Ben Cass

P.L. Travers
C.S. Lewis
Douglas Preston/Lincoln Child
Robert Jordan
Susan Cooper

*making, not maintaining.

I don’t skip prologues, but I don’t see the point of maintaining a prologue. If it’s needed information, make it chapter one. If it’s needed information that feels disconnected, I prefer to work it in during the story.

No idea; I'm a pantser, so I don't even know what the next sentence is going to be! LOL.

#wipsnips #writesky

“Oh! Bode, quick question: has Archie always been totally oblivious to, like, any kind of hints?”

“Yes,” Bode said immediately. “I’ve never seen anybody that spectacularly unable to understand subtlety. You have to be very direct, no matter how mundane the topic.”

Luckily, we have great air conditioning! I'm a native Floridian--been here almost 50 years now--so I know how to avoid the heat when I need to.

I feel for you guys. We’ll be on the opposite side, dealing with record heat for this time of year. I think they said 85 degrees for the forecast.

Still better than snow, though. Give me the heat any day!

Stay safe!

If I have music going, I will either start typing the lyrics or inventing lyrics and then typing those. Annoys the crap out of me! LOL.

Unfortunately, no, I don't. I never associate my stories with songs or mood boards or any of those things. I write in complete silence.

But I'm glad for those who do and who find that perfect song or picture or whatever.

My wife was never really a He-Man or She-Ra person, but she thought this looked awesome. (She was more a G.I. Joe girl.) I, of course, cannot wait!

The Return of the King With Big Naturals.

I know that feeling! My debut novel took me 13 years to write and publish. The sequel took 1 year, then the final book in the trilogy took almost 3. I then spent a couple years not writing anything until I wrote my 4th book in two weeks last summer.

So it's famine, a whole lot of feasting, famine..

That's basically how it goes for me. I either get a lot done or nothing at all. I wrote my 4th book in 13 days last summer. (65K words). Spent 4 weeks revising and then published.

Previous book took me almost 3 years to write and publish.

Feast or famine. Every time. LOL.

Feels great, right? I haven't been able to really write much for months, and over the last 24 hours, my brain decided to cooperate and let me rip out over 10K words.

Of course, I'm sure by tomorrow it'll be back to not cooperating with me, but fingers crossed!

#writingcommunity #writing #writesky

My brain deigned to allow me to write this weekend, so I'm nearing the 10K words over the past 24 hours. I can live with that.

Now, if I can just convince my brain to let me keep writing for the next week or two, I'll have the first draft finished.

I actually wrote a post for my website about this a week or so ago. Many of the names in my trilogy were placeholders that just turned into the actual names. I don't put the same emphasis on names that many writers do. I really don't think the names are important at all to the story.

But do they have the votes to override a veto? Because we all know he'd veto that in a heartbeat.

I don’t have the time or energy to research ideas for a class about which I know nothing. Sometimes ChatGPT is really helpful with lab ideas, and sometimes it’s not.

I use it all the time for help with lab ideas for my science classes…since I have no clue about teaching science, the classes were just dropped on me, and we don’t have the supplies to do 90% of the labs that the curriculum is based on. I teach 6 different courses.

Nothing. I only create what I need for the story as I write the story. If it doesn’t appear on page, it doesn’t exist in my head.

Just binged Season 1 of Creature Commandos. Been meaning to watch it for months. Really enjoyed it.

So for him, "weird" basically means "normal".

Archie is a human working in a magical library. His coworkers? An elf who always “knows a guy,” a dwarf who expects a good insult every chance you get, a lederhosen-loving Sasquatch, and a relentlessly cheerful pixie. Their boss? A tiny book dragon with an insatiable need to hoard books.

I've actually never gotten a flu shot. My needle phobia is way stronger than my fear of the flu. If it was required for my job, I'd do it, but since it's not, I don't.

I've been lucky enough to not get the flu for 40 years or so. Got it a few times as a kid, but not since. Hoping that streak continues.

More or less. He set the story in motion with his machinations 15 years earlier. Now they have to try to overthrow him.

#wipsnips
"That was impressive, Detective," Sharian said. "How did you know to look there?"

"A benefit of being a comic book nerd. I loved Will Eisner's 'The Spirit' comics, from the 1940s. They taught me that the story is already present, and I just have to put the clues in order."

I prefer to not have the antagonist on page that much. In my trilogy, you don't meet the main antagonist until a few chapters into the second book. He then appears here and there in the second and third books, but not too much.

Archie solves math problems to relax, but he has a Ph.D. in math and was a professor for almost two decades before switching careers. We haven't seen him doing it yet.

Rowan, on the other hand, collects comic books. She mentions it in the first book, but we'll actually get to see it in the second.