Being able to thrill readers with what you create is just top tier awesome

I don’t know what kind of cyberpunk wifi-delivered drugs they’re lacing this Kpop Demonhunters movie with but my kids never sat through a full animated movie in their lives without getting bored & wandering off, yet are obsessed with this They call it CakePop Demonhunters though

I stumble across all manner of delightful things while researching horrific stuff for my books Today I leaned about “the Swedish Drink” Fucking diabolical I mean, it’s definitely going in one of my books…..but diabolical

Penelope is supposed to be writing my next book and acting as my publicist but instead she is sleeping the day away at the spa.

destroying the one ring ⚖️ trying to get my children to put their fucking shoes on in the morning

How do you know you’re an author? When you think of a great quote that is definitely going to go in the book you’re writing after the book that is after the book that is after the book that you’re writing now.

When you’re trying to write a book but you get sidetracked wondering why H isn’t pronounced ‘hay’, and W isn’t pronounced ‘wee’, or at the very least ‘wubbleyew’

I introduced my children to fried bologna sandwiches for the first time and my son immediately asked me to put peanut butter on it and now I don’t know what to think

Whenever you are thinking about giving up just remember that some random famous person once considered giving up but then didn’t and it all worked out great for them.

Urge to start new book ⚖️ Urge to tinker with previous book fuuuuuuuuck

souvenir, definition: belonging to a category of words that I must look up the spelling for every single time because my brain only wants to spell it the wrong way

Doing the thing you love; perfection Doing the thing you love while saying fuck you to your naysayers; an even more perfecter perfection

me as an author: at some point you have to decide you’ve done enough revising & declare your book is finished & accept it the way it is because you have to move on to the next project also me: damn it I forgot to mention what color that guy’s shirt was in Ch 12 i have to go back

If you drop a SFF book & it shatters your foot but at the hospital you meet the love of your life get married & have a child but your child ends up hating SFF books but then they drop the same book on their foot & you laugh in shadenfreude how many stars should you rate the book?

I tried to write a book & ended up with a 300K word monolith I tried to write a novella & ended up with a 110K word book I tried to write a short story & ended up with an 11K word novelette I tried to write a 300K word sequel & ended up with 800K words broken up into 3-4 books

Just once I’d like to finish writing a book and not know what to do with myself because I don’t already have 27 other projects that all need to be written asap.

I always struggle with how many named side characters to have around the mains On the one hand I want to keep name clutter to a minimum But I also want to the world to feel lived in & knowing peoples names is a part of that I definitely err on the side over-naming though

Some insist that “Shh” is the correct spelling but I know in my heart that it should be “Shhh” and I shall act accordingly.

I scream inside my head so normal people don’t have to hear it and somehow it comes out as books.

Everyone else’s signatures: LITERAL WORKS OF ART THAT ARE BOTH CLASSY AND COOL my signature: JUST A BUNCH OF SQUIGGLES

How come “biding my time until I can have my revenge” isn’t one of the options on this survey about fun plans for the new year?

Editing fun if you eliminate a character by combining their role with another character in order to simplify the story, DO remember to go back and delete all instances of that obsolete character’s name I just had a “where tf did you come from?” moment😂

Nothing juices up a fight scene like swapping out one of the nameless enemy combatants with a named villain your main character both loves and hates. Apropos of nothing of course 😉

Seems to me this is usually the kind of thing an author writes when a book is about to be finished 👀 I really tried not to make this one a chonker, I really truly did, but I can’t escape who I am

Corrin is as Corrin does

Aha! I had forgotten about this! This was a little bonus card that went out with @yourpaperquest.bsky.social’s edition of The Light Of Kasaban. This is the recipe for Saya’s Shoe Leather Soup, serves up to 15 hungry child wizards. A bit of lore that didn’t make the final cut of the book.

The Monsters We Feed was the result of a bunch of challenges I set for myself: 1) Weave a story out of one tiny piece of lore from my world 2) Make an MC who can’t wield a sword & has no magick 3) Make it 1 location 4) Make it noir 5) Make it a 40k world novella I failed at #5😂

I sometimes use adverbs. Not very often. But more often than never. And when I do, I use them amazingly.

You don’t need to create a name and backstory for every single side character that appears in only 1 scene and is never mentioned in the story again Is what I say to myself after spending all day doing that very thing

Living in the desert means saving a lot of aspirational advertisements for really badass jackets that you will never ever have a chance to use

None of my stories have HEA (bittersweet ever after at best…so BSEA?) but a lot of my works lately are turning out to be straight up SEA. Maybe with a sprinkle of hope on top but sad Apparently The Last Gasp Of Midnight wasn’t a fluke. I’ve only just begun to hurt your feelings

There will be bad days. Days where you question yourself. Days where you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing. Days where you feel like you don’t belong. But keep your chin up. Keep going. Keep doing what you love to do. You will find your way.

This fight scene I’m working on is taking after The Last Gasp Of Midnight and The Monsters We Feed in its use of…unconventional weapons 😂

Being solo dad today is surprisingly conducive to drafting this final fight scene My little warriors are contributing the fight choreography Though mini-daughter is throwing me for a loop since none of my characters are supposed to be dual wielding battle axes in this scene 🤔

I can’t decide which is worse: not having the inspiration to write when you have the free time to write or having the inspiration to write while you are stuck at work all day

Going out with a bang on the last edit of this beast. Worked out that the final touch I’ll be adding is a tiny bit of brutal combat in the middle of an already 110 page finale 30 paragraphs ought to be enough to get out the fight I’m seeing in my head So let the countdown begin

The cute giant dog content in this manuscript shan’t preclude the grimdark violence content.

Very excited to help celebrate wirh @spotlightindie.bsky.social!! Happy year one of supporting indie authors!

2yr old daughter just walked in wearing her favorite snow white costume and unprompted told me that when she grows up she wants to be a daywalker so she can chop vampires up with her sword So now that I’ve won parenting I’ve got to figure out what to do with the rest of my night

me: *writes multiple books after years of practice & hundreds of drafts having learned thousands of little tricks of writing, plotting, editing & publishing* anyone: do you have any writing advice? me: um, what? hmmm *taps chin* how to write? how to write? how to write?

I know there's still a week left, but Tuesday, Sept 23rd at 8pm CST, we will be chatting with @thomashowardriley.bsky.social about his book, The Light of Kasaban for Willow Wraith Press' Indie Book Club. Come join the chat!

Hey indie book fans on #booksky, Willow Wraith Press' Indie Book Club book of September is The Light of Kasaban by @thomashowardriley.bsky.social! Here's my review for this awesome book! Don't forget, we are talking with Thomas tonight at 8pm CST!

@thomashowardriley.bsky.social is the author of We Break Immortals, The Monsters We Feed, The Light of Kasaban and The Last Gasp of Midnight. Recently described himself as 'profoundly silly'. You can find Thomas here: thomashowardriley.com

Editing fun: It just doesn’t hit the same during an emotional scene when your main character feels hopless instead of hopeless

As much as it frustrates me how long it takes to write & edit & publish a book, I am eternally grateful for that time because I tend to keep coming up with badass ways to improve the story all the while Sometimes a VITAL element of the story only reveals itself on the final edit

Weird fact: I have synesthesia so to me letters have colors & textures & ‘vibe’ Because of this, the way letters are arranged in characters’ names impacts their personalities in my writing I’m not remotely qualified to determine how weird this might seem to anyone else

Relief is noticing in the final copy edit of your manuscript that the sequence of events might be out of order and you panic thinking you’ll have to chop up and reassemble the whole book, only to remember that you already did that and this is the correct sequence

I’ve heard that a good author can survive in the wilderness for up to 72 hours with only a single new story idea and their own determination to find some kind of writing device to jot that idea down before they fall asleep.

Sometimes you stumble across a line while editing that you’d forgotten you wrote Sometimes those words are a perfect distillation of your main character I’d say this is by far the best way to summarize Evran Caid (from The Heroes We Never Were) I can’t wait for you to meet him

The problem with me writing so much serious rated-R high stakes dark (grimdark?) stuff is that at my core I am a profoundly silly person and a certain amount of that goofiness inevitably works its way into my books.