The other day I was reading a fantasy book and, in an early fight scene, the hero tackled someone coming at him with a knife. Red flag alert. As someone with a long history in martial arts training, I nearly tossed the book out of my lap. No experienced fighter (which is what the hero was) would ignore the immediate the threat of a blade and try to tackle an enemy's knees. That's a good … [Read more...]
Writing Advice: Fight Scenes
Always with a mind to improve my writing craft, I have been on the lookout for advice from other authors about how to write effective fight scenes in books. First a video from Brandon Sanderson: A blog post from sword and sorcery author Seth Skorkowsky entitled Writing Fighting. A solid blog post from a writer who also participates in events with the Society for Creative Anachronism … [Read more...]
Writing Advice: Starting with Story Structure
When Everything goes Boom... Earlier this year, I hit one of those dead zones in writing. I was 30,000 words into the third book in my Hounds of the North series and everything just stopped. I had taken a few days off writing and when I returned to the computer, I had lost the story. Panic, depression, and anger set in. How could I have been writing 1,500 words a day and all of sudden have … [Read more...]
The Witch of the Sands: An Author’s Note
A lot of you may not know this but The Witch of the Sands, the first book in the Hounds of the North series, was actually written after Black River. In fact, I did not even start on The Witch of the Sands until two years after I began Black River and had a near final draft of the novel done. I know. It sounds crazy. Why I am doing things backwards? And it is backwards because … [Read more...]
Writing Advice: The Long Road
Belt Burning I recently had my worst night ever on the mats in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Worse than those bruising, no technique battle-to-the-death rolls as a white belt. Worse than the long series of competition losses at blue belt. Worse than the night my knee went snap-crackle-pop. I'm not going to go into the details of the night. But it was a bad night - for my ego and my expectations. … [Read more...]
Writing Advice: The Exploding Story
There's nothing quite like having a work in progress explode to welcome in the new year. New Year, New Problem I ended 2014 strong. I had published the first two books of the Hounds of the North series. Not only did I have my idea down for the third novel, I was more than 30,000 words into it. In fact, I had already torn it down, made some big picture changes, and had restarted it with fresh … [Read more...]
