In chapter one, Father Saren tells Cassian about the concept of “jessy,” which is the sylued word for “purpose.” Your jessy is that creative thing you do – even just privately – that makes you feel like you. It doesn’t have to be what you do for a living,...
There was a D&D game that we played in my dorm room at Emerson in 1989 that we never finished. About a year later I started up a new game with one of the same players, and he asked if he could keep the treasure and experience he’d gained...
I love talking about the stories and answering reader questions. There’s one question that my beta readers asked that has been cropping up again with Kindle readers, so let’s address it: “Why so many f-bombs?” Yes, one of our heroes, Timriel Jackson, reeeeally loves the word “fuck”. It is...
One of the criticisms that I received in the first draft of the manuscript was that the genders were imbalanced. While the characters See, Rachel and Zorai are strong women with their own goals and the agency to pursue them, they are still outnumbered by the male characters and,...
I asked the first beta readers of “The Elect Stories,” a handful of questions about themes that stood out to them. I expected to hear things like “good vs. evil” and hoped to hear things like “fate vs. free will,” because those themes are both genre standards and very...
For me, the hardest part of writing this book is talking about it now that it is written. I just wrote an entire novel so it may sound strange that I have trouble putting together a few more words on the subject, but that’s the truth. Part of me...
This weekend marks a month since we released the first chapter of “The Elect Stories” — and we can’t thank you enough for the positive feedback. Your support means everything. As we hit this one-month mark, we also roll into “Phase Two” (though, we’ve never actually called it that)....
I recently joined GoodReads and according to them, I have hundreds of Facebooks friends over there. Stop in and sit a spell! I even posted the first scene from chapter one of “The Elect Stories” for your reading pleasure!
I enjoy working with other writers as a coach, editor or general sounding board. It’s something that I do quite a lot with my consulting service. As with any coach, I apparently have some favorite aphorisms that come up more often than others. One that comes up a lot...
The first chapter of “The Elect Stories” has been available for just a couple of days, but already I have been answering questions about my writing or, more particularly, one word of my writing. One word used repeatedly. “Why so many f-bombs?” Yes, Timriel, one of our protagonists, has...
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