Shaun Horton's Blog, page 16

Show and Tell

I'm going to say something here, which may cast doubt on my writing ability and the quality of the first two books I've self-published. (Well, the quality of the first book was bad regardless, there's no disputing that.)

I never really got the whole line of "Show, don't tell." until recently.

Now, the phrase "Show, don't tell." is one of the most common pieces of advice any writer is going to get, and while it sounds simple enough, its one of those things that can be very difficult to let fully...

Author Problems: Writer's Block

I just want to let everyone know, if they don't already, that due to my hometown Seattle Seahawks going to face the Denver Bronco's at the "Superbowl", I'm putting up my sci-fi/horror novel Class 5 on sale for $0.99 on Kindle from Monday, January 20th, until the big game. So swoop on over to Amazon and grab a copy!

(Seriously, just try and say this out loud without laughing)
So, otherwise, I have to admit I've had a hard time working on this week's blog post. My depression has lifted it's head...

Misconceptions in Horror

So, there's this.


Now, I'm all for the re-imagining of the classic monsters. They need to be treated with the respect and reverence they deserve, though, even if they no longer scare or terrify as they once did. I'm not bringing up this trailer for the new movie I, Frankenstein, to pass any kind of judgement on it though. I'm just using it as a lead in to my topic for the day, which is common misconceptions of Horror.

One of the ones that irks me the most being; Frankenstein was the doctor's na...

Why do we Blog?

After my last post about how my blog did in its first year, I got to thinking about why I started a blog in the first place, what is a blog really for, and what constitutes a good blog. For my first post of the new year, I figured I'd dip into those questions.

Why

Why start a blog in the first place? That's easy. I started my blog as a way to help me push my name out there attached to something besides my books. It's about name recognition. After all, most people can't pump out a book a month i...

Review: Batman: Arkham Origins

The Batman: Arkham series has received praise of the highest order for it's portrayal of the dark knight and the enemies and plots he has to deal with. Currently, the line-up includes Arkham Asylum, Arkham City, and the recently released Arkham Origins.

The interesting thing to note is that while the first two games are fairly linear, with City following not long after Asylum, Origins is a prequel. Set two years after Bruce Wayne first takes up the mantle of the bat. (I doubt it, but if the fa...

Have a blog? Sure, why not?

As this post goes up, it is literally a week before Christmas. And, since Christmas and New Year's Eve both fall on a Tuesday, this year, I figured I'd give myself a little bonus and take the rest of the year off from the blog posts. Also, with it being the end of the year, I figured it was a good time to go over my blog and how it's worked out for me since I started it.


So, I figured the best place to start, is by the numbers, which (and I have nothing to compare these to, so bear with me. :-...

Personal Rant #4: Like for a Like.

Ugh. Some people.

So. Today, I got this message on my Facebook page. (Names are omitted).

Hi! I saw you on Goodreads and liked your page. Here's a link to my page:

The only other thing in the message was a link to her own page. I checked out her page, and her website. A new writer, who JUST started their page and already has 400 "Likes" even though she has yet to publish a single work. That, combined with the mention of Goodreads, made it clear to me that she was farming in a "Like for a Like" m...

Rewards and News.

Hi everyone. So, today, rather than going into a long and boring tirade about any one subject in specific, I have several things I want to share with you all. And yes, all of them will probably have links to check out when you're done here. Or maybe before you go through everything here.

There should be none of these.
It was a good weekend for my book Class 5. I offered it up for reviews to a handful of websites and bloggers over the past month and this weekend I got two rewards for my efforts....

Reading list: 2013

As I've mentioned previous, reading is something I slacked off on a lot in the years prior to this one. It's not that I don't like to read or anything like that, I just found I didn't really want to make time for it, preferring video games and the internet over such pursuits.

This past year though, I've started to make up for it. Reading more books in 10 months than I did the entire 10 years previously. I've already talked about some of the best of them. With the end of the year creeping up, t...

Building a Book: Part 4, The End

So here we are, at the very end. The last 25% of your novel. Congrats to everyone who's made it this far, whether it was for NaNoWriMo, or has been years in the making. So, in the first three parts of this little series so far, we've gone over the introduction, and we've split the middle into the first half and the second half. This part is going over the very end.

The nice thing about reaching this point, is that compared to the rest, this should be easy. At this point there are three main se...