Posting old fantasy fiction can be an exercise in humility for a writer. I often cringe as I read through previous versions of stories from early in my “career”. If I can see an improvement in craft, however, it makes the embarrassment easier to bear. You’ve had a chance to read the opening scene from [...]
A peek at the new “Relvan’s Rescue”
Filed under Fiction, Writing Journal on March 26, 2009
Tagged: fantasy fiction, Relvan's Rescue
Relativism in fantasy fiction
Filed under Soapbox on March 17, 2009
Tagged: character motivation, fantasy fiction, relativism
A common praise I hear of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series is its “realism.” Take this recent comment from a mailing list I subscribe to: By real, I mean that there is no good or evil, everyone has a motive for his or her actions…. That isn’t realism, that’s [...]
Pruning posts
Filed under Site News on March 3, 2009
Tagged: blogs, fantasy fiction, posts
This blog turns 5 next month. Over those five years, I’ve written posts about a lot of different subjects, and not all of them are related to fantasy fiction. Topics have included events in my personal life, the NBA, Dungeons and Dragons, movie reviews, game design, and various geek interests. Some of these posts are [...]
Writing fantasy fiction in a recession
Filed under Market Report on February 17, 2009
Tagged: book sales, fantasy fiction, recession, writing
Is an economic recession a bad time to enter the world of writing? Alex Moore asked this great question in her comment to my reaction to a shrinking market. Intrigued, I decided to do a little research. Are books recession-proof? Conventional wisdom suggests that the entertainment-value-to-cost ratio of a book makes it an attractive buy [...]
Reaction to a shrinking market
Filed under Market Report on February 3, 2009
Tagged: fantasy, fantasy fiction, Realms of Fantasy, short stories
The news that Realms of Fantasy will cease publication with their April 2009 issue has caused me to rethink the submission strategy I employed for my fantasy fiction short stories. The professional market is rapidly shrinking. “Professional” is defined as any market that pays a minimum of $.05/word (per the current membership requirements of the [...]
