Stuff! Thinnngs
I’ve been meaning to get this blog back up and running for a while now, but going to the Write Stuff event (hosted by the always-wonderful Literary Dundee) was the final push. Here I am again! Since it’s mostly family and…
Valerie
Escapism and settings
I’ve been reading (well, listening to) Ready Player One this week, and it’s made me think about settings. Okay—lots of things make me think about settings, but the book is what inspired the blog post. Ready Player One takes place in our…
The Hunger Games post
For a while now I’ve been promising the amazing Ingrid that I’d write “that post” about the Hunger Games. You know—the one that compares the books to the movies and finds the movies wanting. Until Mockingjay Pt 2 came out,…
Reading as a (not yet) young adult
This post was going to be titled “reading as a child”, but I was twelve once, and while I might look back now and label who I was then a child, I wouldn’t have done so at the time. Furthermore, I volunteered with middle…
Fourth manuscript “finished”!
Just a quick update to say I’ve finished the first draft of my fourth manuscript. This one’s a young adult fantasy novel, and it’s been a lot of fun to write. I already know I need to make some pretty big…
Seasons, moods, places
In November of 2014, I moved further north than I’d ever lived before—to Dundee, on the east coast (ish) of Scotland. There were a lot of warnings about the weather, and how oppressive it could be in winter, but my husband…
Proposed new fantasy races
Orcs. Elves. Trolls. Goblins. You know them… I know them… we all know them. Reading high fantasy and playing fantasy games—tabletop or system-based—produces a familiarity with fantasy races that can make them seem just a bit, well… tedious. Hence, I propose…
Place names, Dragon Age, and originality
Coming up with fantasy place names that haven’t been used extensively elsewhere is an ongoing challenge in my writing life. I don’t want to name my glittering empire after a quiet village in England, after all, but I don’t want to use so many…
An Abundance of Romances
Lately I’ve heard more & more people say that the sheer amount of romance in various media (mainly YA, but other things too) is unnecessary. I agree. I shivered with pleasure at the lack of romance in Pacific Rim (let viewers decide how to…
Seeing things done well (or: fantastic hooks & where to find them)
Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff tells the story of a book critic whose childhood love of language has been spoiled by a lifetime of reading. We had to read it for senior honors English, and nothing has been…