The Killer and The Dead is live on Amazon - go check it out! Paperback and hardback to follow. Though this is officially part of the World Belt series, it is a stand alone novel and can be enjoyed without reading The Thief and The Demon, though if you have you will enjoy some Easter …
Category: Books
The Killer and The Dead eBook Release
Coming to Amazon on Saturday November 13th 2021, paperback and hardback to follow! I am proud to announce the arrival of The Killer and The Dead eBook. Check it out!
One small step at a time.
It is a hard thing to finish a book. Not the hardest thing in the world by a long chalk, but, if you've tried writing a book, and then got feedback, edited, re-edited and then polished beyond editing into obsession, well then maybe you've a small idea of how hard it is to finish a …
The Writing Life: SPFBO 2020 and an update or three.
Good evening, whatever timezone you may be in. Quick updates: Proofing run one is done. I have made some minor corrections based on feedback, and then, jaunting down a word-search rabbit hole, I noticed a thing. I'm fixing the thing, (and it is a small thing) before proofing run two begins. I have finalised the …
Continue reading The Writing Life: SPFBO 2020 and an update or three.
The Writing Life: Chopsticks and Dust
Sometimes you just have to start writing in order to get anywhere. This is another made up as I go along blog - welcome to spontaneity land! I am still editing. That basement full of dust covered tables? I'm working on them with chopsticks, one tiny clump at a time. I can't say it's ideal, …
Why I Write Fantasy: To Explore the Meta
To be honest, in writing The Killer and The Dead I didn’t set out to explore aspects of metafiction, which I define as fiction that interrogates itself, and that can operate in a separate space in the reader’s mind beyond merely the ingestion and understanding of the narrative: it just kind of happened. In meta …
Why I Write Fantasy: Death and Freedom
I'm not publishing the blog I wrote earlier today. Didn't quite capture what I wanted to say. So instead I'm freehanding this one, not even a spellchecker to save me! I started writing fantasy, as I've said elsewhere, to create worlds of my own to escape into, after enjoyng the sensation of entering into other …
Editing as a cuesport
This is going to be brief, because I should be editing, not blogging. I refer you to this blog. It is far more true now for me than it was a couple of weeks ago! But, here's my quick thought. Anyone who is any good at cuesports, be it pool, snooker, or billiards; often has …
The Writing Life: Choices in Art
In my recent blog on Bram Stoker’s Dracula I threw in a line that while viewing that film multiple times I chose not to see its flaws. I could, if I wanted, pick away at what some might perceive as problems in the movie, but I chose not to, because I’d much rather enjoy those …
The Writing Life: Gathering Your Thoughts, or Dealing with Developmental Editorial Feedback
So I received my developmental notes for The Killer and The Dead last week. These notes were a collection of thoughtful comments and suggestions on plot, structure, pacing, writing, setting, and character. Plus a ton of in-text comments on specific aspects of the book, good and bad, pointing out places where improvements could be made, …
Roderick T. Macdonald 