Veins of Gold by Charlie N. Holmberg features a creative and captivating magic system that I absolutely adored! It is a stand alone, but I hope to one day see more stories set in this world where magic is fed by gold. Desperate to save her siblings from poverty, a young woman discovers magic fueled… Read More Veins of Gold Blog Tour & Giveaway
Time and calendar world building mostly applies to the fantasy and science fiction genres. But this is a brief and informative post, so hopefully you’ll find it useful beyond those. Calendars Calendars are not just days, months, and years, they include holidays. Canadian and American Thanksgiving, multiple dates for Easter, Chinese New Year, Labor Day,… Read More World Building 103: Calendars and Time
World building entails many different things, and those things vary from genre to genre and manuscript to manuscript. While some world building advice is universal, other bits are not. This is the first post in a series about world building. I hope to keep them all brief and to the point, but let me know… Read More World Building 101
In the month of October, I read a lot of books and did some writing. Here is my month in review: Writing I wrote around 13,000 words for my contemporary YA fantasy manuscript. This is the one that I’m shifting from 3rd person past tense to 1st person present and condensing down from 180k words.… Read More October Wrap Up
I’ve been slacking off in the blogging realm lately. I have tons of things I want to say, but I just haven’t had the time to write it. I plan to post a book review early next week for an ARC I’m reading, so this post will be devoted to an update on what I’m… Read More My Untitled Rewrite
The Fire Queen releases September 26, 2017. It is the second book in The Hundredth Queen Series, by Emily R. King. It follows a young warrior queen’s rise to meet her destiny in a richly imagined world of sorcery and forbidden powers. Religion plays an important part in the stories, since the powers are godly gifts, passed… Read More Book Review: The Fire Queen
The writing style is beautiful and flawless. The world comes alive with Holmberg’s graceful imagery. The characters are complex and dynamic.… Read More Book Review: The Fifth Doll
The Princess Bride is a book! No, they didn’t make it into a book because the movie was popular. It became a movie because the book was so great! Published in 1973, The Princess Bride: S. Morgenstern’s Classic Tale of True Love and High Adventure; The ‘good parts’ version, Abridged by William Goldman, is actually… Read More Book Review: The Princess Bride
I’ve been binge reading this January. I’ve read nine books so far: seven fantasy, one historical romance, and one romantic suspense (which I originally thought was mystery/suspense). You can check me out on Goodreads and be my friend if you want to know the titles of the books I read. I only plan to mention one of them by name in… Read More What Reading can Teach you about Writing
For a while now, a blur of thoughts have constantly been at the back of my mind. Is what I’m writing creative, original, unique? Is it special? What makes it worthy of being read and liked by others? Is it just another story that anyone could have invented and told? Since I’ve been reading modern… Read More Creativity and Originality
R.Q. Woodward 