Category: Opinion
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A Worldbuilding Balancing Act, or: my beef with Beau Brummell
I’ve talked a little bit about the research that goes into writing fantasy stories. Even if the world you’re writing in is not at all the one we live in, I tend to think it’s safe to pull at least a little bit from our world’s history. Would people with…
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Monsters and Metaphor, Part 2
To recap the previous post: There are a lot of horror stories that like to use monsters as a metaphor for people with mental illnesses. I prefer to think of the monsters as the mental illnesses themselves, whereas the people dealing with them are more the Buffy-esque badasses who deal…
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On Terms of Endearment
There’s a lot in the Urban Dragon series to offend people with delicate sensibilities: violence, language, gore, sexual assault, sex work, diversity, dick jokes, etc. So when my dad complained about my writing, I wasn’t surprised that he took offense so much as the thing he took offense about: I’d…
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Molly Grue and the Ghostbusters
When I read The Art of Wishing by Lindsay Ribar, I found myself getting angry– a pacing, seething, hissing fury. Not because I didn’t like the book, mind you. I absolutely loved it. And one of the things I loved most about the book is the very thing that inspired my outrage.
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The Labrador Test
I’d like to propose a new test. We’ve got a slew of them already. I’d like to add The Labrador Test: In which a female character can’t easily be replaced by an adorable dog that a male character is just so gosh-darn attached to. And dear God, I’m so sorry…
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Why secret identities make me see red
(Note: there are some vague spoilers for Daredevil and other titles in the MCU. I don’t get into too many specifics, but you have been warned.) I was watching the most recent season of Daredevil, and something struck me as off. It was surprising– I really enjoyed the first season,…
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How to talk about your novel
Writers have entire worlds swimming around in our heads, and we often have a hard time condensing something so huge into less than 100,000 words. This is why one of the hardest parts of trying to get published is often said to be writing a query letter or a synopsis. Often, we…
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What’s wrong with the Super Bowl?
Full disclosure: Tonight I’m writing my blog post from the Phoenix, AZ, International Airport. I’m writing here instead of in an airplane heading home because Super Bowl-induced air traffic caused some delays in my flight here, and I wound up missing the transfer to Indianapolis. There was also rain involved,…
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Being a Grown-Up
A few weeks ago, I celebrated my 25th birthday, and a few weeks before that, my sixth wedding anniversary. You’d think that at some point, I’d start feeling kind of like an adult or something, right?
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When to say no
Creon: My dear, I woke up one morning and found myself King of Thebes. God knows, there were other things I loved in life more than power. Antigone: Then you should have said no. Creon: Yes, I could have done that. Only, I felt that it would have been cowardly.…
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