Ya know, I like magic as much as the next person. . . no, I think I have to take that back.  I don’t like magic when it’s just a big special effects show.  I like magic to be fully integrated with the plot and characters of the book.  I don’t need to know how [...]

Okay, so I have three days right now between the Novelists, Inc conference on the beach, and the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego.  Yes, the time for denial is over:  I am a conference junkie.  Every year I think I should cut back on the number of cons I attend. . .and every year [...]

The Novelists, Inc annual conference is coming to a close–alas!– with a great talk by Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, a platform for creating and distributing e-books.  One of the difficulties of traditional publishing he pointed out is the limited distribution rights often controlled under various contracts, leading, as he points out, to frustrations like [...]

We were talking at my local RWA chapter about what we needed in order to get to the next level in our writing careers, and one lady summed it up with a mournful, “Time.”  It makes me think of the riddles in the dark scene from the Hobbit, where Bilbo can’t think of an answer [...]