How’s that title for blatant hyperbole? It raises a question worth discussing, however; exactly what role does description play in fiction? This morning, I read a post on Writer Unboxed that discusses descriptive passages and their use in genre fiction. As I read, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Before I […]

Bruce Holland Rogers writes short stories. I’m not talking novella here, nor even a few pages. Think shorter. He cranks out three works of flash fiction per month, firing them directly into the email inboxes of his subscribers.

I can hear your eyes rolling. “Manuscript formatting? Great, here he goes again…” Dinking around with MS Word styles is like watching paint dry, I get it. So rather than foam at the mouth yet again about how to properly format and structure your Word doc, I’m going to hand you a shiny golden Easter […]

There’s a scene in my current novel that’s bedeviled me from the start. Twice now, I’ve started to write it, and twice it’s gone nowhere. It’s not a complicated scene; there are two characters (three if you count the dog - my stories always seem to have a dog) meeting in a run-down office. The […]

I love a neatly-pressed, crisp shirt about as much as anything. For years, I’ve found myself lapsing into a fantasy that there’s a machine into which I can insert one of my old wrinkled shirts, press a button, and in a cloud of steam it would open to reveal those razor-line sleeves and a perfectly […]