Category: Uncategorized
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Travel and Fantasy World Building
Like all works of fiction, fantasy stories revolve around characters and plot. However, in a fantasy novel, the world itself can also be a major part of the story. A good fantasy book sweeps the reader into another realm, perhaps a place of enchantment or magic, maybe a land of…
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Those Little Formatting Oddities
I love books. I love libraries. I love bookstores. That beautiful paper fragrance in a second-hand bookstore is a wonderful thing. When I was a kid, in addition to visiting our local library, my family would occasionally drive to downtown San Diego to visit the huge public library. It was…
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Critiques During a Lockdown – Part 2
As I discussed in a prior blog post, writing during this current pandemic should be easy. We’ve all got so much extra time at home now. For someone of my…ahem…mature age, the “shelter-at-home” lifestyle means that I am pretty much in front of a screen all week. Loads of time…
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The Problem with Prologues
If you’ve read 60th Hour, you may wonder why the first chapter takes place twenty years before the rest of the story. In a book that focuses on time, why have that outlier right at the beginning of the book? The astute among you (who read the title of this…
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Our Next Exclamation Mark Anthology
When Emerald Cove decided to try its first themed anthology (Kidnapped!), I expected all our stories to be similar. After all, we were writing on the same theme. To my mind, kidnapping stories followed a standard structure: a person is abducted, often for ransom, and the story revolves around what…
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To Sequel or Not: One Writer’s Dilemma
If you want your characters to live happily ever after, you’d better be cautious about writing a sequel. Case in point. The Star Wars movies. The end of the Star Wars trilogy back in the early 1980’s was a joyous moment for the heroes of the story and their fans…
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Zooming Around the Cove
We did it! We held our first Zoom meeting of the Emerald Cove Press writer’s critique group this week. The meeting lasted much longer than expected (about three hours), but a lot of the discussion involved logistics for the best way to conduct our reviews and provide written comments going…
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Writing Critiques During a Lockdown
What do you get when you put five authors and the latest drafts of their fiction works in their local Denny’s restaurant? Nothing. Denny’s is closed for dine-in service in Southern California due to the pandemic. What you used to get was the monthly Emerald Cove writer’s critique group meeting.…
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A Firm Foothold in Unreality
Why write fantasy stories? For me, there is an easy answer and a deeper answer. The easy answer: writing them is fun. Ever since I first read the Hobbit when I was 12, I’ve loved reading and writing fantasy. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed books in other genres, such as…
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Can a Book be too Timely?
My new novel is a problem. It’s a fantasy novel. The first draft was pretty much finished by March, but it needs a major rewrite before it can see the light of day. I also need to do some historical research because one of the characters has a connection to…
Susan and John Ruff, Fantasy Authors 