Recent content by Rzero

I'd say that overall, I'm a fairly confident writer. Unfortunately, that's not a constant state. There are areas in which I know I excel, and some where I falter. I'm usually working from a strong outline that I put a lot of work into, so I'm rarely concerned about arcs, pacing or plotholes...

I appreciate the suggestions. I'll think about it. Half the point of the opening, though, is the silly but shocking idea of Nicholas Cage biting off the tip of someone's finger. I want that to hit, even if he's revealed to be a ferret seconds later. I'm absolutely sure that even the real...

From the very rough first draft intro to what will likely be my next novel, Oleg Topol vs. Space: Approximately eight hours before alien poachers abducted Oleg Topol from a CVS parking lot in Lubbock, Texas, Nicholas Cage bit off the tip of Oleg’s right index finger. The ferret, named for the...

I don't see the bubble bursting in a dramatic and catastrophic way like the dot-com bubble. This time, most of the players are well-established powerhouses: Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, etc. For the most part, it's being incorporated into well-protected, ubiquitous existing products backed...

I'm a couple of days late reporting it, but I dropped 1225 words into Curios the other night. Earlier in this project, I would have considered that a mediocre count, but trying to get back into the flow for this round of revisions, which includes twelve new scenes I'm inserting, has been...

That's a bad week right there, getting downsized and then drowned by God. I wonder if Noah hired daylabor outside the Home Depot.

I'd prefer a human reader, but agents aren't reading manuscripts half the time. They or their interns are reading half the query letter and deciding not to bother with the manuscript. I'd rather someone or something take a look at my actual writing, whether I wrote a good pitch or not. Marketing...

I agree that the reasons or logic behind the haunting is a big part of what makes the ghost(s) interesting. I like a little lore in my spooky stories. I wrote a flash fiction ghost story for the LM contest a couple of years ago. It was the only time I ever came in first place, so that was neat...

Lately, not so many. I'm peaking at around 750 a session and getting down less than 200 other days. There was a time during the first draft when I was averaging 1500 words a day and topping 3K on occasion. My record on another project was over 5500 in a single session, but that took a lot of hours.

I'm 513 words into a scene that will probably be 1500 words, maybe 2000 when I'm through. I'd like to finish that this weekend. This is the seventh of twelve scenes I'm inserting into Curios, which has been in between drafts for a long time. Mostly, I'm capping off a subplot that I thought...

I find ChatGPT to be more intuitive than a lot of beta readers. It seems to understand my intentions and seldom gives advice counter to my goals. I have it set with strict rules about not suggesting edits, rewrites or any other actual text, and it follows those directions well. It even starts...

While I wouldn't call it the ultimate, most objective expression of literature, if I had to pick a desert island book for a stranger, not knowing their taste, I would take a gamble on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And I would choose this book over other personal favorites and more...

I can't think of anything brand new that I tried, but I've purposefully reaquainted myself with things. One that stands out in my mind is an incident while I was writing Reset. In the book, my two characters wake up in the beginning to learn that they erased their own memories in order to forget...

Why are you antagonizing me?

That sounds about right. They vary greatly. I have brief scenes of 200-400 words and longer scenes peaking over 2K. And of course, these are scenes, not chapters. The chapters are much longer, most of them. Actually, it's divided into days instead of chapters, but whatever. It's supposed to...