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SMELLS LIKE VIVID DESCRIPTIONCaro Verbeek identifies herself as “a smell historian.” Take a look at her TED video to get a fast but robust context on how smell works, what...
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HOW TO TELLYou know the old saw by now, eh, authors? Show , don’t tell . This is probably the most oft-given advice to authors of fiction in any...
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I GUESS WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT GOODREADSFirst off, as a much-needed addendum to my post from last week regarding the epic career self-destruction of former debut author Cait Corrain,...
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LET’S ALL LEARN FROM THIS DEBUT AUTHOR MEGA-FAILOh, my goodness, I don’t want to be talking about this. I want to be positive, to be a cheerleader for everything and everyone books, and I work...
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MORE ON THE SCIENCE:FICTION RATIO AND SF SUB-GENRESAs with my previous video on fantasy sub-genres , I’d like to add some additional thoughts and context to the more recent video “ The...
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BOOKS FOR FANTASY AUTHORS XXXVIII: NOVELIST AS A VOCATIONFrom time to time I’ll recommend—not review, mind you, but recommend, and yes, there is a difference—books I think authors should have on their...
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WHAT I’M THANKFUL FOR, 2023I don’t do this every year, the Thanksgiving post, but I don’t know, why not…? I suppose one reason not to could be better explained by...
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ON “ON ORIGINALITY” BY HARUKI MURAKAMIAt the Fantasy Author’s Handbook GoodReads group we’ve been reading Novelist as a Vocation by Japanese author Haruki Murakami, who is one of...
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AUTHORSHIP IN THE POST-PRIVACY AGEI’ve started reading Novelist as a Vocation along with my Fantasy Author’s Handbook GoodReads group , and was immediately struck by this...
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HORROR AUTHOR’S HANDBOOK—THE HALLOWEEN EDITIONYou know I don’t just write about writing fantasy here at Fantasy Author’s Handbook, right? I’ve talked horror quite often here, and in...
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MORE ON FANTASY SUB-GENRES, TRENDS, “TROPES,” ETC.A few days ago I posted a video on the FAH YouTube channel looking at fantasy sub-genres. I started with my definition of the fantasy genre in...
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SUBMIT & QUERY LIKE A SALESMAN…because in this context, that’s exactly what you are! My father was a salesman and he used to tell me—pretty much over and over...
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ROBERT SILVERBERG ON TO LIVE AGAINI started reading a copy of the June 1978 Berkley edition of To Live Again by Robert Silverberg as was immediately intrigued by… the...
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ENDING PROMPTSI’ve written short stories using writing prompts before and found it a useful exercise just to get started writing something. Prompts tend to be...
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A CASE AGAINST CHAPTER TITLESTwo years ago I wrote a post here at Fantasy Author’s Handbook entitled: BLOG POST DCXL TOO MUCH INFORMATION IN YOUR...
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FANTASY AUTHOR’S HANDBOOK INTO THE FUTURE!Big things are happening at Fantasy Author’s Handbook! It’s not just the little blog that could anymore. I’m bringing it out into new vistas....
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THE CHARACTER DESCRIPTION INFO DUMPAm I about to put up a full chapter of Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace as an example of what not to do? Isn’t this one of the greatest works...
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BOOKS FOR FANTASY AUTHORS XXXVII: THE LITTLE BOOK OF EXOPLANETSFrom time to time I’ll recommend—not review, mind you, but recommend, and yes, there is a difference—books I think authors should have on their...
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ACTIVE SEARCH: WASOur old friends Strunk & White advise: Use the active voice. And though I’m not a 100% devotee of The Elements of Style , this is...
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ACTION FIRST, DETAIL SECONDI’ll start with my usual caveat that there are no strict rules to the creation of art (and again, yes, fantasy, science fiction, and horror...
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FANTASY AUTHOR’S HANDBOOK ON YOUTUBE!Why has it taken me this long… fourteen years… to widen the scope of Fantasy Author’s Handbook? I’ve been dutifully updating this blog every...
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HOW ABOUT SOME GOOD NEWS……about the publishing business and our hopes for a bright future (and present!) for ourselves, our books, and our careers? Five days ago...
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IS IT OVER?This is going to be a short one because I find the entire subject so demoralizing I don’t even want to recognize that it’s happening—but it is,...
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ON JUNG’S “PSYCHOLOGY AND LITERATURE,” PART 2Let’s continue from last week’s post right where we left off… with the concept of “the poet” (the visionary artist, or for our purposes the...
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ON JUNG’S “PSYCHOLOGY AND LITERATURE,” PART 1In what started as a personal exploration into the life and work of Carl Jung in June , I’m still working my way through his 1933 book, Modern...
