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If the Writer Isn’t Having Fun, the Reader Probably Isn’t Having Fun
So . . . in 2003, JC and I launched a series staring a female vampire hunter—in a dark medieval fantasy setting—and the Noble Dead Saga was born. I’m the first drafter in our team, and I was having a blast. I “get” why readers enjoy stories about vampires and about vampire hunters, and I think as a result, the series did well.
About four years in—and four novels later—we had some other writers over for a dinner party, and one of them was a fairly bitter soul who’d taught creative writing for years and had not managed to land an agent or a publisher. When everyone at the party went outside to play croquet after dinner, I stayed in to wash the dishes, and this writer stayed behind to talk to me. I did feel [...]
Continue reading Welcome Barb Hendee!
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Hey folks, it’s one of those open days again, so time for the MW writers to answer short questions you, the readers, have posed. Are you ready? Today’s question is:
“What is your most unusual writing ritual?”
James R Tuck
I have no “ritual”. I’ve been a professional tattoo artist for 18 years now so I am used to working with people watching, things happening, and distractions all over. I can work in any situation. In fact, my first book, Blood And Bullets, was written in my station between tattoos! Last year my eldest (the Daughter) went off to college so I now have an office. I get most of my work done there and it’s my place to be serious about the writing. Decorated with my inspiring stuff (mostly rosaries, monster toys, Frazetta prints, and pictures of guns) it is a place to really focus on making words. It [...]
Continue reading Magical Words Party Talk 2
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Today we have a special guest, Krista D Ball, who is the author of What Kings Ate and Wizards Drank: A Fantasy Lover’s Food Guide, a marvelous resource that takes readers on a journey into the depths of epic fantasy’s obsession with rabbit stew and teaches them how to catch the blasted creatures, how to move armies across enemy territories without anyone starving to death, and what a medieval pantry should look like when your heroine is seducing the hero. Welcome to Magical Words, Krista!
Sooner or later, all writers face the dreaded research phase. It might be as something as simple as checking to see what street intersects what avenue in your city, or it might be as complex as the legal system of 12th century England. The reactions to research are just as varied, too. Nevertheless, the research demands your attention.
I’ve personally received many emails over [...]
Continue reading Brains, Beer and Books Writing, Research (and Urine Mushrooms?)
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Happy Friday, y’all! Please welcome our friend and today’s special guest, Gail Z Martin! She has a brand-new book coming out this week, and we were thrilled to let her come here to tell you all about it. Ready? Here she is!
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If you’ve ever lived through an extended power outage, you know how inconvenient, scary and dangerous it can be when the power grid goes down. Without electric power, food spoils, buildings get too cold or too hot, businesses can’t function and in a total outage, even emergency services grind to a halt. We’ve seen how devastating it can be to go without electricity when natural disasters or war destroy a region’s infrastructure. Modern civilization rapidly disintegrates without the conveniences, safety measures, and tools upon which we’ve come to rely. When society relies on something as fundamentally as we rely on electricity, everything falls apart when that element [...]
Continue reading When Magic Goes Off The Grid
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Back in July, Misty, Kalayna, AJ and John went to the Second Annual Fantastical Mystery Tour event in Columbia, SC, where they met Delilah S Dawson, author of Wicked As They Come and our guest today. She’s an artist, wife, mom, goof, geek, and cupcake enthusiast. Some of her favorite things are travel, books, movies, ninjas, vampires, pirates, baby pandas, cephalopods, horseback riding, roller skating, painting, Braeburn apples, boots, Candy Cane Lane tea, and cute jackets. Please give a warm welcome to Delilah S Dawson!
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Here’s the dirty secret: I wrote a steampunk book by pure accident.
Honestly, I didn’t set out to do it. I dreamed a scene between a confused, naked woman waking up on a rock and the carnival ringmaster who found her there, and suddenly there were clockwork monkeys and submarines cluttering up the world.
So I did what any stout-hearted adventurer would do: I [...]
Continue reading Confessions of an Accidental Steampunk
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Hi, Todd Massey, the Magical Words admin posting today.
Faith asked me to talk a little bit about the new App I put together for Magical Words and to talk in general about the shift in Internet Marketing taking place due to smartphones and tablets.
What? You don’t have your website built yet? Pfft! Don’t even bother. The mobile revolution occurred while you were looking down at your smartphone.
Now, what you need is, a mobile website and mobile apps to promote your brand.
Magical Words has actually been mobile ready for years. It may not have looked very pretty, but if you visited this site on a mobile device the website displayed in a different format. I recently updated the mobile display and it looks much better now.
Why should I even bother with mobile displays and creating a Magical Words App? The world is going mobile.
Let me [...]
Continue reading Apps For Authors, Going Mobile
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Gail Z. Martin, author of The Fallen Kings Cycle series (The Sworn and The Dread) and a friend of Magical Words from way back, agreed to visit us today to unveil her sneak peek of Ice Forged, Book One in The Ascendant Kingdoms Saga, coming from Orbit Books in 2013. Gail’s giving everyone a first look at the cover art for Ice Forged, as well as book excerpts, author Q&A and more as part of her Hawthorn Moon Online Sneak Peek Event. She’s got exclusive goodies spread out across more than a dozen partner sites, and you can find out about it all on Gail’s site, www.AscendantKingdoms.com. Welcome back to MW, Gail!
Q: You’ve got a new series launching in January, with Ice Forged, and you’re doing an online sneak peek event you call the Hawthorn Moon Event. What led you to create a new series on the heels of [...]
Continue reading Gail Martin’s Hawthorn Moon Event
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