Arcs – like the Greek guy says! (not orcs)

Don McQuinn and I have indulged several conversations on techniques of fiction. Lately we’ve switched from the Celtic Swell to a couple of Greek hangouts. So our notes and scribbles are typically illuminated with coffee stains and ketchup.

Lately, we’ve been musing on — or been bemused by — questions of structure. Here’s a first conversation on structure in genre fiction.
^^^^^^^^^^^
ANNIE: If we’re going to talk about structure, I have to say first that I believe in the three-part act.
(draws Aristotelian slope) Aristotelian structure

DON: It’s worked for 3000 years. I think we should stay with it. Continue reading →

Dialect in Dialog – doing right by the reader

That chat Don McQuinn and I began on Dialog in fiction has spun new conversations.
See Don’s recent James Rollins Interview on Dialog. (James Rollins writes  best-selling thrillers.)
(Our first “dialog” is here.)
Don asked Jim a proxy question for me in that interview: how to let readers know the meaning of foreign words in dialog, without disrupting the flow.  Jim provides great examples from his work in that interview with Don.
Why I asked: I wrestle with the issue all the time. Continue reading →

Paean to Stephen Sartarelli

I owe a debt to Stephen Sartarelli that I can never repay.
If I could go back in time to when my mind was still flexible enough to master a new language — say age 12 — and immerse myself in Italian, I might not owe him as much, and I could instead focus on what I owe Andrea Camilleri as a reader.

However, I found Camilleri only through publication of Sartarelli’s first translation (of The Shape of Water), when I was searching for more translations of Manuel Vazquez Montalbán’s books. My search revealed that Camilleri had named his detective as an homage to Montalbán, so I purchased the first Camilleri translation. I’ve since given The Shape of Water as a gift more than a dozen times.
Continue reading →

Back to the 1992 Future

I wrote the Windows 3.1 Resource Kit using my own WYSIWYG Word template, being the first to deliver Msft Press a camera-ready manuscript using only Msft tools. Then I became one of the first adopters of the infamous Msft MAE templates. Until I began creating Web pages—and even after—I did most of my writing in ready-for-print Word files.

Continue reading →

Launching The Grrrl of Limberlost

Major thanks to early reviewers at Amazon and Goodreads!
Book details on Jugum Press site.
The Grrrl of Limberlost  GRRRL is available from all your favorite vendors.
If you can’t find it at your local bookstore, ask them to order via Ingram:  ISBN: 978-1-939423-18-4

KINDLE:  Lending enabled; Matchbook with print edition
EPUB: Nook — Kobo — Sony & more on Smashwords
PRINT: U.S. Amazon — non-U.S. Amazon — Powell’s — Barnes & Noble — CreateSpace — Find other bookstores

I promised a comparative study of Lisa Tilton’s cover development, similar to the discussion of Nine Volt Heart cover. The final cover for GRRRL still gives me chills … so here’s a tour of the choices. Continue reading →

Why I bullied editors into compromising quality

Reviewer's markup

You might think this post is about you.
It might be.
I have a new “Managing Up” post at http://www.steyer.net on the tradeoffs that managers make:
Understand the Triangle: Cost + Time + Quality

My focus is on issues for contractor writer/editors and technical writing, but the principles apply most everywhere, at least in the tech sector.
Let me know what you think.
(And I apologize if you’re one of the writers or editors that I bullied into making mistakes. You and I know what quality is, and it’s sad that we can’t be paid to pursue our ideals.)