Mark A. Rayner's Blog: Mark A. Rayner's Goodreads Blog, page 7

Advice for Writers: 15 Cheeky Quotes

Here’s fifteen of my favorite bits of advice for writers, from a collection of writers I admire. You’ll note there’s not a single bit of…

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Satire and Her Ugly Siblings: Parody, Irony and Sarcasm

One of Hollywood’s most enduring images of satire is of Slim Pickens as Maj. T.J. “King Kong,” cowboy hat in one hand, h-bomb gripped in…

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10 Mind-Blowing Reads About the Multiverse

In a real sense, you could argue that every book is another reality. The best of them certainly feel like self-contained worlds, and when you…

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Darkness and its delights

Essay: 3:30 min read “Wait, wait, what are you doing?” “I’m, you know, acting,” I said to my acting professor, Fred Euringer. “No, no, you…

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Non-Euclidean Emergency Medicine Show

This is a straightforward, if non-Euclidean, scene I cut from my fourth draft of Alpha Max. I thought it was fun, but it didn't move the plot along much and I was able to cut it down to a couple of sentences in the sixth (and final) draft. You don't need to know much, except that an alien spaceship has appeared over the skies of Landon, Ontario, and that the protagonist, Max Tundra, has broken his big toe and is in the hospital getting it checked out.

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What is indie publishing? And should you care?

These are two excellent questions, but if you’re a reader, the second question is the one that really matters the most. Do you need to…

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Why’s Wally?

The question we usually ask about Wally (or Waldo) is: where is he? In this flash fiction, we get all existential with it.

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One of the Magi Explains About the Myrrh

What is myrrh, and why is it such a great gift for a newborn baby? One magi has some specific ideas about it in this holiday classic.

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Three more great reviews of Alpha Max

The great reviews continue to come in for Alpha Max! Naturally, it’s nice for a writer to get positive comments and reviews, but really what…

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Orthodoxy is unconsciousness

Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought?… Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by…

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