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Showing posts 11 to 19 labeled Rants (19 total)

Faux Strength in Female Characters (January 17, 2016)

Not every heroine needs to be strong, but if you intend to write a strong heroine, you should do it properly. You can't just put her in combat boots and call it a day. More »

Why Libraries Are Good for Authors and Publishers (October 24, 2014)

Today I learned that the San Antonio Public Library has installed kiosks in local airports, which travelers can use to browse the catalog and check out eBooks. This news made me happy and excited for the future of libraries. More »

Sex Isn't a Story, Intelligence Isn't Cute, and Culture Isn't Character (May 19, 2014)

On Friday I borrowed a certain library book. By Saturday night I was bitterly disappointed in the author, the publisher, and humanity as a whole. More »

Hobbyist, Professional...Who Cares? (February 9, 2014)

Recently, there's been an alarming trend on writing blogs to draw a line in the sand between "professional" writers and "hobbyist" writers. Some bloggers have always spent an inordinate amount of time trying to tell people they're not "real" writers if they don't do X, Y, or Z, but starting around New Years, when people were making their 2014 writing resolutions, it started to get especially bad. More »

Interpreting Surveys (August 7, 2013)

Yesterday morning, when I accessed my reading list of blogs for the first time in weeks, I found a bit of hubbub around a survey performed by Marie Force, a bestselling romance author. She surveyed 2,951 readers about what influences them to buy books. At first glance, the results seem to be encouraging to self-publishers. More »

Mystery Tropes I Wish Would Die (April 4, 2013)

I've always loved reading mysteries. Not only to they offer fun puzzles and a bit of mental exercise, but they're very reassuring. The detective/crime/mystery genre offers a dependable catharsis—no matter what injustices the universe throws at us, the truth will always come out. More »

Guns in Fiction Land (December 29, 2012)

When people are afraid of something, they tend to worship it. They obsess and they fantasize and they focus all of their fears and hopes into that one terrifying object. Let's take the most basic fear shared by everything in the kingdom Animalia: death. More »

The Romance of Rape (December 16, 2012)

There's a terrible disconnect between societal attitudes towards rape in the real world and rape in fiction. More »

BS Writing Advice: Adverbs Are the Enemy (October 19, 2012)

This post begins another sporadic blogging series which I have affectionately dubbed "BS Writing Advice." I believe the title explains itself. But for the purposes of establishing a mission statement and sticking to it, I will declare that I intend to write about the ubiquitous Pro Tips for writers which are, in my humble opinion, bullshit. More »