Another artist to whom I owe a significant debt of thanks is the talented Paul Carpenter. Paul is perhaps best known as the proprietor of PompousPets.com, where he is commissioned to illustrate real pets in fantastical portraits. However, he took time out from these and other artistic endeavors to provide the cover art for the …
While the art needs of most authors begin and end with the cover image, fantasy authors know that the next thing readers expect is a map of their fictional world. Tolkien had maps, and so every one of us writing in the post-Tolkien era is expected to have them as well. This may not scare …
Because readers can and do judge a book by its cover, every author knows how important it is to find the right artist for any given project. I believe this to be particularly true for fantasy fiction projects, where the artist must seek to evoke lands, characters, creatures, and talismans not to be found in …
As a naive young reader, I grew accustomed to authors who routinely released a new book each and every year. Every now and then, I’d run up against one who would appear to take long breaks between series, if not titles, and it always left me wondering: Why? What was taking so long? What on …
Way back in the spring of 2002, at a time when I was looking everywhere for opportunities to improve my skills as a would-be writer, the Maui Writers Foundation held a week-long writers retreat in Rome, Italy. The plan was to have attendees tour various historical landmarks in search of inspiration, while working under the …
In chatting with other authors, I’ve found that the most common question a writer is asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” The most common answer? Anywhere and everywhere. We get them from history and current events, from the books we read, movies we watch, and music we listen to. We get them while …
One of the most useful steps I took in the road to getting published was to attend writers conferences. It’s something I recommend to all up-and-coming writers who are having trouble getting their work to that next level. Since not all writers conferences are created equally, here’s a review from one that a friend of mine recently …
Earlier this week, Shawn Speakman of Suvudu.com invited a bunch of authors to talk about what role their publishers may have had in altering the titles to their books. (For the full article, click here.) My contribution to the discussion was as follows…. I had always assumed that, in the event of a publishing contract, whatever title …
Here’s a link to another write-up about the RMFW conference. No, I’m not just mentioning it because the writer, Jenni Holbrook, happens to say nice things about me, but because it talks about what aspiring writers (and even professional ones) can expect to take away from such events. And I couldn’t have said it better …
I’m home from a trip to Denver, where I was invited to be one of the guest speakers at this year’s Colorado Gold Writers Conference, courtesy of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers. I hadn’t heard of either the organization or its conference prior to the invitation — an admission that seemed to offend some of …
