[Warning: this post contains minor spoilers for the Throne of Glass series. Serious mind-fucks and plot twists, however, are not mentioned here.] Last month I wrote a two-part article on how to write romantic subplots. This month, we’ll be looking at how not to write them and we’ll be using Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of […]
I wrote a blog post on my site last January that discusses the use of prostitutes in speculative fiction. You can read that post if you’d like the details, but the gist is that—as writers—we seem to have difficulty imagining fictional worlds that are free of patriarchal foundations. Even when we believe we’ve written something […]
The concept of a sidekick is a slippery one in today’s storytelling climate. Traditionally, at least as far as superheroes go, sidekicks have been junior partners to a hero—usually adolescents (yikes!), training under the tutelage of the titular hero of the book in question. Many were introduced to relate to the presumed audience of young, […]
Though women make up slightly more than half of the population of this planet, we remain woefully under-represented in all media. Frequently, female characters are limited to tokenism, window dressing, and the old clichés of cute kid, love interest, mother, and wise, nurturing grandmother. This is doubly true for women of color, who are shamelessly […]
“Athena bellowed her stunning war cry – standing now at the edge of the deep-dug trench outside the rampart, now at the thundering cliffs she loosed her vibrant cry.” — From The Iliad, translation by Robert Fagles. After the death of Patrokles in The Iliad, Achilles, the greatest of the Greek warriors, donned his battle […]
Wow, it seems like just last week we were here putting together the weekly wrap-up . . . wait a minute. Here we are again, dear readers, with a little list-sicle for your beautiful eyes outlining the new, creative, thoughtful, and fun posts our lovely bloggers have written for you this week. Take a minute […]
[Editor’s note: this two-part debut series for Anna O’Keefe’s column “Redefining Superheroes” began yesterday with Part 1.] My great-great-grandmother, Anna O’Keefe, came to the US, an Irish immigrant, with nearly nothing. We have no record of her life except for a few personal items and a couple of lines in census records. I hold tight […]
[Editor’s note: this is the first in a two-part debut of Anna O’Keefe’s column “Redefining Superheroes.” Come back tomorrow for Part 2.] Superheros and anti-heroes have exploded off the pages of comics and graphic novels in spectacular fashion in the past several years. Forbes pronounced that, “2017 became the greatest year for superhero movies of […]
I dangled forty feet in the air. My toes, my body–more than half my weight–leaned beyond a thin platform. I tried to hold the steel bar that dragged me away from the platform. Sweat seeped from my skin and rolled beneath my clothes as I swallowed my longing to scream. Only a woman half my […]
If you’ve been following the Australian court case between bestselling author Kate Morton and her past agent Selwa Anthony, you’ll know that parting ways with your agent may not only lead to bad feelings, but also to contractual claims. For anyone not following the case or not familiar with the issue, authors should be aware […]
