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So, yes, we’re moving on, but had just one more thought. Sure, we could have caught Tom Dolby’s Virtual Book Tour last week. If we didn’t have an evil overlord named Kevin and cats who demand only the finest in Friskies and a novel by a dear friend to critique. That’s the problem with free […]

The rain has stopped, the cats are reacquainting themselves with something called “sun”, and the day promises to be glorious. Yes, that means we’re headed out to Culver City to spend the day locked in a building. There are so many things wrong with this, we cannot begin to list them. Okay, we can, but […]

There is much grumbling from authors about advances. Generally, it is agreed that the amounts given aren’t big enough. When it comes to advances, one thing many authors neglect to consider is that the map is not the territory. Publishers calculate advances based on a variety of criteria, including anticipated revenue, but, at the end […]

It is rare that we look to Roger Ebert for insight on character development, but perhaps that is just our shortsightedness at work. After all, he did write one of the husband’s favorite movies of all time. Characters (as we all know) march to their own little drummers. How often do we find something happening […]

Sometimes it seems hard to believe that today’s young writers are following the same vocation as that depicted by a long night of wakefulness in Cyril Connolly’s Enemies of Promise (1938), when the tortured would-be writer lies awake all night hearing the bells sound off the hours – or is it the decades? – and […]

They say that novel writing is a lonely business and all that — well, yeah, if we wanted to make it a party, we’d probably go into advertising or screenwriting or something. However, there are times when you want to write with someone else. The good news is that collaborative software has come a long […]

Or maybe Los Angeles is one of the more terrifying towns. We often get this stuff mixed up. J-Fly (who’s un-on hiatus, and if we’d been playing more and working less, we’d know this) has decided to try a novel writing class at UCLA. We’ve done that, right down to the unfortunate runny nose (our […]

We don’t often talk about books we’ve read (mostly because there are others who do such talking far more eloquently), but there was something curious in the last two books we read. Both featured a large cast of characters, all of whom were named. Except one. In both books, one character, the same character, was […]

While we cannot advocate the concept of getting organized (what next, a clean refrigerator?), we are as susceptible as the next person to media overload. Lately, we can’t pick up so much as a novel without someone suggesting that clearing clutter will help focus our mind. The brainwashing is working — yesterday, we looked at […]

If you’re looking for a few craft classes to meet one or more New Year’s resolutions, Salon has helpfully come through for you. Choose from a variety of options (satire, chicklit, screenwriting), and start your year off write! Yes, too much coffee. We promise, that will hardly happen again. Salon eClasses