Tony Talbot's Blog, page 8

Writing Whimsy: The Cult

Expecting trouble, I turn off the car and wait. My hands grip the wheel, the knuckles white in the gathering dusk as my heart races. Small eddies of people stream past me, some in groups, some alone, some laughing, some with their heads down. One man yawns as he passes, studying me. I tense, prepared […]

Rambles: Book Tag thingy

On Tuesday, I was tagged by Becky to answer some bookish questions. Ooo, eck… However… Challenge Accepted! You have 20,000 books on your TBR. How in the world do you decide what to read next? Only 20k? I must be slipping. I pick books from my TBR on a whim 99% of the time, unless […]

Writing tips: Tony Talbot, The Brand

When I started self-publishing back in 2008, I came across an interesting concept: The writer as a brand item and marketed as such. It seemed a little odd to me at the time, but I see the logic of it now: Your readers see very few images of you, or even better, just one. Think […]

Writing Tips: The one rule of writing I know.

“There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.” – W. Somerset Maugham Maybe not, but there’s one rule I have discovered…almost by accident really. It’s going to seem strange to people just starting to publish that they shouldn’t do it, but here it is: Don’t respond to a […]

Writing Whimsy: The Last Page

Back in 2011, I was part of a writing class. One of our assignments was to write the last page of a book. Give it a try one day, just for fun. It’s interesting how the pacing at the end of a book is so much different than the start. I recall the class leader […]

Review: The Fault in our Stars

3/5 The cancer that seventeen-year-old Hazel survived left her lungs in tatters and tied to an oxygen bottle for the rest of her life – however long that may be. Her mother suggests she visits a support group, where she runs into Augustus Waters… This has been at the edge of my reading-pile for at […]

Rambles: The Book Six that never was

“Never apologize and never explain–it’s a sign of weakness.” – John Wayne, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, attributed. But then again, why not? I’ve done one of these posts before in 2013 (The Book Five that never was), so since I’m now into the flesh and bone of Book Six, I decided to do […]

Writing Whimsy: First Flight

I was there when it first happened. The first time he ever did it, I mean. The first time he saved someone. The media were all over it the next day, of course. With that many smartphones in the city, there were no shortage of eyewitnesses who caught him on the move. A million hits […]

Writing Whimsy: The Man of Your Dreams

Heston Strongthigh strode into the room. Heston always strode; to describe his method of getting from one place to another using his feet as walking would be like describing the Pacific Ocean as a bit of damp. Heston always strode because the wardrobe he had for the…shall we say, lower part of the body…was always […]

Rambles: I am what I am

I remember one New Year’s Eve party in particular. My dad was in the Territorial Army (An army reserve he went to on weekends) for most of his life that I was a part of. This was a NYE party they were holding in their big hall in their barracks, and the whole family were […]