Tuesday Tips: Before You Write

I know lots of people that say they are going to write a novel this year. Be smart and watch this video first!

The Outsiders

This anthology includes my Solstice 31 Saga short story: BRAUEN'S MINE

Available in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover editions!

Merry Christmas!

My wife got me this for Christmas!

Ever since he got here today, he keeps threatening to self destruct!

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

Write one good clean sentence and put a period at the end of it. Then write another one.
—M.F.K. Fisher

Writers should be read—but neither seen nor heard.
—Daphne du Maurier

The world is never the same once a good poem has been added to it.
—Dylan Thomas

This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.
—John Cleese

The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.
—William Goldman

I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed.
—William Shakespeare

Write hard and clear about what hurts.
—Ernest Hemingway

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
—Somerset Maugham

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.
—Sylvia Plath

When you make music or write or create, it's really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you're writing about at the time.
—Lady Gaga

Most of us find our own voices only after we’ve sounded like a lot of other people.
—Neil Gaiman

Friday Film: Black Holes

Gotta get busy shopping...

A Boy and His Dog

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.
—Patti Smith

All good #writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald

On writing Fiction: "I wisely started with a map."
—J.R.R. Tolkien

When you catch an adjective, kill it —perhaps the best possible advice for budding writers.
—Mark Twain

I write seven days a week, starting at 4 o'clock in the morning, including Christmas.
—Dan Brown

You are only as good as the best thing you've ever done.
—Billy Wilder

If history was taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten.
—Rudyard Kipling

Let the readers do some of the work themselves.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky

Don't be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.
—Arthur Miller

Spaghetti Western Trailer for "The Mandalorian"

Short Film Friday: The Kid

Friday Film: CC

Happy Thanksgiving, Humans!

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

If I'm going to sing like someone else, then I don't need to sing at all.
—Billie Holiday

I'll be writing records until I'm dead, whether people like it or not.
—Alanis Morissette

Write every day, line by line, page by page, hour by hour. Do this despite fear. For above all else, beyond imagination and skill, what the world asks of you is courage, courage to risk rejection, ridicule and failure.
—Robert McKee

I do believe that tenacity counts. Not going away matters.
—Carole King

There were times when I was afraid I would never sell another book, but I never doubted I'd write another book.
—George R.R. Martin

All you need is a sheet of paper and something to write with, and then you can turn the world upside down.
—Friedrich Nietzsche

Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule.
—Stephen King

If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. It's the hard that makes it great.
—Tom Hanks

Have a belief in yourself that is bigger than anyone's disbelief.
—August Wilson

Nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake.
—John Cleese

NEW: The Outsiders

My most recent short story was published in the anthology:

     THE OUTSIDERS

The short story is entitled: BRAUEN'S MINE

This short story is one of the Solstice 31 universe tales. It describes the origin story of Goris Base, an important location in my next novel.

This volume is also filled with other stories from a collection of up and coming authors I have been honored to get to know. This group constantly helps me improve my writing.

Check it out.

--Available in Kindle, Paperback, and Hardcover.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Tips: Female Character Pet Peeves

Friday Film Short: Custom Order

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

A character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from.
—Arthur Miller

Trust your reader, don’t try to describe things. Give a hint and they will fulfill this hint with their own imagination.
—Paulo Coelho

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
—Rod Serling

I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be still.
—Sylvia Plath

The lowest ebb is the turn of the tide.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.
—T.S. Elliot

The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start talking and they just lead the way.
—Quentin Tarantino

You take people, you put them on a journey, you give them peril, you find out who they really are.
—Joss Whedon

I shall live badly if I do not write, and I shall write badly if I do not live.
—Françoise Sagan

Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
—Judy Garland

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot.
—Stephen King

It must be November...

Short Film Friday: Smash and Grab

--Great Scifi Short from Pixar!

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
—Somerset Maugham

When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.
—Stephen King

It seems that every time I stick my neck out, I get my foot into something else.
—Patsy Cline

This is the extraordinary thing about creativity: If just you keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way, sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious.
—John Cleese

The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.
—Steve Martin

Don't loaf and invite inspiration; light out after it with a club, and if you don't get it you will nonetheless get something that looks remarkably like it.
—Jack London

If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
—Terry Pratchett

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.
—Neil Gaiman

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.
—Mark Twain

Tuesday Tips: From Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut’s 8 Writing Tips:

1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
4. Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
5. Start as close to the end as possible.
6. Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To hell with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

Mmmmm pie...

10 Truths about Writing

Short Film Friday: Negative Space

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
—Maya Angelou

Not all those who wander are lost.
—J.R.R. Tolkien

I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart. 
—Anne Frank

The worst enemy of creativity is self-doubt.
—Sylvia Plath

You are what you settle for.
—Janis Joplin

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.
—Barbara Kingsolver

Fall in love and stay in love. Do what you love, don’t do anything else. Don’t write for money. Write because you love to do something. If you write for money, you won’t write anything worth reading.
—Ray Bradbury

My advice to young writers is to read. Find an author whose attitude you share and study the author’s work. Learn by imitating until you find your own voice, keeping in mind that style comes out of attitude.
—Elmore Leonard

When your story is ready for rewrite, cut it to the bone. Get rid of every ounce of excess fat. This is going to hurt; revising a story down to the bare essentials is always a little like murdering children, but it must be done.
—Stephen King

There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.
—W. Somerset Maugham

PREDATOR: Dark Ages

A fan-made film...

Free: VotV

For a limited time, you can get Virtues of the Vicious audible edition for free!

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

Your naked body should only belong to those who fall in love with your naked soul.
—Charlie Chaplin

Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye.
—Dorothy Parker

Go a little out of your depth, and when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.
—David Bowie

Failure is unimportant. It takes courage to make a fool of yourself.
—Charlie Chaplin

Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. I'd say what any decent poet would say if anyone dared ask him to analyze his work: if you see it, then it's there!
—Freddie Mercury

The less I say the more my work gets done.
—Elton John

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
—Albert Einstein

Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can write anything good.
—William Faulkner

If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.
—Terry Pratchett

The most beautiful stories always start with wreckage.
—Jack London

Don't say the old lady screamed. Bring her on and let her scream.
—Mark Twain

Capclave 2019

This weekend I was at Capclave, selling and signing books! It was a lot of fun, I ate too much good food, hung out with friends, other authors and scifi fans!

--Now it's time to get back t work!

Big Damn Hero!

Tropes Talk... Bad and Good!

Cat Shit One

--I love this!

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

I'm still looking to write a great song.... You always are. You know, you never think, 'Well, that's enough ... that's good enough.'
—Paul McCartney

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.
—Leonard Cohen

Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
—Henry Miller

Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.
—Ernest Hemingway

You have to have something vicious in you, to be a creative writer.
—D.H. Lawrence

Most writers enjoy two periods of happiness — when a glorious idea comes to mind and, secondly, when a last page has been written and you haven’t had time to know how much better it ought to be.
—J.B. Priestley

Create your own visual style... let it be unique to yourself and identifiable to others.
—Orson Welles

I never reread a text until I have finished the first draft. Otherwise it’s too discouraging.
—Gore Vidal

Start writing. I don't mean to sound dismissive, but START WRITING. There is NO SUCH THING as "too late" in the arts.
—Patton Oswalt

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
—Miles Davis

October

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.
—Miles Davis

You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.
That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
—Octavia E. Butler

You don’t start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it’s good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it.
That’s why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
—Octavia E. Butler

If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn’t matter a damn how you write.
—Somerset Maugham

I don’t want to fade away, I want to flame away - I want my death to be an attraction, a spectacle, a mystery. A work of art.
—Jennifer Egan

All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.
—Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.
—Anton Chekhov

I pretend that I’m sitting across from somebody—telling them a story, and I don’t want them to get up til it’s finished.
—James Patterson

Video: The Flying Man

The Fast Friday Interviews: Emma G Rose

Emma G. Rose

Tell me about yourself, Emma.

I'm an author from Maine and my name isn't Stephen King, although I do have a house down the street from the high school where he used to teach. I also went to the college where he studied journalism. I enrolled thinking I was going to become a kick-ass girl reporter, like Nellie Bly, and then I spent a Christmas Eve on the shores of an icy river waiting for rescue divers to pull a body out of the water. That's about when I decided that journalism wasn't the path for me. I knew I wanted to write, but I didn't know what. So I just wrote everything. Resumes, blog posts, product descriptions, short stories, web content, poems, Instagram captions, books. These days, I've managed to narrow the list down a bit. When I'm not writing novels, I write mostly web content, whitepapers and blog posts for companies with big ideas.

Tell me about your current Book: 

Nothing's Ever Lost launched in July of this year, on my 32nd birthday. It's a story about two teenagers trying to hold their friendship together while adventuring through the afterlife. The main characters are basically the 17-year-old versions of me and my friend "Jack." They're snarky and silly, and trying really really hard not to show anyone how supremely uncertain they are about basically everything. I call it a YA novel, and it mostly is, but adults seem to like it just as much as teenagers do.

When a car accident kills them (probably), a pair of teenagers must brave the afterlife, or else...there's no or else there's just the afterlife and all its strangeness. I guess the other option would be to sit down on the ground and just wait for the world to end. But that doesn't sound like much of an adventure, does it?

What are you working on now? 

Two things. Thing 1 is an urban fantasy novel about an EMT named Eric. After recovering from a freak accident, Eric starts seeing ghosts. At least, he thinks they're ghosts. They only seem to show up when one of his patients is close to death. Speaking of Death, he's not thrilled about Eric's newfound abilities. Humans aren't supposed to see the souls of the nearly departed and they're certainly not supposed to talk to them. Where did Eric get this inhuman power? Can Death put a stop to it before bureaucracy gets involved? If he doesn't solve the mystery quickly Eric may not be the only one who has to pay a price. Thing 2 is a secret for the moment. I can't tell you anything about it except that I'm a co-author and it involves a jackalope, a man who doesn't know who he wants to be and a violin that turns into a fiddle at the slightest provocation.

Tell us something that people don't generally know about you: 

That's a hard one. I'm pretty much an open book...oh, the G in my name doesn't stand for anything. It's just a letter.

What is a favorite lesson you have learned about the business of writing? 

Writing may be a solitary task, but it's the only part of the process that is. You might think a writer's life is just sitting in a room alone pounding the keys all day, but you also have to talk and listen and network and edit and market and all of that involves other people.

What is the best piece of writing advice you give to new authors? 

Writer's block is not a valid excuse for not writing because it doesn't actually exist. If you think you have it, you either don't know what you're trying to say or are so worried about saying it perfectly that you can't get anything out at all. The cure for both problems is writing until you figure them out. So really, there's no excuse for not writing.

Links:

Email: emmagauthor@gmail.com
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Emma-G-Rose/e/B07MNGQY9V/
Blog: https://www.emmagauthor.com/blog
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LifeImperative/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/emmagwriter
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/life_imperative/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDOYvY_7pMr4xIMtGJjnatw

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

You own everything that happened to you. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.
—Anne Lamott

First requirement of the writer is the ability to concentrate for long periods of time. Second...the wish to do so.
—Joyce Carol Oates

You don't write a song to sit there on a page. You write it to sing.
—Bob Dylan

You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing we call 'failure' is not falling down, but the staying down.
—Mary Pickford

You start out playing rock 'n' roll so you can have sex and do drugs, but you end up doing drugs so you can still play rock 'n' roll and have sex.
—Mick Jagger

If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area.
—David Bowie

If you're not getting older, you're dead.
—Tom Petty

Don’t rush or force the ending… . All you have to know is the next scene, or the next few scenes.
—Chuck Palahniuk

You can’t be a good writer without being a good thinker. This is a depressing thought for a writer.
—Andy Rooney

Deer Meet Darth Sprinkler

--Darth Sprinkler is on the job!

Declawed but not forgotten!

Preview: War of the Worlds

This looks really good. Kinda steampunk.

Images that Inspire

Images that Inspite

Quotes of the Week

If your book doesn't keep you up nights writing it, it won't keep anyone up nights reading it.
—James A. Michener

Don't be a writer; be writing.
—William Faulkner

Writers get paid for what other people get scolded for— daydreaming.
—Richard Walter

The best stories don’t come from good vs. bad but from good vs. good.
—Leo Tolstoy

An artist's only concern is to shoot for some kind of perfection, and on his own terms, not anyone else's.
—J.D. Salinger

Boys think girls are like books, if the cover doesn't catch their eye they won't bother to read what's inside.
—Marilyn Monroe

Somebody said to me, 'But the Beatles were anti-materialistic.' That's a huge myth. John and I literally used to sit down and say, 'Now, let's write a swimming pool.'
—Paul McCartney

The worst enemy of creativity is self-doubt.
—Sylvia Plath

Good books don't give up all their secrets at once.
—Stephen King

Fuel for Writing: Time Passing

-- As I write a time travel novel this becomes very interesting...

Sunday Signing!

I will be signing books this Sunday, September 15th, 1pm to 3pm at Hylton Performing Arts Center. With some fellow authors that are worth meeting!

Stop in and say hi or just point and laugh!

• Where: Hylton Performing Arts Center - 10960 George Mason Cir, Manassas, VA 20109
• When: Sunday, September 15th, 1pm to 3pm
• Who: You and people like you!
• Why: Because you love to read and we love to write!

Come and see me! 

Meet the Author

I will be signing books this Saturday, September 14th, 11am to 3pm at McKay's Books in Manassas VA. With some fellow authors that are worth meeting!

Stop in and say hi or just point and laugh!

• Where: McKay's Books, 8345 Sudley Road, Manassas, Virginia 20109
• When: Saturday, September 14th, 11am to 3pm
• Who: Several local authors
• Erica Rue
• Stephanie Mirro
• TR Dillon
• Martin Wilsey
• Why: Because you love to read and we love to write!

Come and see us! 

10 Worst Pieces of Writing Advice

-- Here is the list. Worst advice EVAR!

1) Quit your job.
2) Editors are optional.
3) Hard work is Toxic.
4) Do what famous authors do.
5) Buy this course and be a successful author.
6) Fanfic will grow your audience.
7) You must write every day.
8) Traditional Publishing is the only way to go.
 9) Beta readers will steal your work.
10) Write what sells.

Images that inspire

Quotes of the Week

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
—Jim Morrison

Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.
—Annie Dillard

I write to dream; to connect with other human beings; to record; to clarify; to visit the dead. I have a kind of primitive need to leave a mark on the world. Also, I have a need for money.
—Mary Karr

Begin with an individual, and before you know it you have created a type; begin with a type, and you find you have created – nothing.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald

If you let conditions stop you from working, they'll always stop you.
—James T. Farrell

You should read and read, to find out what kind of writer you want to be, and then write and write, to find out what kind of writer you actually are. The two are often two different things.
—Colson Whitehead

Write what you like; there is no other rule.
—O. Henry

I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.
—Anne Frank

Damn the rules, it's the Feeling that Counts.
—John Coltrane

If you want to fly, you have to give up the shit that weighs you down.
—Toni Morrison

There is no friend as loyal as a book.
—Ernest Hemingway

In literature, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth, you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
—C.S. Lewis

Friday Film Short: Goliath

Art That Inspires

Stay afraid, but do it anyway. What’s important is the action. Just do it and the confidence will follow.
—Carrie Fisher

The conscious mind is the editor, and the subconscious mind is the writer.
—Steve Martin

My advice is not to wait to be struck by an idea. If you’re a writer, you sit down and damn well decide to have an idea.
—Andy Rooney

On Twitter, there exists a popular hashtag: #amwriting. Every time I see it, I want to yell: no you’re not!
—Dani Shapiro

The more you read, the more you will write. The better the stuff you read, the better the stuff you will write.
—Annie Dillard

The glory of a good tale is that it is limitless and fluid; a good tale belongs to each reader in its own particular way.
—Stephen King

Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to that one.
—John Steinbeck

The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.
—Arthur Miller

You want to be a writer? A writer is someone who writes every day — so start writing.
—Shonda Rhimes

Happy Labor Day

Now that I am a full-time author, I try to take actual holidays off. I was going to try and take weekends off when I first retired. That never happened. I write most holidays too.

--Happy Labor Day!

Don't Comic While Hungry

DUST: Colony

Images that Inspire

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

Talent is helpful in writing, but guts are absolutely essential.
—Jessamyn West

Every little detail you can smuggle with you into your fiction makes your world more real to your reader.
—Neil Gaiman

If your fidelity to perfectionism is too high, you never do anything.
—David Foster Wallace

To defend what you’ve written is a sign that you are alive.
—William Zinsser

I don't care if a reader hates one of my stories, just as long as he finished the book.
—Roald Dahl

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.
—Catherine Drinker Bowen

Whether a character in your novel is full of choler, bile, phlegm, blood or plain old buffalo chips, the fire of life is in there, too, as long as that character lives.
—James Alexander Thom

Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say.
—Barbara Kingsolver

You don’t actually have to write anything until you’ve thought it out. This is an enormous relief, and you can sit there searching for the point at which the story becomes a toboggan and starts to slide.
—Marie de Nervaud

Keep a small can of WD-40 on your desk—away from any open flames—to remind yourself that if you don’t write daily, you will get rusty.
—George Singleton

Just write every day of your life. Read intensely. Then see what happens. Most of my friends who are put on that diet have very pleasant careers.
—Ray Bradbury