I ask for tough questions on my Facebook. I said I would answer them by doing Facebook LIVE from my Author’s Page. The first question was:
“What is your take on so many old movies being remade? Is it because Hollywood can’t come up with anything new on their own?”
My YouTube answer is here:
Otherwise, keep reading.
I don’t mind remakes of old Si-Fi or Fantasy movies. Because back in the day their reach exceeded their grasp.… Read more
I’ve totally revamped Out of Oblivion the last 6 months after an epic bazillion words. When I got to the end of the first serious draft I was not happy with the ending. I don’t settle.
Recently I got together with two of my genius friends to discuss the end of Out of Oblivion. I sent them a message on Facebook prior to meeting basically saying the following:
What Makes a Story Great?
Let’s use Luke Skywalker’s “moment” in the finale of Star Wars over the Death Star.… Read more
What’s the most important thing a writer can do when writing a book? FINISH!
No matter how rickety the construction, get…it…done! I learned this with Blood & Soul. To me, my struggle was monumental because I put a lot of pressure on myself to write the best book I could write. I labored long, long hours to find the theme, the message, the climax for the first book.
What is the moment of resolution for Out of Oblivion?… Read more
A lot of readers have asked about the pronunciation of names in my book. Because the book is other-worldly I chose to make up names. 99% of fantasy fiction writers do this as well. I worked to make them easy to say. Below is a guide to pronouncing the words. Not a fancy dictionary type guide, but some helpful suggestions on how to sound them out and a micro bio.
People:
Athorigan – Uh-thor-egun
*King of the Midvast
Ledarrin – Led-Arron
*The king’s bastard son.… Read more
In the writing state—the state of inspiration—the fictive dream springs up fully alive: the writer forgets the words he has written on the page and sees, instead, his characters moving around their rooms, hunting through cupboards, glancing irritably through their mail, setting mousetraps, loading pistols. The dream is as alive and compelling as one’s dreams at night, and when the writer writes down on paper what he has imagined, the words, however inadequate, do not distract his mind from the fictive dream but provide him with a fix on it, so that when the dream flags he can reread what he’s written and find the dream starting up again.… Read more
Romantic love i
s already complex and mysterious but society’s understanding of it has now become terribly flawed by profound confusion and misapplication. Love has been unlearned, and often disabled. The windows into our souls have become more clouded. The roads are rougher and the cars are rundown.
Dark forces have attacked Love on many levels in our world. For me I see the attack in our media driven world. Because I enjoy studying story structure I see more people fall in love on the big screen at the theater or TV than in life.… Read more
Here’s an update on books in the making, marketing, upcoming promo and letting go.
The Hero’s Journey is not built well on stereotypes. It excels on archetypes. Below I have listed the sequence of the hero’s transformation. These are recognized patterns in great stories. It is seen in 
everything from High Noon to Star Wars to Lord of the Rings.
A few writers are gifted like Stephen King. They seem to have the instincts from the get-go, like a person born gifted with seemingly embedded musical talent. So when gifted people like that say there are no rules to story telling, it seems valid to them and the folks seeking wisdom on how to be as good as King go looking for inspiration rather than perspiration. When King sits down and just writes, it’s not, of course, me just sitting down to write.… Read more
