Category Archives: Writing

Notch Up the Tension, Pick up the Pace – A Workshop with Colleen Thompson

Colleen Thompson, RITA- nominated author of Touch of Evil, Beneath Bone Lake, Fatal Error, and Triple Exposure, gave a riveting talk at the April Romance Writers of America-San Diego meeting on building suspense in fiction. Ms. Thompson outlined five techniques … Continue reading

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What Fans Don’t Know About Publishing – A Condor Writing Panel

Saturday’s panel on publishing focused on an inside look at the industry from science fiction and spirtuality writer Matt Pallamary, sf/fantasy writer Jean Graham, graphic novelist Eric Shanower, YA novelist P.J. Haarsma and paranormal romance writer Linda Thomas-Sundstrom. Some interesting … Continue reading

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What do You Do When Your Characters Don’t Work? – A Condor Writing Panel

Condor – San Diego’s annual science fiction convention, held Feb. 26-28 – hosted a number of writing panels. Leading off Friday at noon, “One of Your Crucial Characters Isn’t Working: What Do You Do?” featured  horror author Tamara Thorne, fantasy … Continue reading

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Takeaways from the Southern California Writer’s Conference, Part 2: Platform Building for Fiction Writers

I’ve been hearing a lot about the necessity of building a platform. Apparently before a publisher will pick up a first time writer’s book it not only has to be superbly written and perfectly timed for the market, but the … Continue reading

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Takeaways from the Southern California Writer’s Conference Part 1: Cross-Reading Leads to Better Metaphors

I was at the Southern California Writer’s Conference last weekend and as always came back with some valuable ideas and connections. At author Bob Yehling’s panel on Cross-Genre Writing, Yehling urged listeners to keep a stack of four to five … Continue reading

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(Very) Short Fiction: Writing Stories for Twitter

How do you write a story in 140 characters? It’s simple. Action, reaction, and a twist. Start with a basic concept. And by basic, I mean really basic. The space limitations of Twitter won’t let you write War and Peace, … Continue reading

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