Reading Time: 11 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes four cozy, witchy mysteries — and some epic space battles.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for July 26, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 3 minutes Don’t blame her. She knew that if she avoided the knife, she could grant her city centuries to grow and thrive. She also believed if she made that choice, she would die by year’s end.
Reading Time: 6 minutes When a Virgin is seen in a small Mexican town it’s a miracle – the town is blessed… or is it?
Reading Time: 2 minutes The Hugo Awards, set to be awarded on August 11, has disqualified nearly ten percent of the votes cast this year due to fraud.
Reading Time: 6 minutes In the mornings, if he wakes beside the dust of a beautiful stranger, he knows he’s drained the world of a bit of color, a bit of beauty, however deadly.
Reading Time: 14 minutes A cosmic traveller helps a grieving fisherman to deal with his trauma.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Explore how to weave backstory well and keep your reader’s attention on the present.
Reading Time: 10 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes some epic epic fantasies, including one by Nora Roberts — yup, the Nora Roberts!
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for July 19, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutes While NASA researchers are directly combing the surface of Mars for signs of life, scientists are also using a site here on Earth to approximate ancient environmental conditions on Mars.
Reading Time: 4 minutes They knew each other very well, as much as the Law would allow. Their children were beautiful, curious, and kind. To know where they were now, or what their mother looked like, could lose him everything.
Reading Time: 5 minutes Jason’s daughter, Sarah, approached him one morning and said, “Daddy, the Shadow Man is back.”
Reading Time: 8 minutes Out of the earth, up through the floor, dust rises. It clings together, forming a translucent woman. She is brown as earth. Her face is worn. Her eyes are shadows in the night. Red paint dots her cheeks and ears. Her hair is made of darkness, the part decorated by a circle of crimson. “I am Amimi, matriarch of the Lenni Lenape,” she says.
Gods and Monsters Installment 21: Out of Dust – The Lenni Lenape Read More »
Reading Time: 2 minutes How will a child react to his father’s unsettling business decisions?
Reading Time: 7 minutes Settings in stories have lives of their own and become characters in themselves, living from the first pages of a story, experiencing challenges and changes.
Reading Time: 9 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a college student at the center of a mysterious conspiracy, and a man with no memory marooned on a planet trapped between two dimensions.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for July 12, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 5 minutes Science fiction and technological innovation feed off each other in an ongoing back-and-forth that can play out over decades.
ChatGPT and the movie ‘Her’ are just the latest example of the ‘sci-fi feedback loop’ Read More »
Reading Time: 5 minutes An old man’s dedication to his garden goes beyond the grave.
Reading Time: 4 minutes The emigrants to Planar6 have survived the voyage from Earth via conversion to semi-sentient fungal forms, a process that is reversed upon arrival. The trouble is, one of the crew prefers to stay the way they are…
Reading Time: 4 minutes A budding student sci-fi writer applies to the Rod Serling School because of the celebrity’s name attached to the school. When a salesman comes by the house to pitch the school, her father joins the conversation, with unexpected results.
Reading Time: 5 minutes Mr. Jones appears to have been mauled by a wild animal. His body shows evidence of teeth marks and claw marks. The wounds are uncommon.
Gods and Monsters Installment 20: The Love Song of the Mole Cricket Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutes The balance of the four elements of the MICE Quotient (milieu, idea, character, event) in narrative fiction carries forward a story succinctly and cohesively to engage readers. Here’s how to use it.
Reading Time: 9 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a cursed merman king, orcs and vampires, and a superhuman soldier called back into action to fight in an interstellar war.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for July 5, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 3 minutes What does it mean to be human? Other species may never understand, but they can have fun pretending.
Reading Time: 3 minutes He is deeply fascinated by growth. And he’s ready to sacrifice a lot for its sake…
Reading Time: 7 minutes I drove that ancient pick-up all the way out into the Catskill Mountains. Even after that trek, that good old Ford was running strong. Still is. I rented a place out in the woods about ten miles from Greene Village, New York. It was tiny; just bed, bath, and stove, but I didn’t need more.
Gods and Monsters Installment 19: Lonely Journeys Read More »
Reading Time: 7 minutes In the environmentally and economically devastated not-so-distant future, best friends Pen and Lissy have fought for years simply to survive. After a lifetime of struggle, Lissy is desperate for escape, and decides uploading her mind onto a computer chip – complete with home-designed software – is her only option.
Reading Time: 10 minutes Subjective interpretation of appearances and other facets of being human means each person has a different reaction to what they’re seeing with varying levels of intrigue, disgust, indifference, and deference. Show your readers who your characters are, rather than telling, for greater emotional effect. Here’s how.
Humanize Characters By Appearance and Interpretation Read More »
Reading Time: 9 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes lots and lots of cozy fantasy — and invading alien monsters.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for June 28, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 5 minutes The funeral was hard. But the thing that helped me smile through the tears was counting the times Tom had sat on top of hotter pyres and lived.
Reading Time: 8 minutes He awoke at dawn, sore and scratched. His mouth, clothes, and limbs were covered with gore. His clothes were in tatters. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, trying to remember.
Gods and Monsters Installment 18: We Are The Stuff That Genes Are Made Of Read More »
Reading Time: 15 minutes A strange star is spotted in the distant sky. Scientists watch as its near miss brings humanity to its knees.
Reading Time: 8 minutes Readers look for emotional connections to the stories they read, and your characters are poised to deliver those emotional connections with staying power when developed in a robust and well-rounded way.
Humanize Characters Using Dialogue, Thought, and Action Read More »
Reading Time: 10 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes so much romantasy. And all the fae and forbidden loves anyone could ever want.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for June 21, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutes “Path!” Glinda paused so abruptly the six foot necromancer slammed into her, tangling himself in the wild frizz of her white hair. Glinda waved a white diamante-studded glove at the waist-high grass. “This is hardly a path, Snark. This is a swamp!”
Reading Time: 7 minutes “Where did you get the gun, River?” Jackson asks. River looks down. His right hand is wrapped around a cold black gun.
Gods and Monsters Installment 17: Moirai Mechanics Read More »
Reading Time: 2 minutes A hungry ghost, pockets full of whatever money he could collect, visits his favorite diner on Halloween
Reading Time: 7 minutes Choosing your point of view and narrative perspective was one of the first choices you made when penning your manuscript, but how can you be sure that default perspective was the right one for your story? Immerse the reader in your story world and set them on a path to build emotional connections to your characters and their circumstances.
Reader Experience Depends on Perspective (Use it Well) Read More »
Reading Time: 10 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a gun-toting private eye, a magical artifact-toting private eye, alien messages, and a human real estate agent who falls in love with an orc billionaire.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for June 14, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 3 minutes When a robot does something right, Dr. R says, “Look, Mr. Butterfield. A breakthrough, Mr. Butterfield. What do you think of that, Mr. Butterfield?” It goes in a box with the other good robots, then trucks come to get them. When you’re good, you go outside.
Reading Time: 5 minutes While his father’s once-famous bait shop struggles to survive against the threat of an impending storm, Dill encounters an unexpected solution.
Reading Time: 7 minutes Gabriel awakes to his monotone world. The white sun is reaching fingers through the twisted roots of orchids. As Gabriel looks toward the light, he sees that a flower’s throat is freckled deep crimson. On the table, a cigarette paper is dark red. Everywhere, the world is streaked, stained, and tinted.
Reading Time: 4 minutes Knowing that sustainable change is important is one thing. Putting sustainability into practice, however, is something else entirely.
Writing Advice of the Week: Change is Hard (but Necessary) Read More »
Reading Time: 8 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes a space opera, and fantasy both epic and urban — and wild western.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for June 7, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 4 minutes The earliest account is from our foremother, Rhoda. You know her better as Red Riding Hood. That’s right, she was a real person. Back then, the handbag was still a handbasket, but more on that later.
Reading Time: 9 minutes Sometimes, from my prison cell, when the time of year was right and the night was clear, I could see Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. Many ancient cultures thought of it as a dog, or a wolf. For me, it was a beacon of hope between the bars. Just one light in the night sky, so bright it looked like a searchlight.
Reading Time: 9 minutes Small actions allow the reader to feel the bigness of the emotion. Plus: more than 100 all-new links to articles, podcasts and writing advice videos from around the Web!
Writing Advice of the Week: Small Moments Make Big Stories Read More »
Reading Time: 9 minutes We read the first few chapters of each of the top five free fantasy and sci-fi books on Amazon. Today’s list includes witches, a war with Russia, and a hard sci-fi box set.
Free Friday: Today’s top free Amazon sci-fi and fantasy books for May 31, 2024 Read More »
Reading Time: 3 minutes A story about a society in which a mechanism was invented to increase pleasant dreams. Old men prefer to sleep unawakened rather than live. One man tries to resist.
Reading Time: 3 minutes Gwen examined the table so she didn’t have to meet the impatient eyes of the family members. Had one of these cups of tea held the poison responsible for the corpse lying beside an overturned chair at the head of the table?
