I and other authors such as David Day, Tim Waggoner, Gary A. Braunbeck, Janet Harriett, and Sarah Hans recently formed the new Ohio chapter of the Horror Writers Association. You can find the new group online at https://ohiohwa.wordpress.com/ and on Facebook. At present, the group is holding quarterly meetings; the next will be on November 4, […]
The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing: Traitor to the Nation: Vol. 1: The Pox Party tells the story of Octavian, a young slave boy who’s a living experiment conducted by the Novanglian College of Lucidity. Octavian’s life as an experiment began when the head of the College (Mr. Gitney) purchased Octavian’s pregnant, teenaged mother Cassiopeia at […]
I launched my Patreon a little over 5 months ago, and it’s been steadily growing. Through it, my patrons receive: Monthly chats with professional authors, editors, and agents Weekly poems Weekly writing prompts Monthly short stories Monthly novel excerpts Monthly writing articles Monthly manuscript critiques I’m doing my best to provide a good value to […]
Hi everyone! If you’ve been enjoying the writing articles and reviews I’ve been posting on my website, please consider supporting me at Patreon! The goal of my Patreon is to provide my readers with great content while enabling me to focus on the kind of work I’d most like to be spending my time on: […]
What’s the most difficult part of writing a fiction story? The beginning, middle, or end? The answer to that question will vary widely depending on the writer and his or her particular fiction project. Most of us start writing a story or novel for a particular reason: we had a compelling dream, or we overheard […]
On May 6th from 11am-1pm, I’ll be leading a free writing workshop for teens and adults at the Pickerington Library in Ohio. “The Plot Thickens” is a two hour discussion on the mechanics of various plots and narrative structures and how they can be applied to fiction, games, and nonfiction. Each of my workshops includes discussion […]
The MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University in Greensburg, PA is an unusual one. First and foremost is the program’s emphasis on popular rather than literary fiction. Many traditional MFA programs scorn science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, young adult literature, and romance; Seton Hill embraces these genres. Other programs may not explicitly […]
Right now, I’m in the process of putting together the writing workshop track for Context 23. The convention has grown considerably in the past four years, and all our data points to that being the result of expanding the writing programming. A decade ago, Context had a writing workshop that was similar to the type […]
You’ve reached a certain level in your writing and you realize that you need feedback from people other than your friends in order to improve your work. Perhaps you’ve been taking creative writing classes, and you sense that your well-meaning classmates just don’t “get” the genre fiction you’ve been writing; you yearn for constructive feedback. […]
