Merrilee Faber is running a Creativity Workshop that will run from now ’til August. It involves writing lots of short stories.

Even though I’m in the middle of a novel edit, I joined because I’m still not done with my novel, and I’m feeling quite bad about that. In the long run, I’ll benefit if I give this workshop my all; it should help me complete works in a more timely manner.

Our first assignment is to assess our weak-points or other things we’d like to work on during the workshop when it comes to writing short stories.

So without further ado…

I usually bill myself as a high fantasy author on the web. More specifically, an ‘aspiring author of the high-fantasy kind’. By the time I’d plotted the final book of my trilogy, I realized I probably had an epic high fantasy on my hands.

Some people say the terms epic fantasy and high fantasy are interchangeable. And I can understand that; it’s tricky to pin them down and define them. The meanings evolve on a daily basis.

At this current juncture, I’d define a high fantasy as a story that features a world with different rule-sets from our own that is threatened by a malevolent evil.

And an epic fantasy, in my opinion, has everything to do with scope (although the classic definition has to do with cycles). So what is scope, exactly, when it comes to writing novels? Read the rest of this entry »

Didn’t see this coming, did you?

A lot of people don’t realize I consider myself a movie buff. It helps that I don’t have cable TV and do have a Netflix subscription. But anyway, I want to keep myself in the posting habit. So here I am, sharing my top 10 favorite movies from the year I was born: 1979.

1. Apocalypse Now

2. Alien

3. Rocky 2

4. The Jerk

5. Real Life

6. The Amityville Horror

7. The Muppet Movie

8. Escape from Alcatraz

9. The Warriors

10. Moonraker

I started working on a brighter layout. So once again I’m brushing up on things like Java and PHP. I also procured a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS4 and have made a few graphics already.

And I’m working on a secret project involving NPI that may or may not come to fruition :)

I’ve had a serious case of  blogger’s block lately. I’d take blogger’s block over writer’s block any day. … But not necessarily every day.  

Today the doctor let us know my son is officially free of his heart and apnea monitor.

Here he is on Easter Sunday:

And here’s him being his usual cheerful self:

You may have noticed those little black and white cords. No worries; they’ve officially gone bye-bye and the next chapter can begin.

I finished reading A Game of Thrones. Finally. I had no idea just how much story laid between the covers, like I just read five very good novels rolled into one.

Then I started in on The Path of Daggers. I figure if I’ve read seven WoT books, I can read the rest. It’s been kind of nice settling back into Jordan’s familiar world, as good as George R.R. Martin’s was. I’m heavily invested in the characters of WoT and am excited to see the story through to the end.

My editing’s been going very well despite getting knocked out of my own NPI. My paragraphs have gotten … noticably larger lately– without feeling too info-dumpy. I feel like I don’t have to trim everything as much as I used to because the flow still seems to be there. But please. If it’s not, knock me off my high horse.

Maybe I should introduce you to Cirellio sometime. Maybe a passage from a chapter? He is the main character, after all.

And maybe I should change the way the site looks, something bright instead of dark? A change around here might be just the inspiration I need.

Just to be clear– Nobody ‘fails’ the Novel Push Initiative. Sure, you can get knocked-out, but you absolutely positively cannot fail. Just by choosing to participate and giving it your all, you’ve succeeded.

And no, I’m not saying that just because I got knocked-out, too ;D

I’m concerned that some of you were saying ‘Sorry I failed’ to some degree in the form of Tweets or E-mails to me or others, and I want you to know that … you didn’t. You’ve got more words and experience than you started out with at the beginning of the month– You’re further along in your works-in-progress, and that’s got to count for something.

Life happens, even during NPI. And sometimes it gets in the way of writing a single word in the course of an entire day.

After I got knocked-out, two people asked me what happened. Read the rest of this entry »