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I've just returned from the 2013 AWP conference in Boston. I met many writers, many publishers, and many people who would like to be writers and are looking for publishers.

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Original header image by Andrea Piacquadio

Last October, I gave you 10 Words You Literally Didn't Know You Were Getting Wrong, and it generated a lot of discussion about common usage, which is often incorrect or imprecise usage; and good usage, which is usually the best way to use a word.

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One of the great things about fantasy fiction is that it mixes well. Fantasy elements can be added to most other types of fiction quite easily. Mix it with noirish mystery and you get urban fantasy. Stir it with science fiction and you get science fantasy. Splash it on romance and you get paranormal romance.

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It’s one of the first things you learn as a comics reader — don’t get too emotionally invested in the death of a character, cause they’ll be back. Usually before you can even miss them. The latest to suffer an irrelevant death is Batman’s most recent Robin, aka Damian Wayne, Batman’s son, aka the grouchiest Boy Wonder ever. This death, spoiled prior to the release of the comic just about everywhere, was a long-planned plot point of Grant Morrison’s in his Batman Inc. series. While the book itself (Batman Inc.

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We all want to read a story that can surprise us. Every time you open a book, you do so in the hopes that it will be at least different enough from everything else you’ve read to be interesting. Even when we read the same kinds of stories over and over again, we do so with an appreciation for the variations of the familiar form. Often the most damning criticism one can offer an otherwise brilliant piece of writing is that it’s been done before, thus lessening its value. Perhaps that explains popular fiction’s recent obsession with twist endings.