Authors Electric

I have met a lot of writers. Like real, published-by-big-houses, award-winning, best-selling novelists. Writers you know, writers that your kids have tests on, and writers that your kids read to avoid studying for tests on the writers your kids have tests on. Writers with Wikipedia pages I once had dinner with Joseph Heller because I told him at a signing that I was writing my Master's thesis on his work. I had to explain to Kurt Vonnegut at the same dinner that no, it wasn't because  Slaughterhouse-Five wasn't good enough for me. I didn't have a camera, so this picture of them with their wives (from an entirely unrelated event) will have to suffice. I used to play D&D with a World Fantasy and Bram Stoker Award winner. I correspond regularly with another Bram Stoker Award winner. I've eaten several lunches with T.E.D. Klein . I used to work with the guy who wrote the Wishbone books . I am also good friends with both Kelley Wilde and our own Reb MacR...

For me, the "inside story" is the real truth, as opposed to the spin or interpretation put on it by the person telling the tale or writing the news report. The private persona rather than the public face. In writing, it can be the difference between telling and showing - although that's a whole different ball game and not one I'm going to play here; not in this post anyway. It's also where you find out what makes your character tick, what motivates them and why they feel this way. When I first started writing my YA fantasy Edge of Dreams , I had absolutely no idea where the story was going. I really don't recommend it as a way to write, as I've written myself into more corners than a Mueller yoghurt over the past however-many years - unfortunately it's the only way I know how to be real and immediate. If I plan more than a scene or two ahead, I lose interest in what I'm doing and it shows. In Edge of Dreams , I wrote that one of my characters w...