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POINT OF VIEW: On Aging and Writing

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Today is my fifty-third birthday. When I was younger, someone who was my current age was old. They dressed in slacks and cardigans, walked a lot slower, and ate things like green beans and beef stroganoff. Now that I’m fifty-three, it doesn’t seem so old anymore. Part of this is the Boomers’ fault – they refused to act their age, and brought their jeans and workout routines and chopped salads with them into their golden years. Being fifty-three now isn’t what it was four decades ago. And part of it is that I just don’t feel it. I vividly remember … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Shouting Into the Void

Shouting Into the Void - Deposit Photos

Every author reading this knows what this column will be about, just from reading the title. Well, at least every self-published author. You have done everything right. You have a website, a blog, a facebook profile (and page/group!). You’re on Twitter, the ‘gram, Slack, Zoom, Discord, and a hundred other apps you probably forgot you downloaded. You’ve writen your ass off, paid a professional editor, and have created or commissioned covers that would make the Gods weep. They ought to – they cost you enough. You have Nanowrimo’d, workshopped, critique-grouped and edited your writing to a finely honed skill, and … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Damage

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“What’s your damage, Heather?” We all carry damage around with us in some way, shape or form, like an unwanted hitchhiker. Damage from things that were done to us as children. Damage from things we did to others. Damage from the world and society at large. I carry the damage of homophobia. Of being called a faggot and queer and a sissy, damage from the nasty looks straight guys sometimes gave me when I was a teenager. I carry the damage of shattered hopes, dreams, and expectations, and the damage of a few hundred writing rejections that feed my imposter … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Stanislavski-ing My Characters

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Constantin Stanislavski came uo with a theory of acting that I’m loosely going to describe as “become the character” – a method of connecting with the personality of the person you’re playing, and learning how to think and feel like they did. It’s also known as Method Acting, and taken to its extreme, it can mean basically living as the person you are portraying. As folks who regularly read this column know (thanks to both of you!), I’m working on going deep with my characterization. Lately, I’ve found myself thinking about method actors and how they get into the heads … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Breaking Out of the Present

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Writing the future is hard. We’re embedded in the present. We have all this amazing tech now, but most of it will be gone in fifty years, evolved into something new. Who could have predicted some of these things fifty years ago? Sci-fi writers, that’s who. It’s what we do, but it’s a lot harder than it looks. Think about the world fifty years ago. There were no personal computers, no iphones, no facebook, no floppy disks, no emails, no post-it notes, no tik tok, and no space shuttles. The web wasn’t created until the 90’s, and text messaging started … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: 2021 Is Here – What Now?

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Last week, I talked about some writing successes during an otherwise bleak 2020. Today I’m turning my gaze ahead and pulling out my crystal ball (and my planner). Here are some things I am hoping for and preparing for in 2021. In January (1/10), I am rereleasing Between the Lines, my River City Chronicles prequel. I have re-edited and extended it a bit, and it will be available in print as a novella for the first time. It also has a spiffy new cover, which I am previewing in this week’s newsletter! In February (2/10), I’ll be rereleasing a short … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Breaking Through the Wall

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Sometimes we just get stuck. Writers gotta write, but life has a habit of getting in the way. Maybe a particular project has you stumped. Or maybe it’s a general sense of malaise or a bad review, or a book that didn’t sell like you hoped it would. As I write this, we’re at the tail end of 2020, a year that offered enough pain and distraction to stop the most dedicated of writers dead in their tracks. Whatever it is, you need a way to break through the wall. If you’ve never read it, I’d like to recommend a … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Writing in the Margins

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Growing up, I was an insatiable reader. Starting with the Lord of the Rings in third grade, I moved through the canons of Asimov, Clarke, Silverberg, McCaffrey, Heinlein and many more by the time I hit junior high. It wasn’t until I was in eighth grade and realized I had crushes on other boys in my class that I noticed the lack of diversity in speculative fiction. And it wasn’t until much later – after I came out at twenty-three – that I started thinking about actually writing my own queer characters. My very first one was a gay, winged … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Following the Plan

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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

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POINT OF VIEW: Navigating the Interregnums

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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