Welcome to the latest Bonus Material post for the Project Renovatio series. This one’s gonna get a little musical. Some writers use music for inspiration. I know of a couple who got whole story ideas from a song (I had one for a short story). This isn’t quite like that. As I write, I hear songs…
I visited a rather unique place last weekend. It’s a temporary exhibit at the Denver Art Museum, and seeing as my family 1. Loves Star Wars, and 2. Mostly hadn’t been to the art museum (I’m the only one who had), it was a good opportunity to gain some artistic insight. Isn’t this post about the…
Project Ancora goes to betas today, and I’m taking a short break from formatting to share part of it because it’s crazy exciting (the book, not the formatting. Formatting sucks). Side note: If you’re planning to read parts 1 and 2 of the series, this chapter has spoilers. So don’t read it. Enjoy! Chapter One…
There are many rules that govern our writing and language use. Ever useful, sometimes changing, and occasionally bizarre. There are some rules I just can’t seem to learn. My brain refuses to let them in, and I have to look them up every single damn time I need to use them. One of those is…
A friend emailed me a question. She’s written a book and is considering what to do with it. Her question: “How do you self-publish on Amazon?” She didn’t mean what buttons to push on KDP that makes the book go live. She meant: “What are the steps necessary to prepare a book for publication?” I…
About a week after Thanksgiving, I posted this on Facebook. It led to a variety of comments. There was one odd man out. Yes, Dan, I called you odd. That’s what you get for liking that song. This post has a different point than “Christmas music sucks” (though that’s a valid point). The point is what came…
Books are made of chapters, and chapters are made of scenes. Those segments of the story are what hold the whole thing together. Write them well, and you have a page-turner. Write them not so well, and… No writer wants to do that to their readers, so it’s worth figuring out what makes a scene…
“Creating that all important sense of danger, wonder, and high adventure that genre fans crave she delivers a thoughtful narrative that engages and enthralls from the very start, achieving an equitable balance between her reimagined human world and fantasy that tugs at the heart strings.” How cool is this?? Drake and the Fliers received an…
Over two years ago, I participated in a genre mashup flash fiction challenge – the “genres” I was randomly assigned were dystopian and shapeshifting. I took some literary license and went more post-apocalyptic than dystopian, and I created a short story about a teenage boy who survives a global pandemic only to be gifted the ability…
When I published my first book twenty-one months ago (two years ago come February, so you don’t have to math), I didn’t know what to expect. I knew I’d sell some copies, probably my friends would read it, and it would get a handful reviews (hopefully good ones). If you’ve followed the blog for a…
Allison Maruska 