Writing Archives

You can never read the same story twice. Some of us complain about returning to earlier favorites only to find they’ve been rendered unreadable by visits from an imaginary being called “the Suck Fairy.” The Suck Fairy brings to our attention the unfortunate assumptions our favorite authors made as they created their fictional worlds: the racism implicit in Tarzan’s superiority over Black Africa…

When listing their 10 top horror novels for 2024, The New York Times said we’re in a golden age of horror, which is wonderful news for anyone who writes—or wants to write—in the genre. When I got my adult library card at 13, I went straight for the horror section. That’s what I loved to read and also what I wrote. But when I started thinking about writing for publication, I discovered that the …

Early in my writing career, I took a lot of world-building workshops. At the time, I was writing contemporary romances set in quirky small towns, so I would carefully build and populate my world. Then, I would turn in the manuscript and start all over again. It took years before I thought, “Wait … what if I stayed in one fictional place and explored more of its stories before moving on?” Part o…

Writing retreats offer a chance to work in peace and restore creativity Sometimes we need to escape our everyday lives and become a hermit for a time to meet that pesky deadline or work out a plot point. Or maybe visit with like-minded souls to remind ourselves why we write and to recharge our creativity. That’s where writers’ retreats come in, hence the name. Writing retreats run the gamut. Th…

In Romeo and Juliet, William Shakespeare writes this line from Juliet to Romeo: What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. Likewise, authors sometimes wish readers would judge our books purely based on prose, character, and plot. But let’s face it, readers are often swayed by an eye-catching book cover or a clever title. The reality is that there are mil…

It’s October, where the onset of fall, Halloween, and the alleged thinning of the veil between the living and dead initiates interests in ghosts, sorcery, and witches. But in the last few years, there’s been a proliferation of witches in literature, including romance, cozy mystery, science fiction, and urban fantasy, among others—and not just at Halloween. It’s a current trend that’s created a …