Tag: writing

Achievement Unlocked: Choose Title for New Book

On By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Self-Publishing, WritingLeave a comment

Thanks to everyone who commented and gave your thoughts and suggestions for a title. I’ve given it a lot of careful consideration, and the winning entry is…

VENUS RISING.

I love it. It’s got the obvious SF implication from the word Venus, the ‘rising’ is dynamic and interesting, and the cadence of the two words flows really well.

The book’s coming along very nicely, too. I’ve been quite ill this last week, which has stalled things a bit, but I’m nearly there with the first draft. Midway through chapter seventeen (of twenty), 57.5K words done with only another 12-13K to go. I might even get the draft done before Christmas. We’ll see.

Exciting times!

Twenty Rules For Writing Detective Stories

On By Dan HarrisIn Writing1 Comment

A bit of a diversion from our normal schedule of science fiction, but this is too good not to share. Futility Closet has posted a list of twenty rules that an aspiring writer of detective stories must abide by, originally collated by S.S. Van Dine in 1928.

My favourite:

“7. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader’s trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.”

Marvelous.