Some say the world will end in fireI think the entire northern hemisphere is having a hot flash this week. I'm suffering from a little bit of schadenfreude. I frequently find myself glad that I'm not in Arizona anymore, but especially on days in whic...

Usefully unreliable narratorsReaders (myself included) love to discover things as the narrator does, peering over her shoulder as she shines her flashlight into the unknown. The problem is how to figure out a scenario when the person telling you abou...

Demonic rituals: bad idea?Neither Kit Melbourne nor Susan Stillwater are into killing people to power blood magic rituals (even though Susan sort of does it accidentally at the end of Alternate Susan.) Killing people or animals in sacrifices for dark...

Novels and other nacreous creationsOCEAN is an acronym describing the five basic personality traits that researchers use to categorize people. The last N is neuroticism, which gets a bad rap, although it's a fantastic survival trait. I'm pretty nerou...

The Magic of Lost and FoundThis past week I found something I thought I'd lost (phone holder) and lost something I thought I'd had forever (plastic splint). So often in stories, the macguffin drives the plot, and so rarely, the macguffin gets misplac...

Click on the corresponding image to download the first book in each series free.When fantasy and new science combineI was just listening to a podcast about how our brains process information. There's a blind mountaineer who uses an electrical interfa...

Where names come fromI was driving down some back roads this weekend and passed by two small lanes, one on either side of each other. On one side is Starvegut and the other side is Sunstone. Even though they are probably equally pleasant, I don't thi...

The fragility of creativityI'm 18,000 words into KM11 (working title of the sequel to Wyvern's Sigil) and I know that at least 80% of what I have so far will be deleted. I've written one scene five different times and none of them feel right.There ar...

Ghosts that put glitter on ceiling fan bladesApril Fool's Day is one of my favorite holidays. I love practical jokes. Like the time I put a tub tint in the shower head so my cousin had a pink shower, or the time my brother made a Christian Rock stati...

The Nuts and Bolts of Novel WritingEvery time I write a novel, it feels like the first time. Some people say they are “planners” who outline everything, and I did this once (Parasitic Souls), and other people are “pantsers” as in “fly by the seat of...