Recent content by JFB

I'm not sure you have to love them. With apologies to Raymond Carver, I'm not sure you even have to forgive them. What you do need is a grounded understanding of why they are the way they are and how they got that way. Lesser throwaway antagonists don't require this so much. A Big Bad...

I’m a great fan of Hemingway’s theory. I enjoy it as an alternative to the sort of braindead exposition that dominates most forms of modern entertainment. I like to think I’ve used it, occasionally to good effect, with the marked caveat that it’s gotten me dinged by readers more than once...

I write to justify my research habit. No rabbit hole too deep. No triviality too far. Whether it gets used isn't the point, necessarily - more that I have the best material understanding of the time and place possible, even if it's only there to influence how the words are structured. This...

This is a complex question. But unequivocally…no.

Sympathy is great...when you can come by it honest. Otherwise, the most important part of a character is that they make sense in their context, their purpose, and their stated experience. The importance of likability pales in comparison, and striving to build a character who doesn't offend...

- Protag is usually a male, usually a young adult at introduction, and frequently out of time or place - There are politics, though seldom explicit and never mapped to a contemporary left/right system - The cooler it looks, the more likely it is to be wrong (i.e., if it's Hollywood, it's...

Early on, passivity is your enemy. Later, too, but less critical then. You've also got kind of a mixed metaphor going, and you use 'weight' twice in short succession. Dunno if this is a dealbreaker, but a reader is likely to notice. The past never let go. Outside, rain pulled leaves from...

Were it me...I might upend this entirely. The moon had been set an hour when His Majesty's Ship Maasai edged into the habor at Kalamata. Flames licking through burning buildings gave the waterfront a hellish cast, the night sky darker against fire. Grain of salt, as ever.

Last I checked I was. I think. Probably. ...I haven't slept in a while.

Wait...I entered a contest?

Weirdly, no. JBF was. I just kinda rolled with it. Seemed a fitting summation of my writing career.

Bonus points for referencing the finest guitar player of the latter 20th century.

Dunno. Hence, 'may'.

I...uh...may have done drum stuff once.

I have a flit gun I stole from somebody trying to get rid of me. Challenge accepted.