College of Sidekicks and Secondary Characters – Commencement Address
Dear graduating class, As a writer, as someone who was there at your emergence, I am so very happy to see you. To know that you are out there. That you exist. Because – make no mistake – in a world...
View ArticleThe Writer and the Photographer
When I’m not writing (or cooking, or carting my kids somewhere, or doing one of a hundred other things that occupy the hours in a normal day) I am often outside with my camera, stalking that perfect...
View ArticleThe Skill List Project: Index
Okay, I’ve thought for a month, and I can’t think of any other subject this project should address. I’m sure there’s a lot of stuff I’d change if I did this again, or if I ever get around to rewriting...
View ArticleMy Blog Tour Begins . . . With a Post About Blog Tours
Today I begin officially the Summer 2014 Plunder of Souls Blog Tour, and I thought it might be fun to kick off this year’s tour with a post about how I go about putting one together. Blog tours can be...
View ArticleMore about the “Strong Female Character”…
What is a “strong female character”? This article has an opinion on it, and discusses how little of it there actually is out there, despite the lip service to the concept. Time after time we get a...
View ArticleNotes From the Road: The Shared Journey
I have just returned from a convention and small signing tour to help promote A Plunder of Souls, the third book in my Thieftaker Chronicles (written as D.B. Jackson). I had several good events — a...
View ArticleVoice – what you say, and how you say it
Part of the problem of writing the other, writing about a culture one has researched rather than the culture you are familiar with from the inside, is that it depends so fundamentally not just on...
View ArticleShort Fiction, Anthologies, and an Ongoing Kickstarter Campaign
I often encourage aspiring novelists to write short fiction, which is a bit ironic, since I began my career writing novels and didn’t sell my first short story until I had my fourth novel in...
View ArticleThe Light of Story…
Disclosure: a version of this essay first appeared here The books of the Were Chronicles might be the most ambitious thing I have ever attempted, and that includes highly complex novels like “Secrets...
View ArticleMy First Contemporary Fantasy
After years of writing epic fantasy and historical fantasy, and having to watch every word of what I write for possible anachronisms, I have finally turned to writing contemporary urban fantasy. And I...
View Article
