Susan and John Ruff, Fantasy Authors

Category: Uncategorized

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • When is an Hour Not an Hour?

    A large part of 60th Hour involves time. The driving force behind the narrative is the countdown to the calendar’s end. In addition, much of daily life in the Kingdom of Kenarin involves time or timekeeping. At some point during the worldbuilding for the story, the Kenarin day became 60…

  • How the Countdown Began

    “CHICHEN ITZA IN 2012 – THE END OF THE WORLDCON” That’s what the bid poster on the convention wall announced. The year was 1995, and John and I were on our honeymoon attending “Intersection,” the World Science Fiction Convention held in Glasgow, Scotland. What? You didn’t plan your wedding date…

  • When Lario Met Martha

    Lord Larrin’s Daughter was originally intended as a one-shot story, a light-hearted piece about medieval highwaymen kidnapping the wrong girl: Robinhood meets The Ransom of Red Chief with a little twist at the end. Even though John and I are primarily fantasy authors, it was not really a fantasy story.…