Category: Guest Post


Guest Post: Bitterns and Leucrotas and Amphisbaenas, oh my! (With GIVEAWAY)

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February 1, 2013

by Myke Cole

Shadow Ops Control PointMuch is made of the humans in my military fantasy SHADOW OPS series. This makes sense. The books are, at their core, stories about the military, which (last time I checked) is chock full of humans.

But there are monsters too, and judging by the reviews and interviews, these get much less attention. I see this as a good thing. I put a lot of work into my humans, and I’m happy they’re taking center stage. It’s their story after all.

But I put a lot of work into my monsters.

I mean a lot of work. In the SHADOW OPS universe, the powers that be believe the Great Reawakening is due to a thing they call “planar orbital theory.” The Home Plane (our world) and The Source (where magic comes from) orbit one another. Every millennia or so, they come close enough that magic bleeds through the barrier between the planes. A very limited number of people have Limbic systems that can channel it, and they come up Latent. Wackiness ensues and you get the story you’re reading in CONTROL POINT and FORTRESS FRONTIER. A Portamantic gate is necessary to move between planes.

But there is another theory circulating in military intelligence circles, that there are rare “thin spots” in the planar fabric that allow fauna to occasionally wander across. Those rare instances of Source fauna spotted in the Home Plane gave rise to every medieval bestiary ever written, not to mention the Lochness Monsters, Bigfoots and Chupacabras of the Cryptid world.

Is this theory correct? Let’s take a look at three beasties you meet in the first two books:

- A tall, black feathered bird who can emit sonic booms when alarmed.

- A hyena like creature that mimics human voices.

- A two headed, horned snake. View full article »

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Guest Post: Howard Andrew Jones On Writing Arabia?

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December 27, 2012

Howard Andrew Jones is the author of two of my favorite reads from last year: The Desert Of Souls and Pathfinder Tales: Plague Of Shadows, both great sword and sorcery reads! His popular prior post here on the historicals of Harold Lamb is one of our most read guest posts.  This time, he talks about why a white midwesterner set his fantasy novel in historical Arabia.

Plague of Shadows - HA JonesPeople ask me why I’m so interested in the ancient Middle-East. Why isn’t everyone? The 8th and 9th century of the Abbasid caliphate was a true golden age, when scientists, poets, philosophers, scholars, and explorers were sponsored and celebrated. Science and arts flourished. It’s no wonder that later storytellers looked back at the time with longing and threaded the caliph Harun-al-Rashid and the vizier Jaffar into the fabric of The Arabian Nights. These two were said to wander Baghdad nights in disguise – as they do in the Nights — and they weren’t the only fascinating figures of the time.

But I think a lot of people aren’t really asking why I find the time period interesting. They’re asking how a white guy from southern Indiana got interested in the Middle-East.

I occasionally run across the implication that by writing of the ancient Middle-East I’m practicing cultural appropriation. I never know quite how to respond to that, although I try to be sensitive. After all, there’s a long history of people from the west writing other cultures as stereotypes. A LOOONG, painful history. I can only say that I strive to write characters, not caricatures. A lot of people don’t realize that the stories of the Arabian Nights are a blend of Chinese, Arabian, Persian, and Indian myths. A few of the stories might well have been inserted by a Frenchman who claimed he’d gotten them from a Christian Arab, although there’s no record of their existence before Monsieur Galland’s translation of the Nights. Anyway, a lot of other people have gotten to play with the Arabian Nights, and I would like to think it’s okay for one more to sit down at the campfire and spin a few, even if he’s a white Hoosier. View full article »

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Guest Post: How To Write A Novel

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February 17, 2012

by Patty Jansen

Great. Another how-to post. The internet is full of them. Judging by the popularity of books like Novel-writing for Dummies and 12 Things Not To Include in Your Novel’s First Chapter, people seem to love being told what to do. As if writing a book is a paint-by-numbers thing that guarantees success once you’ve ticked all the boxes.

For writing a novel, you’d better have some solid work practices or your work is doomed to fail. Ahem.

Let me describe my novel-writing process.

Stage 1: I write random crap into a file. Anything goes. It doesn’t have to follow the previous scene. I can be a rewrite of the previous scene. As soon as I hit a block, I press control-enter and start a new page. I set myself an arbitrary goal, usually 1000 words a day that I must add to the novel. Usually, I write a lot more than that, but I find that higher limits actually discourage production.

Stage 2: I sort out all these scenes and half-scenes into storyline order. This would be the stage at which I’d write a synopsis, if I needed one. I may end up having several goes and versions of the storyline, but in the end, I’ll have a file that has the scenes more or less in order, albeit sometimes written in the wrong POV character or in the wrong setting.

Stage 3: polish, polish, polish.

It’s chaotic, and in the middle I may not see the wood for the trees. Now, what is so unusual about this method?

Nothing. It’s chaotic. I has a let’s-throw-wet-spaghetti-at-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks element about it. It’s not particularly efficient, but it’s mine. It cannot be found in any how-to books, but it is how my process has developed in the course of writing many novels, and it works. I’m a pantser at heart, and rigid outlines written prior to the storytelling bore to death. I also recognise that at some stage, you need to bring structure into a novel, and adhere to it, or the novel will forever meander between directions you could possibly take with it. Say after me: there are a thousand different things I could still do with my novel, but does that mean I have to do them? View full article »

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Guest Post: On Writing by Emmy Jackson, Author

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January 2, 2012

Emmy Jackson is the author of the post-apocalyptic urban fantasy novel Empty Cradle: The Untimely Death of Corey Sanderson. He lived as a nomad in an RV for three years, wandering the continental United States at will. He was born and raised in Detroit and always returns no matter how many times he moves away. He is an ex-school bus driver, an ex-marketing manager, and a self-published, self-syndicated freelance writer. Emmy speaks the secret language of cars, is a rescuer of things, and enjoys dancing, collecting toy cars and traveling to visit new goth clubs. He lives in a suburb of Detroit.

Writing, for me, has always been about listening to the voices in my head. I don’t mean that in a facetious, Hot Topic T-shirt way, but almost literally. It’s always started with a character speaking (or thinking) and if I listen carefully enough, some mental clutch slips a little bit and my new imaginary friend’s reality will begin to overlay my own, ever so slightly. It’s kind of like an image projected on a window, mirroring and adding to the reality beyond.

When this first started happening, in grade school, I didn’t think anything of it; an overactive imagination was just a handy way to make every day an adventure, after all. As I got older, though, I began to wonder if it was “right,” going so far as to visit a therapist or three during college. When they asked if I heard voices, I told them yes, and tried to explain, but this led to all future efforts being directed toward getting rid of the voices. And this, in turn, made me realize that I liked them. View full article »

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