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JWTroemner.com

The Blog

  • Writing Exercise: Out of Costume

    Two of your characters, who are the most bitter of enemies most of the time, unwittingly sit down and have a chat. Maybe they met up on Chat Roulette (is that even a thing anymore?), maybe they’re a superhero and supervillain who ran into each other out of costume. Whatever the case, at least one… Read more

  • Fresh on the shelves!

    In case you hadn’t heard, Michelle Hauck and I are working together as freelance editors. Today I’m proud to announce that not one, but two of our clients just hit the shelves!  Kyoko M. just came out with her first book, The Black Parade, an urban fantasy NA thriller with a holy twist.  One bullet… Read more

  • People Watching

    I was digging through some old notebooks this evening when I found a page of People Watching. You can’t ever hear enough about this: writers, artists, filmmakers– no matter what your brand of creativity, it’s imperative that you go out and actually look at people. I’m not talking about the standard stuff– you know, the… Read more

  • Women who kicked ass

    I ended up doing a lot of research for yesterday’s post, and editing some of that out. One of the things I found was a list of women that you don’t really hear much about– not the wives of famous people, but women who held what I fondly think of as “non-traditional” careers. (Pulled from http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/figures.htm)… Read more

  • Changing the background

    If you look at the majority of non-modern fantasy, be it medieval, pseudo-victorian, what have you, you’ll notice a pattern: everybody’s white and straight. If genderqueer or homosexuality is brought up, it’s with a heaping helping of homophobia and transphobia; if people of color are included, you can expect to see racism that would make… Read more

  • Stealing from another house

    It’s no secret that I’ve got a bit of a sore spot regarding certain elements in fiction: specifically, I’m frustrated by a glut of fiction featuring Tolkien’s Elves/Dwarves/Men, the standard Vampires/Werewolves civil war, the obsession with Norse and Greek mythology. It’s not that these elements are bad– not by a long shot. But I’ve seen… Read more