S. Boyd Taylor's Blog, page 5
June 10, 2012
Book Recommendation: “Enchanted” by Alethea Kontis
Let me tip you off to the next big hit book. It’s called “Enchanted”, by a talented and enchanting new author, Alethea Kontis. Here’s the copy from Amazon:
“It isn’t easy being the rather overlooked and unhappy youngest sibling to sisters named for the other six days of the week. Sunday’s only comfort is writing stories, although what she writes has a terrible tendency to come true.
When Sunday meets an enchanted frog who asks about her stories, the two become friends. Soon that friendship deep...
June 8, 2012
The Quest for Plot, Part 4: My Current Plotting Solution
As I said, I am still in the middle of fixing my lack-of-plot, but I recently had a pretty convincing “light bulb turning on” moment. I watched a series of videos, and took copious notes, and, somewhere between listening and writing it all down, a connection was finally made in my head.
For the first time in my life, PLOTTING WITH AN OUTLINE MADE SENSE.
Now, you have to realize, it never had before. Even when I plotted my first novel before I wrote anything, it was slipshod plotting — I shot-gu...
June 7, 2012
The Quest for Plot, Part 3: How to Make It as a Professional Author, By the Numbers
This article will discuss how much mid-list writers need to write and sell to publishing houses in order to leave their day job.
”BUT I WANT TO BE A SUPERSTAR AUTHOR — WHY ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE MID-LIST?”
My dream is not to be a professional mid-list author, either — I want to be the next big, famous break out author — what writer doesn’t want to be Cormac McCarthy, JK Rowling, Steven King, Dan Brown, etc? — but I have to be realistic too.
Most of us, even the very talented poets and geniuses...
June 6, 2012
The Quest for Plot, Part 2: My Turbulent History with Plotting
I have never really been a big plotter/outliner before.
I did successfully outline my first novel entirely — and I went from blank page to finished rough draft in 16 days — but I spent 18 hours a day every day on it, and the whole experience was so difficult and messy, mentally, and the plot was so thin and predictable that I swore I would never use that process again.
Ever since, I’ve kind of held my nose up at it and pretended it wasn’t important (because I had no idea how to do it, and snoot...
June 5, 2012
The Quest for Plot, Part 1: My New Obsession
I have been driving myself crazy recently questing for something that for years I felt was either impossible or, maybe, just wasn’t mentally possible for me:
Outlining novels quickly, efficiently, and relatively accurately — while still leaving enough breathing room to develop the novel.
Plotting has always been a weakness of mine. I have tons of beautiful, brilliant opening scenes that have been discarded because they go nowhere. I have a tendency to wander around in my fiction, exploring fasc...
June 4, 2012
What I am currently reading
"Writing the Breakout" Novel by Donald Maas.
Good info about the book premise, which I, personally, really needed.
Also reading:
Three of the 4 classics of Chinese literature:
-"Outlaws of the Marsh" (aka "The Water Margin") by Shi Nai’An
-"Romance of the Three Kingdoms" by Luo Guanzhong
-"Journey to the West" (aka "Monkey") by Wu Cheng’en
"A Handbook of Chinese Mythology" by Deming An and Jessica Anderson Turner
"Chinese Mythology" by Claude Helft and Chen Jiang Hong
"Story Structure Architect" by Vi...
June 2, 2012
Great New Book: Nightshifted by Cassie Alexander
A friend of mine, Cassie Alexander, has a great new book out. If you are into Urban Fantasy, you have to check it out — “Nightshifted”.
Here’s the cover copy:
Nursing school prepared Edie Spence for a lot of things. Burn victims? No problem. Severed limbs? Piece of cake. Vampires? No way in hell. But as the newest nurse on Y4, the secret ward hidden in the bowels of County Hospital, Edie has her hands full with every paranormal patient you can imagine—from vamps and were-things to zombies and b...
Cousin Darrell is Dead… Finally!
I’ve been trying to remove a particularly bothersome character, Cousin Darrell, from my novel for a while. For those of you following along at home — he’s dead. At last. Or, more properly, he has ceased to have ever existed.
This coincides with me reading a passage in Donald Maass’s “Writing the Breakout Novel” about keeping the number of characters to a minimum. I am tempted, indeed, to put the nix on another one of the troublesome Bascom cousins… But I don’t think I should. If I do, some of...
May 25, 2012
I miss Kung Fu
I’ve had knee surgery recently, if you’re not in the loop, and I really can’t do anything for a few months — I miss my martial arts BADLY,especiallyXingyiquan (Form of the Mind Fist), probably my favorite martial art.
Here is my kung fu big-brother David doing one of my favorite Xingyiquan forms, Ba Zi Gong Lian Huan (8 Word Skills Linking Form — a combination of all of the “Word Skills”, each skill being based on one word/theory/character in Chinese)
He’s a little too relaxed here in my opinio...
Did Robert Johnson Really Sell His Soul to the Devil?
Straight from BoingBoing and PBS, a new RadioLab Episode discussing the truth or fiction behind the famous legend that blues great Robert Johnson got so good by selling his soul to the devil.
BTW, per Robert Lockwood, Jr. (essentially Robert Johnson’s stepson) and Honeyboy Edwards (who was at the party the night Robert Johnson was poisoned through to the day he died), Johnson never mentione...
