I’ve recently come to the unfortunate realization that nearly everything I’ve ever been passionate about is something nobody particularly wants to pay me to do. Drawing. Painting. Music. Carpentry. Writing. Apparently, when the universe was distributing interests, I wandered into the arts-and-crafts department and never found my way out. Why couldn’t I have developed aContinue reading “A Passion for the Impractical”
Tag Archives: creative-writing
I Tracked More Than Half a Million Amazon Keyword Rankings. Something Has Changed.
I know I am publishing a post outside my typical blogging schedule, but I’ve been working on this one for a while and feel it deserves a special place. For nearly four years, I have tracked where my books appear in Amazon search results. What began as a fairly simple attempt to understand whether readersContinue reading “I Tracked More Than Half a Million Amazon Keyword Rankings. Something Has Changed.”
The Ruins Beneath Belief
Governments, whether modern-day or fantastical, are all very good at pretending the past is dead. They build roads over old paths. They raise new temples on the bones of older shrines. They rename holy days, outlaw certain prayers, scrape symbols from door lintels, and teach children that whatever came before was foolishness at best andContinue reading “The Ruins Beneath Belief”
Quick update and a piece of gold
I know, I was doing really well with posting on time twice a week, and I’m slacking. This is late, but it still counts, as it was posted on Wednesday. Unfortunately, it is budget time in higher education, and the situation is especially grim this year. Thus, my time is being consumed by work, andContinue reading “Quick update and a piece of gold”
Koen’s release is amost here!
This is my last post before Koen: Quills from the Raven’s Nest releases on October 1. It’s hard to describe what this moment feels like, standing on this edge. Terror, exhilaration, sadness, joy, relief—it’s all there, tangled together. Will this book succeed or fail? I have a lot riding on it. It’s my first traditionallyContinue reading “Koen’s release is amost here!”
A Million Words in Lucardia
When I first set foot in Lucardia, I never imagined I would still be walking its shadowed roads a million words later. The very first scene I wrote was simple, almost innocent: a rainbow-barked tree within a cave, sparkling in the sunlight pouring through a fissure. At the time, I thought I was sketching theContinue reading “A Million Words in Lucardia”
Discipline, Passion, and the Molasses of Words
Lying in bed last night, I stumbled across a short interview between guitarist-virtuoso Steve Vai and Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins fame. (It still feels strange to call Billy a legend, since I remember when their first album came out.) The clip was from Billy’s new show, The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan. It remindedContinue reading “Discipline, Passion, and the Molasses of Words”
What Has My Writing Style Become After 20 Years?
After more than two decades of writing, I’ve started wondering what, exactly, my style has become. It’s not something I’ve spent much time defining, and truthfully, I’m still not sure I could point to a formula or philosophy that guides every decision I make on the page. But the question keeps returning—quietly, persistently—especially as IContinue reading “What Has My Writing Style Become After 20 Years?”
A Writer’s Note-to-Self
Dear Me, I know you’ve been wrestling with questions lately about your writing—specifically, how to balance the desire for external validation and writing for the sake of writing. Destiny of the Daystar is the fourth book in a series, and you can’t expect it to take off. You knew sales would be dismal. Yes, itContinue reading “A Writer’s Note-to-Self”
