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In an episode of Family Guy, Peter is listening to the police scanner.  Brian walks in and remarks, upon hearing a crime being reported, by saying, “Is it just me, or is rap music just getting lazier?”

Well, I have come to believe something similar when it comes to what is popularly known as “dark fantasy”.  Dark fantasy is that sort of fantasy where you have an anti-hero with morally questionable motives.  Decades ago, I read The Black Company by Glen Cook.  It’s a great piece of dark fantasy, following a band of anti-heroes (The Black Company) and narrated by an analyst (named Croaker) who has a knack for coming up with really fun, yet bizarre, ways of describing common occurrences and The Company’s exploits. Read more…

As I’ve blogged about several times, getting Chapter 9 for my work in progress (Under the Darkened Moon) ready for the manuscript has been a real struggle. The problem is that the chapter is one of those necessary bridges to get Kyel, the story’s main character, from point A to point B. Point A is Chapter 8. Point B is Chapter 10.

Alas, the scene has been really fighting me. Read more…

Are you one of those authors that frets over everything being nothing less than perfect?  Do you spend hours thinking how stupid something that happens in your story is, and how it will completely destroy any hope of it being published, or making money even if it does get published?

Don’t lie.  We all do it.

Yet, the fact is that every year stories with major flaws, and just generally goofy things happening within their pages get published, made into movies, etc.  Some of them even make those that wrote them filthy, stinking rich.

And if you doubt this, just think about the movie Star Wars.  Then think about that absolutely weird scene with the monster in the Death Star’s Garbage Compactor.  WTF is up with that?  I mean, seriously, what really was up with that? Read more…