David B. Coe's Blog, page 47

A Post About Very Little

Today’s post can be found at http://magicalwords.net, the group blog on the business and craft of writing fantasy that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, and C. E. Murphy. The post is called “Ephemera and Free Association,” and it is really about nothing at all. I hope you enjoy it.

The Right Wing Unhinged

I don't know who started it.  Maybe it was wack-job conservative columnist Thomas Sewell.  Maybe it was one of the idiots on Fox News.  I do know that Uber-wing-nut Glenn Beck has made it a staple of recent broadcasts, and that protesters at recent health care town halls and "tea parties" have written it on posters, printed it on t-shirts, included it in leaflets, and repeated it in chants and TV interviews with local news people.  I know that parents are now using it as an excuse to keep the...

A Writer in Need of Some Help...

Dave Freer, a fine writer and one of my friends on SFNovelists, is undertaking a major move from his home in South Africa to Australia.  The move is a complicated one, particularly because Dave and his family have many pets, and the cost of transporting them and getting them through Australia's stringent pet quarantine is substantial.  As a way of raising money for the move, Dave has started an online story project.  Please visit the site and check out his work.  http://savethedragons.nu/

Sometimes My Job Is Kind of Weird...

I finally finished my massive rewrite of the contemporary fantasy I've been working on.  It was a tremendous amount of work, deeply wrenching at times, and deeply satisfying at others.  In a way I was taking an old book and grafting a new book onto it.  

I let the manuscript sit for a little over a week, and now I'm polishing a bit.  And sometimes when I polish, I read the book aloud.   Why?  Because it's often the best way for me to experience the book, to check it for awkward wording, for ov...

A Post About Writing Tips

Today’s post can be found at http://magicalwords.net, the group blog on the business and craft of writing fantasy that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, and C. E. Murphy. The post is called “Eleven Tips for Beginning Writers,” and it is intended to answer the question I am asked more than any other: “What advice do you have for writers who are just starting out?” Here’s my answer. And it’s a good one; it goes to eleven.... I hope you enjoy it.

Teddy Kennedy

I'm not looking for a fight or an argument.  I know that Ted Kennedy was a flawed human being, that his flaws cost a young woman her life, that he hurt his children and his first wife and others with his drinking.  I don't presume to make excuses for him.  He had to live with his flaws and following the tenets of his faith, he believed that he would have to answer for them before he would find rest.

I also know that he made this country a better place.  The countless pieces of legislation he auth

A Post About Art and its Influence on Writing

Today’s post can be found at http://magicalwords.net, the group blog on the business and craft of writing fantasy that I maintain with fellow authors Faith Hunter, Misty Massey, and C. E. Murphy. The post, called “Five Works of Art,” discusses five pieces -- a novel, a movie, a painting, a photograph, and a piece of music -- that have influenced my approach to writing. I hope you enjoy it.

A Post About Teaching and Writing

Today's post, "Learning to Teach Writing," can be found at SFNovelists.com. SFNovelists is a group blog maintained by over one hundred published authors of fantasy and science fiction. I hope you'll visit the site and enjoy the post.

Tom Ridge Comes Clean

Former Bush Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge is now saying that he felt pressured by others in the Bush Administration to raise the nation's terrorism threat level on the eve on the 2004 Presidential Election.  The only thing I find surprising about this is that anybody could be surprised by it.  The worst kept secret in America during the seven years four months between 9/11 and the end of George W. Bush's Presidency, was that the Bush Administration used fear of another terrorist attack a

An Open Letter to my Congressman

To Congressman Lincoln Davis (D-TN4):

I attended your town hall forum today in Winchester, Tennessee, eager to hear what you had to say about health care reform, hopeful that you might offer some much needed clarity in a debate that has been muddied by lies, distortions, and misinformation. I cannot begin to describe for you the disappointment I felt when I left the forum a mere fifteen minutes after you began speaking.

You were asked about provisions that are supposedly in the pending health car