Writer/Reader/Listener Blog

How to Effectively Take Criticism About Your Writing Without Turning Around and Making the Idiot Who Dared Savage Your Precious Prose the Murder Victim of a Rabid Two-Faced Alien with Mommy Issues in Your Great American Science Fiction Trilogy &nbs…

           I have a friend. No, really, I do. To protect the innocent, I’ll say his name is Don Muchow. You might recognize the name, but I assure you, it is almost coincidental. Okay, somewhat almost…ish. …

From time to time you hear authors being asked why they chose to self-publish. Preferring to maintain creative control is the most common answer. But what does this really mean, creative control? Talking to the Galaxy of Authors webpage, the author…

One of the most important choices that a writer makes when they start a story is the “point-of-view”, or POV, that will be used. Most stories are told in a 3rd person POV and usually in the past tense. These include stories that start w…

            I was offered the opportunity to teach a group of junior high school students. This was obviously an ad hoc proposition linking me-as-a-writer to them-as-bored-kids, the product of e…

As mentioned in the last blog, advances in science and technology had a profound influence on writing in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. As new branches of  physics, chemistry and medicine grew, so did the opportunities …

The nineteenth century was a time of great change and upheaval. It was also a period of great adventure and opportunity. Advances in science and technology induced much of this change and had widespread effects on society. In our generation, we've …

Bold title. “Everyone”? Yes, everyone. You’ll see why soon, depending on your reading speed and my ability to keep your interest. The call for everyone to read science fiction boils down to three reasons. The first is that reading…

Most people think of science fiction as a twentieth century phenomenon, born in the age of atomic energy, the ‘bomb’, and the race for the moon.  It may surprise many to find that science fiction traces its roots much further back a…

Many people oppose the concept of hard 'rules' about writing and argue adamantly against blanket do's and don'ts. As Marc Neuffer (one of our favorite contributors) recently said... "Rules often become truncated sound bites, their original, e…