A Flash Fiction challenge was offered on June 2 by the TerribleMinds blog (filled with the entertaining wordspewings of author Chuck Wendig) and it tickled my fancy, so I wrote something then and there. And then immediately forgot I wrote it until I stumbled over it yesterday (June 18), long after the challenge had ended. […]

I was given the James Patterson writing Masterclass for Christmas, and enjoyed the class. Part of the class involved a contest to become a co-writer on a James Patterson book, and a lot of people took a stab at it — including me! Since the 10 semi-finalists have been announced and I’m not one of […]

There was an interesting discussion in one of my Facebook writing groups today, about whether a fantasy novel needs to call a horse a horse or come up with all new beasts and names. The original poster wanted to know if it was OK to use Earth animals rather than coming up with her own. […]

Another interesting bit of conceptual development from the NaNo worldbuilding forum. 1. What is valued most in your Society? (Money, Family, Love, etc.) Tesh (my main character) isn’t sure what her people value since she’s lost her memory; as the story progresses she realizes she values independence and knowledge. The La’an race values their Goddess, […]

This year I stumbled on thread on the NaNo forums where you were challenged to write your plot like a Pixar plot summary. The Pixar pitch goes like this: 1. Once upon a time there was … 2. Every day … 3. One day … 4. Because of that … 5. Because of that … […]