In a little less than a month, Elisha Barber will be published.  It’s a historical fantasy novel, based on my reading too many medieval history books, and way too many books on the history of medicine.  If you’re curious, you’ll find the bibliography on my website.  I also attended the International Congress on Medieval Studies [...]

My beloved elder child cannot write a paragraph to save her life.  I, a professional fiction writer, am perpetually mystified by this.  I know that it’s common for parents to have children with different skill sets, and for this divide to cause consternation on both sides. It helps when the parent recognizes the child’s actual [...]

No doubt many of you are familiar with Clarke’s law:  any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.  It’s been speculated that one reason why science fiction as a genre has lost some ground to fantasy is that we seem to be living in an age of magic.  With all of the extraordinary technologies at [...]

One of the questions I’m frequently asked is how you go about creating, not a single book, but a coherent series. Fantasy readers love series books.  Once they get excited about a world and its inhabitants, they like to go inside and shut the door, living in there for book after book:  as long as [...]