One of the many lessons I learned while writing my first novel, HOST, is put the effort up front into your characters motivations and goals. If you can distill them down to a single sentence, hell a single word, it’ll pay dividends as these characters move through the plot and Read more…
It took me a bit to figure out exactly what genre my book would land in. At first, I thought it’d be sci-fi, it had elements of science fiction so that’s it, right? Then I leaned into the sub-genre of technothriller. Heavy on the tech details and encapsulates sci-fi enough Read more…
POV – what a chaotic mess it can be. My first draft of HOST was in first-person. It was terrible. I had no clue what I was doing. I understood what POV was but in practice I clearly had no idea or how to use it correctly, if at all. Read more…
Having gone through the entire editing process from development to copy to proofread with my novel, it seemed like a no-brainer topic for Writer Syndrome to chat about. My writing pal, buddy, friend, amigo, Tim Letteney and I sat down and chatted through the entire process during this episode. What Read more…
No, The DiCaprio is not an appetizer consisting of buffalo mozzarella, with a leaf of basil, wrapped in Soppressata and drizzled with a balsamic/honey reduction, or the name of a sandwich you’d find at your local deli. This is a movie playlist with my favorite actor to dislike, Leonardo DiCaprio. Read more…
Not sure I can connect Murphy’s Law (the idiom, not the show) to this playlist. I mostly thought it was a clever title since three of the four movies are Eddie Murphy either working with a cop or being one. It doesn’t matter, let’s move on. This might seem like Read more…
I couldn’t sleep the other night. A sudden bout of insomnia had me up until 3 AM. Some say nothing good happens at that time of day, and I agree. In an attempt to find some path to dreamland, I decided to watch a shitty movie in hopes that I’d Read more…
The western. A classic cinema genre ever since moving pictures have been captured on celluloid, and a personal favorite. It’s been remixed in every possible flavor from comedy to sci-fi to romance, and manages to stand the test of time as a genre to revisit. I recently caught a western Read more…
Have you ever played a board game and come across a gameplay mechanic, or feature that just doesn’t quite make sense or add up? No matter how many times you re-read the rule, it seems to fall flat or not add any value to the rest of the game. Almost, Read more…
I’ll admit it. I’ve been on a time travel kick. My last post covered a playlist with Nolan’s best examples of time trickery. Where that list was about manipulating time for the viewer, this playlist is about travelling through it. This all started when I was scrolling through my digital Read more…