Columns

Why I Volunteer for Writing Festivals like Wordstock (and Why You Should, Too)

September 19th, 2012

Coming home late one evening after a meeting for the Wordstock marketing team, my husband looked at me and said, “I don’t get you. You actually spend your free time talking about books and reading. You are crazy.” I laughed and agreed that, yes, I was probably crazy. Not everyone would donate their time to planning a huge literary festival, or attend hours of meetings figuring out ways to get people to come to said literary festival.

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Storyville: Narrative Hooks

September 19th, 2012

I’ve mentioned narrative hooks before, but only briefly. What I’d like to do with this column is elaborate a bit more on what a narrative hook is, how you can create great opening sentences, and how that hook relates to the rest of your story or novel. Wait, that’s a terrible narrative hook. Let me try this again. When you push the metal hook deep into the mouth of a large-mouthed bass, piercing the skin, the barb unable to be removed, you have captured the beast, he will not get away—do the same thing with your writing. Not great, but better.

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Small Packages: Short Fantasy Fiction

September 18th, 2012

In looking back on my columns for LitReactor so far, I realized that I’ve focused primarily on fantasy novels and not on short fiction. As a writer and reader of short stories, I felt that should be rectified. There’s so much good fantasy being published today, and much of that is in the short form. And while novels offer more space for worldbuilding and intricate plots, short stories often allow for more experimentation in content and style, and can pack more emotion than might be expected in such a short space.

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What's The Value Of A Great Ending?

September 17th, 2012

In art school, when building your portfolio they tell you to start strong, end even stronger, and bury any weaknesses in the center. Opening strong gives a good first impression and encourages interest, and closing strong is vital because the ending is what people remember most when they walk away. For me, and I would wager for most, the same is true of books. And since it takes a great deal longer to read a book  than to flip through a portfolio, a strong ending becomes even more important.

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Ask The Agent: Answers To Some of The Gritty Details of The Business

September 17th, 2012

I received so many fantastic questions this week! I couldn’t decide on just a few, so I’ve decided to go ahead and answer several of them, given the answers are not as intensive as usual. Question from Malina Not too long ago, a friend of mine had asked me to help look at her work on www.wattpad.com and for a bit of fun, I started writing a book on there too. 

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The Bottom Of The Barrel: The 10 Worst-Ranked Books On Amazon

September 14th, 2012

With 42 million books to choose from on Amazon.com and only so many hours in the day, I need help picking out the right ones. No matter how good a book is, some idiot reviewers are bound to drag the score down (showcased in The Top 10 Best Books... With The Worst Amazon Customer Reviews) and the author's loved ones will undoubtedly get paid off to compliment the book, but overall, Amazon reviews still give a fairly accurate assessment of a book's quality.

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Return of the Bonkbuster

September 14th, 2012

If you’re feeling all Fifty Shades of Grey'ed out, the bad news is that the feeding frenzy has not yet abated. A film version is in the works and rumor has it that Ryan Gosling has been offered a sufficiently tempting deal (probably including his own luxury mansion on the Moon) to sign up for the part of Christian Grey.

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The Weird Side Of Literary Tourism: Five Bizarre Book-Inspired Experiences

September 13th, 2012

Literary tourism isn't new. The Wadsworth-Longfellow House, Mark Twain's boyhood home, the Hemingway Museum, the Dr.

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The Street Is Hers: Quality Over Gender In Noir

September 13th, 2012

Sexism and the arts (hell, sexism and anything really) is an unfortunate reality. Particularly for us critic-y types, who've had it drummed into our heads that we need to marvel in wonder at any piece of film, literature, sculpture, canvas, photography, etc., created by anyone nonwhite and not in possession of a penis. We're taught that we need to mention, in fact, glorify that the piece of art was made by someone who's Mexican or black or a woman, and that this is the sole thing we need to judge the art on.

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The Fantasy Novel Back To School List

September 12th, 2012

It’s September, which means back to school time for a lot of folks. That got me thinking about classic fantasy stories that continue to be taught in schools. I thought it might be interesting to expand on some of those classics and take a look at more current works that play with similar themes and ideas. Here, then, is a list of both - the original classics along with their modern counterparts. This is not an exhaustive list by any means, but just a sampling of some of the better known works. I welcome debates and other recommendations in the comments.

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