Danoli didn’t realize it was a fence until he he tried to push through its mesh of green leaves.  Thorns pricked him, tearing his clothes, scratching his face and arms.  He tried again a few feet away where the undergrowth seemed a little less dense.  The result was the same, though.  Defeated, he backtracked, trudging [...]

Jottings to warm up for a day’s work at the keyboard.  Nothing preservable, but it purges feelings stirred by a conversation I had this morning at breakfast.  She lives in a village of the damned.  The people there lost their souls long ago, freely giving them away in  exchange for safety. They speak what they are told [...]

I have a book…that has two tails — two ends to one question.  And my question is, do I end it chilled hope or with chilled terror?  That’s the conundrum.  I’m leaning…well, more than leaning…toward ending with chilled hope where the protagonist wins with the antagonist under her control, alive.  On the other hand, we [...]

Some people like to write about terrifying possibilities.  Some prefer to write about troubles.  Some want somebody beating up on someone else, or falling in love, or making good, or defeating some obstacle or enemy — an outside enemy or obstacle.  And all of it set in the some richly draped realm of human potential.  Dress up [...]

In one of my present manuscripts, I’ve let the question of marriage dangle without settling the question quite yet.  Here’s why.  If I go ahead and have my protag marry in this book, it changes the character in the mind of the reader.  Some of the character’s ”edge” is dulled; the character becomes more mundane, less interesting, and [...]

Figuring out which one, two, three…four, five, six…er — quit counting, EJ — novels to share here, and then working out blurbs and searching out text excerpts from them which will not give out any real meat of the story, but, instead, just give out enough stimulation to invite a reader to investigate — that’s what I’ve been muddling with [...]