Blog Tour 2012 — The Writing Trip

A Q&A at David L. Shutter’s Writing Trip talks process! Passion! Publishing! Prose vs. film! Other things, only some of which begin with P!

It would take a full frontal lobotomy or some manner of alien brain parasite for me to ever take on the services of an agent again, but that’s just one guy’s opinion. Like many writers, I think the advantages of indie author-publishing are pretty clear — but maybe better than some, I also understand how much work is involved in publishing properly…

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Blog Tour 2012 — Pure Textuality

The August/September Blog Tour continues at Pure Textuality, where Scott talks about the fine art of tricking your writer’s mind.

Being a dedicated editor involves a very different set of creative muscles than being a dedicated writer, and it’s certainly not the case that all writers need to be as good at editing as a dedicated editor. A lot of writers find editing about as exciting as warm yogurt, and if that’s the camp you’re in, that’s totally fine. Here’s the thing, though. The writer’s mind is really, really good about hiding the mistakes that the editor’s mind needs to catch…

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Blog Tour 2012 — Indie Book Blog

The Blog Tour stops in at the Indie Book Blog to talk philosophies of world building in fantasy and speculative fiction.

I like a starting point to my fiction that’s tied down firmly by rules. I like the idea of consistency in fantasy worlds. I like the idea that magic works the same way for everyone in a fantasy world, and thus should be theoretically accessible to everyone in some way — not just the exclusive province of a small number of extremely powerful background characters…

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Blog Tour — The Eagle’s Aerial Perspective

Scott talks speculative fiction, indie publishing, and hanging out with Joseph Conrad up in the aerie of the Golden Eagle.

It’s been said before by people smarter than me, but working within a fictional world limited only by your own imagination is both a blessing a curse. A blessing because you can tell literally any story that comes to mind; a curse because it gets very easy to tell stories that disconnect from the core essentials of dramatic storytelling — morality, the struggle for survival, and what William Faulkner famously called "the human heart in conflict with itself”…

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Blog Tour 2012 — McAfee Land

Horror author David McAfee invites Scott to hang out and talk about his publishing journey.

My publishing journey is a little bit different than many self- and indie-publishing authors, because my journey has taken me on a grand tour of the publishing industry through all the years that I’ve been bashing away getting better as a writer. And because I was fortunate enough to work in publishing for a long while, and because I was doubly fortunate to work with some incredibly talented people, my sense of what’s involved in being an indie publisher begins and ends with two simple facts:

Publishing is a complex process. Publishing is hard work…

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Blog Tour 2012 — Lisa Mondello

As the 2012 Blog Tour clocks into the second quarter, Scott drops in on author and screenwriter Lisa Mondello to talk screen v. prose and aesthetic separation.

The problem is, workshops don’t function the way most writers (and a lot of instructors) think they do. In a workshop, the feedback you get from other people is much less important than the feedback you give to other people — because the point of workshopping is to learn how to spot problems in your own work as easily as you can spot problems in other people’s…

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Blog Tour 2012 — Tonya Kappes

Mystery writer Tonya Kappes opens up her site to the 2012 Blog Tour today, where Scott does a rousing cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop”.

Writing is hard. Everyone who’s ever written knows this. Everyone who’s ever written knows the adage attributed to Dorothy Parker: “I hate writing. I love having written.” Writing is hard. But stopping writing is dead easy, and therein lies the problem… 

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Blog Tour 2012 — Greg Hamerton

The 2012 Blog Tour continues at the site of fantasy author Greg Hamerton, who asked about collaboration.

For me, there’s something special about worlds crafted through collaboration, because there’s something special about the process of collaboration — and of how that process sharpens, rather than dulls, individual creativity…

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“I Mourn With Such Dismay”

When I recall that nevermore, alas!
That lady shall I see
On whose account I mourn with such dismay,
My grieving thoughts about my heart amass
Such sorrow that I say:
“My soul, why dost thou not depart from me…?”

— Danté Alighieri

Blog Tour 2012 — Christopher Bunn

Fantasy author Christopher Bunn’s site rings out today with thoughts on writing and worldview for the 2012 Blog Tour!

For me, the most important stories — the best stories — are about the struggles of real people to define their place in the world. Characters alone, cut off. Driven to question and forced to discover the meaning in their lives. And my problem with fantasy built on a rich cosmology of living gods is simply that it undercuts those questions and that process of discovery where so much of the best fiction is made…

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Blog Tour 2012 — Guerrilla Wordfare

The 2012 Blog Tour swings by Lizzy Ford’s Guerrilla Wordfare, for some discussion of the connections between story and the person the writer used to be.

Above and below that level of conscious creative possibility, all writers collect bits of information and ephemera. Things we know, things we wonder about. Stray thoughts that never manage to percolate up into consciousness, but which embed themselves into the strata foundations of our creativity like layers in the fossil record…

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Blog Tour 2012 — Darrin Drader

Author and game designer Darrin Drader opens up his guest blog to the 2012 Insane Angel Studios Tour of the World*, for a Q&A talking about We Can Be Heroes, “Heroes of Gracia,” and the Endlands.

Looking away from the mechanics, though, I think there are narrative threads in the new book that resonate in most of what I write. Even going back to the work I’ve done as a screenwriter in years past, the stories I gravitate toward tend to be focused around characters who end up in over their heads and are forced to rethink who they are and what they’re capable of as a result…

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*Entire tour of any entire world, real or imaginary, not actually implied or suggested.

Blog Tour 2012 — Ty Johnston

The Insane Angel Studios August/September Blog Tour rolls into its first stop at the online home of author Ty Johnston: Life on the Written Page, with an essay on technology, fiction, and character in SF.

The one thing that all my own favorite writers of science fiction and speculative fiction do is to look not only at the narrative possibilities inherent in technology, but at the interface line where technology impacts on and resonates in the human world…

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