed of text messages, and I really don’t want dukes […]
“Show, don’t tell” (henceforth SDT in this post) is one of the most common pieces of writing advice. As with most writing advice, it’s a useful thing to consider, but gets wildly extrapolated into an iron law by people who use maxims as a substitute for thoughtful consideration of the thing in front of them. […]
I last bloggged about silly stylistic fads and Rules for Writers. These often arise from perfectly good editorial advice (don’t overuse passives) that get generalised into sweeping laws (don’t use passives at all!) and are applied regardless of whether the author is doing the thing well or badly. One of the more pervasive of these […]
So I was on Twitter yesterday (my first mistake) and I came across this gem by an actual literary agent with an actual literary agency. Delete all the adjectives and adverbs from your book. All of them. Get rid. Your book will read better, and be more appealing, as a direct result. The direct result […]
I did a talk on edits and editing for NECRWA (which looks like it ought to be a necromancers’ club but is in fact a regional RWA chapter) and this has spurred me to commit some thoughts to keyboard. Thanks to Tamsen Parker for inviting me to speak! The editor-author relationship can be a fraught […]
I picked up a book recently without checking the sample (it was a freebie on a promotion to push the series, and I am a sucker for that). This is what I posted on Facebook shortly thereafter. I started this book. It basically has one-sentence paragraphs. All the way through. Some of them are pretty […]
I have been reading a lot recently—like, a lot—so I thought I’d share some joy. I have divided these into the reading experience rather than genre (because I felt like it, sue me). Somewhat less romance than usual as I have not been in a romancey mood recently. Books to make you feel warm and […]
There is an apparently very widely held belief that it is not acceptable to judge a book, TV show, or movie unless you have consumed it. “Give Confederate a chance!” people say. “You can’t decide to avoid a book just because the advance reviewers are saying it’s offensive! It’s censorship to say you don’t want […]