I recently discovered that the Japanese have turned one of my favorite Robert Heinlein stories into a movie. The Door Into Summer, if you haven’t read it, is a classic hard-scifi story with robots, time travel, cold sleep, romance, betrayal… and a cat. The hero, Daniel Boone Davis (in the movie he’s Soichiro Takakura), is…
I hear this question a lot. How long is a chapter supposed to be anyway? Of course, the correct answer is usually “As long as it needs to be” — within reason. There’s actually a rationale behind keeping your chapters shorter, and it has to do with your readers and their attention spans. In days…
I recently asked ChatGPT to fill me in on the latest AI technologies. Here’s what it suggested: With all these new technologies, will it be long before we have an actual working artificial intelligence that knows it’s intelligent? In other words, a sentient machine? I’m waiting to see what happens…
I’ve recently subscribed to a “TV” streaming service (it has a lot of well-known channels like Hallmark, INSP, METV, etc) and have found a channel that shows old Star Trek episodes (TOS is The Original Series for you non-Trekkers out there!). Of course, as you’d expect from a show from nearly 60 years ago, the…
First Wednesday again – time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group post! March 1 question – Have you ever read a line in novel or a clever plot twist that caused you to have author envy? I have author envy all the time! Sometimes I have to stop and reread a line or two just…
I had an interesting question at my recent talk: How do you know how much research to do when you’re putting your setting into place? If you’ve been writing for a while (or if you’re just interested in learning), you know what a rabbit hole research can be! You start out trying to find what…
My talk seemed to go over well today. At least, most everyone seemed interested and I got some good questions afterwards and sold some copies of the book, so that’s great. I think, after it’s all said and done, though, that I’ll change things up and restructure the lecture into a participatory event where the…
I’ll be giving my little class next week: a behind-the-scenes look at a mystery story. I’ll also be selling copies of Carolina Crimes: Rock, Roll, & Ruin. Here’s what I have so far: I’m going to toss in a little behind-the-scenes information about how I personally write my stories, but this will be the gist…
Time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group Post! February 1 question – If you are an Indie author, do you make your own covers or purchase them? If you publish trad, how much input do you have about what goes on your cover? I’m pretty much traditionally published, but with small presses. My publisher ran…
Enjoyed the Author Expo – it was a well-organized & well-run event. Everything seemed to flow along without snags & the library had everything set up in a pleasing manner in a large room, so we weren’t crowded together or cramped. Sold some books, so that’s good (not a whole lot, but some is better…