point of view

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

POINT OF VIEW: Following the Plan

by
plan - pixabay

Last January, I announced that I had a plan. Going all in on my agent search. Writing every morning from 5:30 to 7:00, to maximize my writer productivity. And putting together another novel. So here we are, almost at the end of 2020, and I figured it was time to look back and reassess. In March, COVID-19 took us by storm, and nothing has been the same since. But I stuck to my plan, through the lockdown and everything that followed. I submitted Dropnauts to more than 140 agents, and so far I’ve had two full manuscript requests to show … Read more

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

POINT OF VIEW: Navigating the Interregnums

by
pause - pixabay

interregnum /ˌin(t)ərˈreɡnəm/ noun1) a period when normal government is suspended, especially between successive reigns or regimes.2) an interval or pause between two periods of office or other things. The world is holding its breath. As I sit here writing this, I find myself living through a number of nested interregnums. We’re still in the throes of the Great Pause, as the world tries to figure out how to live with, and ultimately get to living without, Covid-19. Here in the US, we’re in the interregnum between administrations, holding our breath and waiting for the madness of King Trump to come … Read more

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

POINT OF VIEW: After the War

by
war - deposit photos

So I didn’t “win” Pitch Wars. My regular readers will know that I first entered this annual mentorship contest last year with “Dropnauts,” hoping to snag a mentor who would help me rework the manuscript for the Pitch Wars Agent Showcase in the spring. I didn’t even get a request from my four chosen mentors last year, and it sent me into a spiral of despair and not-writing that lasted for months. I wasn’t even going to enter this year, but a friend encouraged me to try again. So I buckled down and powered through my latest novel, wrapping up the … Read more

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

POINT OF VIEW: Writing Hope

by
forest path - hope - pixabay

As a sci-fi author, I have written a number of times before about our responsibility to forecast the future, both to warn the world about what might be coming, and to share my hopes for what we might become. In these last few years, I have written four separate columns about the idea of hope and writing. In these fraught several weeks before the US election, I find myself hoping against hope for change, and then fearing the worst. Every day, there’s a new poll that reinforces that hope, and a new piece of news that dashes it. Biden’s up … Read more

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

POINT OF VIEW: Choosing the Perfect Title

by
Book Title / Muse - Deposit Photos

So you’ve finished your book, and it’s time to change your working title into your forever one – the one that will stick with your newly finished work for the rest of it’s happy little book life… assuming your Publisher doesn’t change it later. So how do you choose the perfect title? At their best, titles do a few key things for your book. They make a bold statement about what the reader will find inside. They convey (along with the font and cover art) the genre of your book. And they tease the reader and invite them inside. A … Read more

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

POINT OF VIEW: The Mutable Future

by
crystal ball - pixabay

I just finished a new short story called “High Seven,” which takes place 150 years from now in a future where the world has devolved into a series of city-states that are holding on as best they can against the ravages of climate change. My view of the future has dimmed markedly over the last twenty years, and even more so over the last four. It’s hard now to see a future that’s not defined by climate change, one way or another. I still have hope, and my stories reflect that, but it’s a hope that somehow we’ll manage to … Read more

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Point of View: Waiting for #100

by
100

100 is a magic number for authors. There’s an old saying – let’s call it the “Rule of 100” – that you’ll get 100 rejections before you make your first sale. I had maybe twenty, so it’s certainly not a hard and fast rule. But it does give aspiring authors a reason to keep going – what if that golden ticket is just around the corner, and you gave up at 99? They say something similar about trying to get an agent. Agents are the gatekeepers of the mainstream publishing industry – it’s nearly impossible to get noticed by the … Read more

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

POINT OF VIEW: Writing Too Fast

by
speed - pixabay

Is there such a thing as writing too fast? That occurred to me this week as I really hit my stride on my latest novel, “Twin Moons Rising.“ I am zooming through this one, which feels great, especially since I hope to submit it for Pitch Wars next month. I’ve been writing an average of 1000 words a day these last couple of months, but lately I’ve been reaching as high as 2000 – NaNoWriMo levels of writing output. In June, I shifted my writing time to first thing in the morning. I usually get up at about 5:30 AM … Read more

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

POINT OF VIEW: Writing Without a Win

by
Waiting room - deposit photos

It’s been 7,464 hours since my last sale. Not that I’m counting. Honestly, it’s partly my own fault. In October last year fell into a bit of a … let’s call it a rough patch, since we’re not dealing with clinical depression here, and I don’t want to minimize those who suffer from it. Still, I basically stopped writing for months. I’d just finished and published the last of my two trilogies, and had wrapped up a novel, submitted it to Pitch Wars, and then utterly failed to even attract a full manuscript request. Since then, I’ve thrown myself into … Read more

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

POINT OF VIEW: Put a Wolf Under the Table

by
wolf snarl - deposit photo

Your characters are on a quest for the fabled Sword of Bighands. They’re sitting around a thick iron-banded wooden table at the Borderlands Pub, a dark, seedy local hangout where you can buy anything from drugs to human slaves. Or a really good guide to get you out of Bordertown and across the great Scorched Desert, to the fabled Treasure Lands across that hot, dry, shimmering expanse of red sand. Your characters are talking about the long trek ahead, sharing war stories, and sipping on curiously ice-cold mead. And they’re absolutely bored out of their gourds. So what can you … Read more