Book Launch: The Shibboleth Code Is Finally Available!

After a long wait and a lot of struggle, the final book in the Five Rims Series is finally available! Description: Guillermo and Mitsuki, the last humans in existence, have survived their escape through the dangerous purple ionic cloud. Their broken gunship floating helpless in space, they are picked up by a gargantuan dreadnaught, healed

Think Carefully About Your New WIP

I am in the uphill struggle to finish the final book in the Five Rims series, and as the kids say, the struggle is real.  I have been bombarded with so many new ideas for novels that it has become that much more difficult to finish the current novel because I want to move on with

3 Reasons to Not Write a Series (AND 3 Reasons Why You Should)

I’m trying my darnedest to finish the third book in the Five Rims series, and writing this blog entry isn’t really helping me achieve that goal…or is it? I think that I will never attempt another series.  It’s not that my series isn’t exciting as it really is.  I love the idea of creating a massive

5 Myths About Writing Science Fiction

So you want to write a science fiction novel.  However, you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.  Perhaps you read science fiction like this humble author and you’d like to try your hand at writing something in the science fiction genre. Well, there are a few myths about science fiction novelists, and I’m

The Lost Soul and Characterization

I spent a wonderful afternoon yesterday hashing out the details of the latest Five Rims installment with my good friend and collaborator Jack Johnson.  If you don’t have a writing group from which you can bounce ideas around, you need to at least get a good friend who is also a writer or at least an

New Podcast Up: We Go To Mars!

In this podcast first, we attempt to record the podcast from two different locations. I don’t know. We think it may be a success. You be the judge. Anyway, on this podcast we discuss Weir’s best selling book “The Martian” and what we thought made it a great novel. We also discuss Gotham, The Black

The Terminarch Plot Is On Sale for .99 Cents!

Today begins the week long .99 cent promotion of “The Terminarch Plot”.  It is the first installment of “The Five Rims” series of books set hundreds of years in our future, a time when the human race has dwindled to less than 50 souls after their tyrannical empire fell at the hands of four races

5 Tips for Finishing a Writing Project

How many writing projects have you started, but have not finished? This is an excellent question, but the answer for a writer should be a very small number.  Successful writers finish what they start, even if it takes years to get there. Elizabeth Bishop worked on her poem “The Moose” for a record 20 years.

Organic Unity: A Good Novelist’s Added Edge

As an English teacher, I have read and taught much great literature.  I have a stack of great writing to draw from when writing my own stories.  What makes these writers great is their ability to write organically unified text. A novel has organic unity not just when the story is well conceived, but when