Categories:
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater (Book 1 of a cycle of four books) is about magic and yearning. The main characters, all teenagers of 16 or 17 years, try to solve a magical mystery while they struggle […]
Categories:
After working through the beta readers’ comments on the first draft, I solicited another review from someone who hadn’t seen the manuscript before. This isn’t a beta reader exactly. Is there such a thing as a gamma-reader? The […]
Categories:
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke is a dreamlike mystery that unfolds like a rose: first the petals are tightly closed, but as they open one by one, a new flower is revealed. At the start, the protagonist, who narrates […]
Categories:
I usually have at least one book I’m reading (or listening to) — often more than one. As I walk around the city or work out in the gym, audiobooks keep me company. And curling up in bed […]
Categories:
I cook a lot. And I like cooking. The pandemic hasn’t made me yearn for restaurants or do a lot of takeout (though I do worry about my friends who work in restaurants). I just keep on cooking. […]
Categories:
Where do gods come from? Cities have had gods for millennia, but how do the gods of cities come into being? It’s a messy process and, like a turtle egg hatching on the beach, there are always predators […]
Categories:
And now for vampire lingo… Vampires are obsessed with eternal life and their elitism, in that they have attained immortal life, and they believe that this is because they somehow deserve it. After all, not everyone who’s bitten […]
Categories:
Werewolves love and hate the moon. She gives them freedom on their Night, but rules their lives, even when it’s not the Night. She can be a cruel mistress. She gives them amazing strength and magical abilities (like […]
Categories:
I was challenged by my sharp-eyed editor to reconsider how vampires and werewolves describe themselves and their world. It would be more intriguing, she said, if the werewolves and vampires have their own lingo such that it takes […]
Categories:
I remember going to a lecture by Neil Gaiman in 2017 in which he said (I’m paraphrasing) that the way to write is to start writing, and don’t stop, don’t fix, just keep going until it’s done. The […]
Recent Comments