Okay, so we’ve talked about writing a different kind of person than you actually are – maybe you’re a straight woman writing gay romance. Or maybe you’re a gay man writing a transgender character. Or someone in Iceland trying to imagine the experience of someone in South Africa. That last one gets to today’s point. There’s an old adage – “write what you know.” But so often, we are challenged to write things and places that we don’t know it all, especially in science fiction, fantasy and paranormal. And these often require research to get the details right. Recently I … Read more

I’ve been writing for a long time. I mean, like a really long time. I wrote my first short story when I was in fourth grade, and submitted it to a contest at the University of Arizona. It won, and you can probably still see it somewhere in the dusty archives there. In my teens, I embarked upon my writing career in earnest. But I had one big problem. I didn’t like to plot out my stories. Instead, I like to be surprised by what might happen next, like my readers. So I would sit down in front of a … Read more