Human brains generate ideas all the time. If you’re a writer, your brain has probably come up with lots of great novel ideas. But for all of us who write, the first and most persistent obstacle is to creative ideas is you—your inner critic, your inner saboteur. Think about this: When Stephen King’s brain first [...]
“Where do you get your ideas?” is a question all successful authors get asked. Their answers are all different but they have a few things in common. See how some famous novelists answer that question, and maybe find some inspiration of your own.
History is about what happened. Historical fiction asks, "What might have happened? What could have happened? What if. . ." With a question like those, is it any wonder there are so many exciting sub-genres in historical fiction? Part 5 of Enjoying Historical Fiction.
People who enjoy historical fiction like it for a variety of reasons. The reason they most often give is that it takes us into a world that’s different from our own. Daniel Mason’s novel The Piano Tuner is a great example.
We often think that writers of history stick to the facts, working to present a fair and accurate account of the past, and that writers of historical fiction can pretty much make it up. It doesn’t always work out that way.
Adventures in Publishing, Part 4: In which the author enjoys modest success with her first novel, only to discover that she and her book are not necessarily invited to the literary party.
Death issues a new human a debit card, loaded with a lifetime of days.
When we talk about the heroic journey of myth and story, we’re usually talking about a man’s adventures. A woman’s heroic journey often starts in different circumstances, and it ends differently. And it can be harder to write in historical fiction.
Adventures in Publishing continued: the writer rolls on from Amazon publishing to an author-paid hybrid publisher.
I knew Allan Pinkerton had hired a woman detective just as his agency was getting started. I’ve thought about creating a fictional woman detective working for Pinkerton after the Civil War—but it never occurred to me that he’d hired more than one. Chris Enss, with her excellent book, The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives [...]