From the monthly archives:

September 2009

One Good Detail

September 17, 2009

“…you see, a .45 will blow a barn door out the back of your head.  There’s alot of drycleaning involved.  Whereas a .22 will just rattle around in your brain like Pacman ’til you die.”    –Vinnie Antonelli from My Blue Heaven. So, I’m halfway through World War Z by Max Brooks and it’s about the third time [...]

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Meeting the Gods of Other Worlds

September 15, 2009

Last week I had the pleasure of briefly meeting Sir Terry Pratchett at Discworld Con, where he was the guest of honor. I was there to do a bit part in the opening ceremony, which I was happy to do as a long standing fan of Pratchett’s 30+ book Discworld series. After galloping through my [...]

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The Perfect Me Character

September 14, 2009

Perfect characters are boring and tiresome and make for boring and tiresome stories. The worst are the characters conceived as the author’s fantasy of their ‘perfect’ self. It’s a trap many fall into on the quest to produce a first novel – the furtive but futile attempt to weave a credible story around a ‘me as [...]

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creative writing exercise – I needed a prompt

September 7, 2009

I’ve been heads down on a (non-writing) project the last week, so I needed some quick inspiration to kick start this post.  I cast about looking for a decent writing prompt/story starter and came across the site: http://www.writersdigest.com/WritingPrompts/ I scanned the first couple of pages and ran across one that clicked with me.  The prompt [...]

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One Page Exercise: Grind

September 4, 2009

Saliva gathered in silky strings and pooled in the plastic basin of the mouth-guard he wore to sleep at night. For years now he had been grinding his teeth as he slept. All those years all that grinding. His teeth were down to nubs and he didn’t even know the true cause of it. At [...]

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