After many months of mistakes and banging my head against the wall, I came up with a few principles related to creating fictional worlds. I’ve never written them down before and they’re by no means perfect, but they may help you craft your own world or at least generate some thoughts on how you would approach it.
𝐷𝑜𝑛’𝑡 𝐶𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝐵𝑎𝑐𝑘 opens with a woman being kidnapped during the night. “Thunder sounded, but there wasn’t a storm, and no rain fell on the tin roof. The old woman squinted into the dark room and heard shuffling—like mice—across the pine floor.”
Bringing characters to life gives me the ability to live a hundred lives with no boundaries, limits, or rules.
It is August of 1581 in London, England. Those who are Catholic are not looked upon favorably. Why not? Because it was thought that Catholics were more loyal to the pope than to the queen.
Someone once called me the Queen of Serendipity. I wish. Whether it’s true or not, I don’t know, but I’m largely guided by synchronicity or serendipitous moments.
How contemptible is your character? Is she a blellum? Could she be a buffarilla or a fa-ma-fuff? Would she be smart to marry a fritlag? Not all of these words can be found in today’s dictionaries, so where did I find them? I found them in word books, three of which are listed at the…
Did the inspiration for this book have anything to do with jigsaw puzzles? How important to the success of a book is it to have a good editor? What advice does he have for authors that aren’t yet published? Was there a specific inspiration for this book? Years ago I lived in Ft. Lauderdale and…
For this month’s Author Spotlight post, I interviewed Atty Eve, the author of the dark and powerful My Beautiful Suicide series. Was there anything that happened in your life that inspired this series? Anything you noticed going on in the world? The original inspiration for this series was the first line of a letter I…
Two quotes by Hunter S. Thompson sum up my youth and my writing: “Truth is weirder than any fiction I’ve seen” and “It never got weird enough for me.” I was fascinated with people, but I quickly grew bored with ordinary life. I went off exploring other worlds: criminals, gangs, commies, Birchers, hippies, drug dealers,…
I am going to share with you the reason behind my first novel and subsequent books as well as the important part that music always plays whenever I start writing a novel. Back in 1992, I was 19 years old and still grieving for my first love who had destroyed my life two years before.…
