Posts on writing.
This is the last post on this blog. I will be focusing all of my energy on my newsletter from now on. When I started my newsletter I wasn’t sure where it was going or what to do with both a blog and a newsletter. Over the past year, though, everything has seemed to go …
It is publication day for my 8th-century historical novel, The Wistful and the Good. The mighty are undone by pride, the bold by folly, and the good by wistfulness. Elswyth’s mother was a slave, but her father is a thegn, and Drefan, the man she is to marry, is an ealdorman’s son. But though Elswyth …
A friend asked me yesterday if I had thought about doing a book trailer. She even pointed me to a list of the ten most viewed book trailers of all time: https://film-14.com/the-10-most-viewed-book-trailers-of-all-time-updated/ I watched them. I don’t get it. It is not that they are not good. They are as slick as any Hollywood movie …
My novel, The Wistful and the Good, begins serializing on Substack tomorrow, November 27. You will be able to read the first chapter at https://gmbaker.substack.com/p/wag1 and you can subscribe to receive a new chapter by email each week. Besides the novel, I am also serializing a series of backgrounder posts discussing the historical background and …
Sunday, May 7, 2018, Amarillo to Las Vegas, New Mexico Today’s theme ranges from the tackiness of a deliberate art installation to the truly enchanting highway overpasses of New Mexico. In New Mexico, it seems, it matters what things look like. In Texas, not so much.
Ever since my publisher told me I should start a newsletter, I have been trying to figure out how it would be different from a blog. I know how to blog. I maintained a content strategy / technical communication blog for years. It did a lot for my content strategy career, it helped launch my …
One of the trickier things about historical fiction is trying to make the language, particularly the dialogue, sound like it belongs to its period while still being easy enough to read for a modern reader. For fairly recent times, this is not much of a problem. The biggest difficulty in writing a story set in …
On Words that “Sound Modern” in Historical Fiction Read More »
Which point of view produces the greatest intimacy between the reader and the character? Watching this debate between two writing friends led me to ask what they meant by intimacy. I propose (invoking the liberty of blogging) that there are at least three modes of intimacy between reader and character: avatar, friend, and shrink. There …
Avatar, Friend, and Shrink – Three Modes of Reader Intimacy Read More »
Really pleased to say that my first novel has been accepted for publication by Chrism Press and will see the light of day toward the end of 2021. The publication contract with Chrism Press has been cancelled. There is many a slip twixt cup and lip. The Rules of Trade will find its way into …
Writers sometimes worry about overthinking their writing. They should be more worried about under-imagining it.
