Short Film Friday: "Ji"

Images that Inspire

Short Film Friday: Home

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week.

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

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children isn't a good children's story in the slightest.
—C.S. Lewis

Fairy tales are more than true not because they tell us that dragons exist but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.
—G. K. Chesterton

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading. In order to write; a man will have to turn over half a library to make one book.
—Samuel Johnson

If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood.
—Peter Handke

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

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

The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon.
—Robert Cormier

Sometimes the most beautiful note, is the silence between the notes.
—Andrea Bocelli

I don't try to guess what a million people will like. It's hard enough to know what I like.
—John Houston

When you write—explode—fly apart – disintegrate! Then give time enough to think, cut, rework, and rewrite.
—Ray Bradbury

How to Suck at World Building

NEW Short Story: Piper's Run

Need Some Summer Reading?

Welcome to the Christmas in July E-Book Fair! There are over 100 PNR, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi e-books to choose from.

--Click the image for some great deal on great books, including STILL FALLING.

Quotes of the Week

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

Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.
—Kurt Vonnegut

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

Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid.
—Albert Einstein

Tuesday Tips: King on Writing

No Cat? No Way?

Short Film Friday: Laws of the Universe

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the week

When all else fails write what your heart tells you.
—Mark Twain

Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible.
—Doris Lessing

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

Whatever you describe to another person is also a revelation of who you are and who you think you are. You cannot describe anything without betraying your point of view, your aspirations, your fears, your hopes. Everything.
—James Baldwin

Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.
—Jimmy Stewart

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

I write only when inspirations strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o'clock sharp.
—W. Somerset Maugham

We who tell stories should be modest about the job, and not assume that because the reader is interested in the story, they’re interested in who’s telling it. A storyteller should be invisible, as far as I’m concerned.
—Philip Pullman

Tuesday Tips: Length

One question I hear a lot is "How Long is a novel?"

My answer is always, "The story should be as long as it needs to be to serve the Story."

That being said, here is a handy table.

New Audio Book! The Once Damned

Everything Ends… 

“Please don’t go.” She leaned her forehead on the nape of his neck. It was the most intimate moment he had ever experienced. His whole life had been violence and pain and death.

This hurt more than all of it.

“I must go. It is my final task. Live or die. The High Vestal must know the truth. I cannot do otherwise. I am finished hiding from the Queen. I am finished hiding from the truth, only to discover death hides from me.”

“They will try to stop you.”

“They will try."

--The novella is $.99 in Kindle and $4.80 for the Audio Edition (101 minutes!)

Cat and Computer

Summer Writing

This has been an odd summer so far. COVID has canceled all of my normal summer road trips and vacations. All my camping trips have been canceled as well. So we are staying home, staying in. Can't even go on our weekly summer movie dates at 11am on Tuesdays.

I have fallen into a new writing routine.

Instead of morning writing until lunch I am doing projects first thing to beat the heat. That is great for projects, but afternoon writing is not my best time.

I can still crank out a chapter but I miss the coffee. I don't want to make and drink a second pot a day so on Monday I will wait until noon to make a pot of coffee and see how that works.

--At least it's not 100 degrees in my den...

Short Film Friday: The Birch

Images that Inspire

Quotes of the Week

When asked, "How do you write?" I invariable answer, "One word at a time."
—Stephen King

I write to find what I have to say. I edit to figure out how to say it right.
—Cheryl Strayed

Writing is a socially acceptable form of getting naked in public.
—Paulo Coelho

Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.
—John Steinbeck

I only lie when I have to, but I have to a lot.
—Mark Twain (from Huckleberry Finn)

Write hard and clear about what hurts.
—Ernest Hemingway

You must write. It’s not enough to start by thinking. You become a writer by writing.
—R.K. Narayan

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