Wolverton interview and more

The interview with Dave Wolverton was a resounding success!  We had a fascinating conversation about science fiction and the gospel, his latest book In The Company of Angels, self-publishing, the English 318 class at BYU and the profound impact it’s had on the LDS writing community, and much, much more. On that, I suppose I… Continue reading Wolverton interview and more

An interesting concept

Last night, I was hanging out with a friend of mine and a couple of girls in the apartment complex where I currently live.  We got to talking about books, and one of the girls said something really interesting: Every book needs to have one thing that the main character knows that the reader doesn’t… Continue reading An interesting concept

Space Pirates of CONduit

So this weekend I went to CONduit up in Salt Lake city.  It was a great experience! Lots of fun, lots of friends, and lots of excellent panels on writing. The usual crowd was there: Dan Wells, Brandon Sanderson, L. E. Modessitt, Bob Defendi, Dan Willis, Paul Genesse, Julie Wright, John Brown, Larry Corriea, James… Continue reading Space Pirates of CONduit

Book Festival and other updates

So last Friday, there was a book fair at the Provo Library.  I only heard about it the night before from Facebook, but there were almost twenty authors on the guest list, so I figured it would be a good place to go to meet other writers.  I wasn’t mistaken! I biked up to the… Continue reading Book Festival and other updates

Untitled

Man, I don’t write for this blog as much as I should. Life is going well.  I just recently got a part time job doing telephone surveys; hopefully, it will help tide things over until I can get something better.  Between that and donating plasma, I should be able to pay the bills for the… Continue reading Untitled

Quark has a new writing VP

That’s right; her board name is Jimmy and she’s basically doing it the same way I did it–by jumping in the deep end first.  Joined quark last semester, went to a few writing meetings, and pow!  Writing VP. Anyways, we had some interesting conversations after the last writing group meeting of the semester.  Basically, I… Continue reading Quark has a new writing VP

Quick post from Provo

This is going to be quick, because it’s late at night and I want to get some sleep. I made it to Provo.  I’m currently staying with an old roommate, sleeping on his couch.  To do: find a job and a place to live.  Fortunately, I’ve just about got the second one secured. I talked… Continue reading Quick post from Provo

Go to Tor.com and read this.

Brandon Sanderson’s story of how he decided to become a writer is very interest.  It goes back to elementary school, when he hated books and reading in general.  A wise teacher put a copy of Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane in his hand, and it started a chain reaction that led to him becoming a bestselling writer.… Continue reading Go to Tor.com and read this.

Thoughts on writing characters

A couple months ago, I was listening to one of my personal recordings of Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 lectures from last  year’s class.  The topic was writing characters. Brandon outlined several techniques for making characters sympathetic.  He also outlined how to round them out: give them flaws and handicaps, as well as little quirks to… Continue reading Thoughts on writing characters