I have had my first poem accepted for publication! My first one! And it was selected as Editors choice, too! Five Ways To Murder Your Mentor will be published by Star*Line in the New Year. I’m very pleased to get into such a well known and well regarded magazine. The poem was a lot of […]
Not dead
Welcome, traveller. If you’re here, you must be lost! Take care, some of these dark passageways may be booby-trapped… I offer my apologies; I am a poor host. I have been absent a long time. The moss grows on my rolling stone, and the poison on my darts has dried into a bitter crust. So […]
5 Rules for Success in Writing
“I can tell you in less than fifty words how to get published…” So said Robert Heinlein and, whatever you think of his politics, Heinlein knew how to write (and sell) books. Way back in 1973 he gave a talk in which he fulfilled his promise in exactly 39 words and, frankly, nothing’s changed since.
How to Write a Good Book
If you had to define the single most important feature of a good book, what would you say? That a good book is not too long? Or that it’s got short sentences? Maybe it has characters who are just like you, or characters who you’d like to be. Perhaps it should have romantic vampires who […]
When is the Present Historic not the Past?
What is the present historic? The present historic tense is when you talk about the past as though it were happening now. So, instead of using appropriate time expressions like ‘had’ and ‘was’ you use ‘is’ and ‘are’. For example: 1. On Tuesday something strange happened. I was walking the dog when it started to […]
The Hunt For Gollum
In a nutshell: a triumph of budget film-making that is often so good, you’d think it was made in Hollywood. But it suffers from patchy plotting.
