Image Courtesy Jesse Michener The other day, I came across a series of videos recorded by writer and broadcaster, Ira Glass. In the videos, Glass talks about the art and craft of story telling, and hands out quite a bit of advice on writing and the creative process. In one of these videos, Glass talks … Read more
As a writer of dark fantasy horror, my early influences where always going to be movies. Yes, I have read thousands of books within the dark fantasy and horror genres, many of which have influenced me greatly over the years, but it would be wrong of me to discount the influence certain movies have had … Read more
When I was a kid, I read a lot. I read classic books like Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland, the Hardy Boys detective novel series and whatever else I could get my hands on. I loved reading and I loved escaping into the worlds created in those books. When I hit my teens, my reading habit … Read more
I have always enjoyed reading about morally ambiguous characters in fiction. Such characters, to me, are much more interesting than straight down the line good or evil characters. The fact is, we live in a world of gray, not black and white. Almost everyone can go one way or the other at any time, and … Read more
I used to hate the fact that I was an introvert. When I was a teenager and I would go to parties, I would always end up sitting in some corner, wracked with discomfort, out of place, wishing I could be more like the extroverts in the room. These days, Iām happy not going to … Read more
If thereās one thing Iāve learned about achievement itās this: you have to keep going and persevere with what you are doing. More than anything else, perseverance will see you through to the end. Perseverance is almost like a skill and it contains a few different elements that you should be aware off in order … Read more
You wanna mess up a writer tell them to write something original. See how long it takes them to freeze up and then fall to bits. What many beginning writers fail to realize to their detriment is that purposely trying to come up with wholly original stuff is folly and only results in one thing: … Read more
9 Urban fantasy isnāt just a literary genre; itās also a TV genre, even if it isnāt necessarily referred to as such by many people in TV Land. Urban fantasy shows have been around for quite a while now, starting with the likes of the Twilight Zone and Outer Limits, both of which were more … Read more
Where would a writer be without their subconscious? What chance would a story have to be written without the help of the subconscious to tell it? Writers kid themselves into thinking that they are the sole architects of their creations, when really, they arenāt. Sure, a writer does most of the leg work, puts in … Read more
I hesitated to use the name Urban Fantasy in this article, mainly because these days it is often too closely associated with Paranormal Romance, which does nothing to describe the kind of books that I write. To me, Urban Fantasy describes a type of fiction that features supernatural characters in a realistic setting, which can … Read more