Genre Happenings

The Wagon Wheel of Writing Historical Fiction

How many times have you heard the phrase Those who don’t know their history are destined to repeat it? And how often did you suffer through history class after history class, only to be inundated with a laundry list of names, dates, and places that meant absolutely nothing to you?

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For Writers

I’d Rather Be Writing

I became a writer because I wanted . . . well . . . to write. But after five years in this business, I’ve learned that writers aren’t just writers. They are creators, editors, designers and, yes, even marketers. Most publishing houses require authors to actively participate in getting the word out about their new releases.

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Making A Scene

The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations, Part 1

The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations by Georges Polti was first published in 1917. The concept of the book is that there are only thirty-six basic plots in all of literature. Polti’s idea was not new. In brief, the idea had been bandied about by Carlo Gozzi (playwright who saw his Turandot turned into an opera) and picked up by Schiller (who translated Turandot into German) and Goethe. But Polti was struck enough by the idea to take a hard look at the...

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Author By Night

Night-owl or Vampire-slayer?

A couple weeks ago on a gorgeous spring afternoon, I threw open the heavy velvet drapes in my bedroom and cracked the sliding glass doors. I fell down on my bed and crawled beneath the crisp sheets. The sun through the transom was warm on my face.

It was a glorious day for sleeping.

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