The Chronicles of Malus Darkblade: Volume One – Dan Abnett and Mike Lee
Also on my reading pile is this, a compilation of the first three books of (apparently) the second most popular series in the Warhammer canon. Read more…>
Author: Dan Harris
Writer of stories that haven't happened yet. 10% Sci, 90% Fi. Author of The Unity Sequence: ASCENSION POINT (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B009TCE6G4) & VENUS RISING (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C9PF35G)
Question for aspiring writers…
Do you firmly believe you’ll be published one day?
Because I do. And I’m wondering if I’m being ridiculously overconfident or just typically overconfident.
Reading Now: The Dark Tower, Book VII
The Dark Tower, Book VII – Stephen King
(Look away now if you plan to read this at some point and want to avoid spoilers.)
Still here? Good.
I’m nearing the end of this, the last book of King’s epic fantasy saga – essentially one million-word novel, written over the course of seven books and twenty years. I’ll not go into great detail or summarise: there are a wealth of analyses of the series online already. But I did want to talk a little about the sheer audacity of one of the elements of the novel. Read more…
Link Dump: Advice
I’ll just leave these here.
- Hook Your Readers With Tension
- Writerisms and other Sins: A Writer’s Shortcut to Stronger Writing
- Hardcore Critique Guidelines
- 10 Things To Do To Become a Better Writer in 10 Days
- How to Write Strong Arguments
- Grammar Plague
- 5 Editor’s Secrets to Help You Write Like A Pro
- Plot and Structure
- Beginners’ Four Faults
- 25 Things Every Writer Should Know
Why be a writer?
A full-time, honest to God, professional writer, I mean. I’ve wanted it since I was a kid, but the reason – had anyone asked – would have been vague.
‘So I can write for as long as I want and make a living at it!’
Which is answering the question with the question, isn’t it? Stupid younger me. Read more…
Limbering up
I’m delighted to discover that splurging God-knows how many words – of questionable value – onto this blog didn’t lessen my ability to actually write something useful. It may even have loosened the old brain muscle, got the juices flowing, as I just banged out a thousand words in forty-five minutes – the final scene of chapter 20 of my WIP.
It’s a particularly poignant and saddening scene, I think, but one I hope I’ve managed to infuse with some kick-ass bravado. We’ll see. A snippet is in order:
“Skin darkening from white through dusky grey to black, veins of putrid green splitting his flesh, eyes glazed and glistening, Abe smiled. He would give them submission.
And he would take from them everything.”
You show ’em, Abe.
Scrivener
Evangelism mode: activate.
If you’re a writer, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Scrivener already. If you’ve not, head over there now.
Done? Good. So what is it? Read more…
Word Count
I do wonder if professional writers concern themselves with word count as much as I do. I assume they must, at least to the extent of “Have I written my 2,000 words for the day? I have! Excellent. Crack open the wine, Jeeves.” Read more…
In the beginning…
A shiny new blog.
A seductive timesink.
An outlet for the words that don’t belong in a novel, but have to go somewhere – lest they get bottled up and explode messily later.
May the time you waste here not be completely wasted.
DAN HARRIS: 10% SCI, 90% FI 
