Worldbuilding: The Sounds of Living

Guys start working on the lot of rental community houses next door about 6 AM every morning. There’s the buzz and whine of saws, the tack-tack-tack of nail-guns, the ringing thump of heavy materials getting dropped into or hauled out of a truck bed. And sometimes an odd, hydraulic thumping

Writing Crossovers: Cowboys & Samurai

I’m far from the first to point out the mutual attraction Americans and Japanese have for stories of the Old West and wandering ronin. To the point that stories have been used for inspiration back and forth; Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai and John Sturges’ The Magnificent Seven being one of the best-known pairs of examples. But there are also stories of cowboys and samurai.

Some Recipes for the Tender of Stomach

More accurately tender of gut, but who’s counting?

Everybody’s stressed lately. Good food is one way to keep up morale. But that can be tricky if you have food sensitivities.

Worldbuilding: Avoiding the Info Dump

Info-dumping. We’re all guilty of it at one time or another, especially if we’re diligent writers who have Done Our Research. Maybe it’s habits left over from too many school writing papers. Maybe we have a secret yen to write the next

Nail Bunny Example: Grandmaster and Cultivation Hiccups

So I was pondering what I’ve seen so far for Grandmaster, and wondering what tiny thing might allow characters to avoid a lot of the horrible things that happen in canon. In the process of poking other people’s writings I ran across a blog post that pointed out Grandmaster differs from a lot of cultivation settings;

Fanfic Writing: For Want of a Nail

One interesting subcategory of fanfic is that of the For Want of a Nail story basis. Basically, keep all the canon background and characterization except for one small detail.

Current Events: Trouble Brewing

I’ve been trying to limit watching the news lately. Even so… what’s been going on lately

Writing Fanfic: Everybody’s Got Opinions, Part 2

Say you’ve looked over the review, and decided you just have someone who Doesn’t Like What You Wrote. This leads to step three: Why are they leaving a bad review? Do they not like the story in general?

Writing Fanfic: Everyone’s Got Opinions, Part 1

You would think fanfic was an innocent, harmless exercise. Like cosplay, only with words instead of cloth and painted foam weapons. Surely no one would see such an obviously amateur effort and thing ill of your little dream of a dream?

…Oh boy.

Worldbuilding: To Make It Weird

Some of the most engrossing fictional worlds are those where a few things are slightly off from reality as we know it, and the writer has put thought into how this would ripple across societies dealing with that difference. You can go for something obvious, like the existence of magic, or stargates, or a lighter than air metal. Or you can take a more organic approach,