Susan and John Ruff, Fantasy Authors

Tag: writing

  • The Other Side of Writing Critiques

    Last Friday, I talked about the importance of finding good critics to help evaluate your manuscripts before you publish. This week, I want to discuss the other side of that issue. How can you be a helpful critic for your friends and fellow authors? Let me confess right away that…

  • One Method to Overcome Writing Malaise

    Why is it hard for many of us to write fiction during this pandemic? Several of my author friends have expressed difficulty getting motivated right now. One friend, who is normally a prolific writer, told me that he has not written anything since April. At our most recent Emerald Cove…

  • How Did You Discover Your Favorite Genre?

    If you’re an author or a reader of fiction (or both), I’d love to hear the story of how you discovered your favorite literary genre. Feel free to leave a comment after this post or write a comment on Facebook to let me know. My favorite genre is fantasy. (Yeah,…

  • One Hundred Words to Defeat Writer’s Block

    As authors, we all know that our craft is part inspiration and part discipline. Inspiration is the fun part — those wonderful ideas and words that flow into our heads when we are writing, daydreaming, walking, or doing absolutely nothing. We all love it when just the right phrasing or…

  • 99 Cents for a Filched Fish

    My sixth grade teacher once asked the class what grade we thought he should give each of us for a particular assignment. I was a straight-A pupil at the time, but trying to be humble, I responded that my assignment deserved a C. When the teacher gave me my first…

  • Making an Old Story New

    Back in the early 1990’s, before self-publishing was common, before I even owned a cell phone, I wrote a fantasy novel called Feast of Five Crowns. I dutifully attempted to get my manuscript published in the old fashioned way. The rejection letters I received were very polite. One publisher told…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…