writing - If You Write It

August 1, 2024August 4, 2024

Mastering Travel Writing: From Audience Tailoring to Authentic Storytelling

Travel writing is an art. It’s not just about describing the view from your hotel window or the taste of the local cuisine. It’s about capturing the soul of a place, the heartbeat that makes it unique. Today, I’m going to share with you the essential tools and tricks every travel writer needs. So grab a cup of coffee, settle in, and let’s embark on this journey together. Know Your Audience First and foremost, understand who you’re writing for. Are they thrill-seekers looking for their next adrenaline rush, or are they luxury travelers seeking the finest experiences? Tailor your voice…

June 4, 2024June 4, 2024

Exploring the Magic and Mystery of ‘Fourth Wing’ by Rebecca Yarros

Introduction “Fourth Wing” by Rebecca Yarros is a captivating fantasy novel set in a world where dragon riders are the elite warriors who protect the realm. The story follows Violet Sorrengail, a young woman who is thrust into the rigorous training and dangerous life of a dragon rider. Violet must navigate a brutal military academy, form alliances, and uncover hidden truths while surviving deadly trials and fierce competition. The novel is filled with action, romance, and intricate world-building that grips readers from start to finish. Chapter Summaries Chapter 1: Violet Sorrengail is introduced as the daughter of a renowned general.…

February 23, 2019

Can You Ever Forgive Me?

I’m a photographer and every once in a while a movie will get my attention with a particularly beautiful shot. This image of Melissa McCarthy sitting alone at the end of a long bar as her character’s world reaches one of its many low points is a great shot. I like everything about it. The leading lines, the strong shadows, the darkness of the bar while the world outside the windows is clearly light. The different tones from the light shadows to the subtly illuminated bottles. Great imagery. Of all the great actors on Gilmore Girls, Melissa McCarthy was not…

July 11, 2017

Coffee shop

I love the story that JK Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter book in a coffee shop. To me it tells how she was able to fall into flow and block out the rest of the world. I do love that feeling myself. It also makes me think that she needed to get away from home. Homes are very demanding places if you care about things like clean dishes, floors, and porcelain. So nice to be away for a bit. I remember drinking coffee while sitting on my father’s lap. One of a handful of fond memories having to do…

May 13, 2017May 13, 2017

The Collapsing Empire

The Collapsing Empire tells the story of a handful of people living in the far flung future. Humans are scattered around the galaxy or the universe or something. Lots of random settlements, two of which we see, are connected by a McGuffin bit of sci-fi called The Flow. This is much like a Stargate system or a series of Portkeys or Jump Gates or a Warp Field or any other made up means of transport over vast distances you have ever seen. Like these other constructs, the tech doesn’t really matter. So it’s kind of odd when John puts a…

July 3, 2016

Wilhem Walengrave Vampire

Writing is an amazing experience. Editing is hell on earth. Selling is next to impossible. For all creatives, these are the best of times and the worst of times. Anyone can be published. Anyone can make a movie. Anyone can release their own album. And pretty much everyone has. New content is constantly being created and added to Amazon, YouTube, Twitter, Vine, Facebook, etc, etc, etc. There is a wonderful little rush that comes from hitting the button that allows something you created to be available to the world. And a wonderful little bump of depression when no notices. I’ve…

July 7, 2015July 7, 2015

A Few Thoughts on Self Publishing

When I was in the 7th Grade my English Teacher gave me a paper bag filled with back issues of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Great magazine. Lots of great stories. And lots of crap stories as well. Those below par stories that helped to fill the magazine out inspired me to become a writer. For the next few years I would bang out bad short fiction and send it off to the three or four Science Fiction/Mystery magazines that published monthly digests. Then something happened, I got a handwritten rejection letter saying they were looking forward to my next story.…

March 20, 2015March 20, 2015

All You Need Is Kill Script

a few spoilers and such I like reading scripts. The original stories almost always differ from the final films. There was a scene with Mr Potter and Clarence cut out of It’s A Wonderful Life and there’s a sequel to The Matrix floating around that actually makes sense. All You Need Is Kill by D W Harper is the original script for Live Die Repeat or Edge of Tomorrow. There’s a lot of stuff in the Tom Cruise time loop story that makes no damned sense at all. Like Tom being a recruiting officer and how he makes that…

March 18, 2015July 11, 2024

From Typewriter to Technorati: My Journey as an Old-School Blogger in a Modern World

I used to write these long rambling letters to everyone I knew. Pages and pages of random thoughts and poems and photos and whatnot. I banged them out on an old typewriter and I still refer to the ‘Enter’ key as the ‘Return’ key. I was blogging before there were blogs. A pretty lesbian I liked to write to told me I should write a blog. So I did. It was a more personal blog than the ones I write now. Filled with intimate details, rants about the unfairness of it all, and the usual mundane daily business of a…

November 1, 2014

Wild

Wild tells the story of a lone woman’s trek along the Pacficic Crest Trail, commonly referred to as the PCT. This is a hiking trail that goes from Mexico to Canada along a range of mountains and deserts and forests. A world that measured two feet wide and 2,663 miles long, as Cheryl Strayed so eloquently puts it. I’m not a hiker, but I have enjoyed the books about the PCT that have found their way into my hands. Wild is more than a book about hiking, it’s also about Cheryl’s life, the death of her mother, and the hazards…