Amy Laurens's Blog, page 102

Captain Obvious (Repost)

So you’re reading along in your story, and you think things are going great. You even make it all the way to the end, and there was just that one typo that needed fixing. The plot makes sense, it’s kind of funny, and now, it’s cleanly written. No flab, no superfluous anything. It’s great.

So off to the beta readers it goes.

Their feedback returns, and you sit there having an hour-long *facepalm* moment. Why is it that all these things they point out to you suddenly seem SO OBVIOUS, and yet befo...

Story: Recruitment

So, I can’t believe I’m posting this for you, but anyway. Welcome to Mercury. Some of you have met Mercury before. For everyone else… I’m sorry. :D And another apology: this ‘short story’ is actually an excerpt from the very first novel I ever wrote!

(Yes, I know, that means I’m not writing new fiction, but it’s been three weeks since there was a story on the blog and short fiction is just Not Happening because Life right now – being sick, reports, marking, etc. You know. The usual.)

Anyway. It...

Free Books, Anyone? Limited Time Giveaway.

Limited time giveaway: If you contact me* between now and, hmm, let’s say midnight on Friday the 13th (because hi, FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH), I will provide you with one free – yes, FREE – e-copy of any of my books (any format) in exchange for a fair and honest review left somewhere like Smashwords, B&N, Amazon, Goodreads, etc, etc. These are your options:

Why? Well, really, why not. But also, we are hopefully moving into our new house next week, plus I have a long weekend coming up, plus I just...

Applying Hot Iron: How To Deal With Recalcitrant Characters (A Repost)

Okay, so I am totally planning to cheat over the next couple of months and pull out some of the most popular posts from my old blog about writing to repost here. A couple of people have asked me for more writing-related stuff lately, and this is the easiest way to accommodate that when my blogging time is sorely limited. Plus, convenience O:) So without further ado, Applying Hot Iron: How To Deal With Recalcitrant Characters.

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Let m...

SFR Brigade Anthology For Diabetes

So, the Brenda Novak Annual Online Auction is coming to an end (ends May 31), which means it’s a GREAT time for you to get some bids in! There are FANTASTIC prizes up for grabs – literally hundreds of them – and all the proceeds from the auction go towards research into diabetes, a condition which affects upwards of 382 millionpeople worldwide, and is the fastest growing chronic disease in the world, expected to affect 592 million people by 2035.*

This is also your one chance to get a print co...

You Kids Are So 2014.

Watch The Truman Show with my year 9 class this week, and for the most part, we had a blast. There were the fairly predicable groans of ‘We don’t understand what’s going on!’ for the first half, but I just keep reminding them to wait and see, and to trust the story. When the Big Reveal came, they were all like OHMYGOSHTHATISSOCOOLWAITWUT?!?!?! and it was fairly awesome. I have to say, though, that my absolute FAVOURITE moment of the whole experience was the bell ringing about 10 seconds befor...

Story: Another Kind of Hunger

If you’ve been hanging around here or on Twitter with me for any great length of time, you’re bound to have heard me mumbling about my novel Sanctuary at least once or twice. Well, this week’s short story up on Darkness & Good is your first official introduction: Another Kind of Hunger takes place a couple of months before the main action of Sanctuary, and is about the novel’s villain, Scott. If you know the story, the short might be mildly spoilery, but I think it should be okay. Obviously,...

Blood and Wreath-Bearer

Forgot to post here that there are a couple more stories up on Darkness &Good. Wreath-Bearer is set in a world that I one-day plan to write a novel in, when I’m a much, much better writer, because the idea is… complex. But this short story introduces the key idea of the world: the spirits of the dead collect in the Tower, and every year, someone is thrown in to lead the dead to the top and thus to their eternal rest. Only for the last couple of decades, the leader, the Wreath-Bearer, has fail...

Hustlers, Harlots, and Heroes!

How many of you know Krista D. Ball? She’s an amazing author who writes very fun field guides for other authors (along with assorted fiction of course). These aren’t the typical How To Write A Book books, these are well researched, in-depth looks at things you never stopped to think about.

Like, what did Aragorn eat while he was chasing the hobbits to Isengard?

Or, how many layers of clothing would a Regency harlot wear?

Off hand, I don’t know the answer. I doubt you know the answer. But Krista...

How To Write A Series

Long-time readers will know that I am a BIG fan of author Holly Lisle’s various how-to-write courses. I have literally taken every single course that she has ever offered, and her method of teaching just really gels with the way that I learn, and the way that I write. To me, it’s intuitive, flexible and logical – three things that make learning anything easier :o) See previous reviews here.

Anyway, the point is that she’s about to release her next big-ish course. Only big-ish because we’re not...