Month: April 2014

Newsbites: Men Don’t Read

NewsBitesGreetings from the IU news desk in the prestigious but entirely fictional BlackBox Tower Complex. It’s our job to track down the news, grab it by the ankles, and hold it upside down until the truth drops out of its pockets.

It’s a dangerous job that takes our staff to far-flung corners of the internet. Our crack team of reporters wade through a digital jungle of pop-up ads and 404 errors to get to the bottom of whatever it is that got their undies in a bunch in the first place.

Remember, NewsBites is the official news snack of the junior auxiliary astronaut team, whose proud motto is: We may not have been in space, but we are willing to go. Continue reading “Newsbites: Men Don’t Read”

Featured Book: The Alignment

The AlignmentThe Alignment
by Kay Camden
Fantasy, fiction, paranormal
Available from Amazon.

Liv’s cross-country move lands her in the path of Trey, a mountain recluse with more enemies than she can count. He’s heading out for revenge against the family who wronged him, and he needs her help. Her answer would be a definite no if she hadn’t fallen in love with him.

Lather, Rinse, Explain, Repeat: Redundancy in Writing

Redundancy DeptYour main character has fled from the office she shares with a close co-worker and friend, and has run to the boss’s office. There, in a key scene, she has emoted all over herself, revealing a deep, dark personal secret thereby. (Yes, she still has a job at the end of the scene.) Now she’s back in her own office. Her friend gets in her face and says, “For the love of Pete, would you please tell me what this is all about?”

Your main character is hesitant, but then mutters to herself, “What the heck. The whole world will know by tomorrow.”

Choose what happens next:

  1. Your main character rehashes, practically word for word, the conversation she just had with the boss.
  2. Your main character gives her friend a severely truncated version of the conversation with the boss – the Reader’s Digest version, if you will.
  3. You, as the author, sum up the conversation in a sentence similar to this one: “She told her friend the whole story.”

Got your choice? Continue reading “Lather, Rinse, Explain, Repeat: Redundancy in Writing”

Book Brief: Dawn of Steam – First Light

Dawn of Steam - First LightDawn of Steam: First Light
by Jeffrey Cook (with Sarah Symonds)
Genre of this Book: Steampunk/Alt-History
Word count: 93,000

In 1815, in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, two of England’s wealthiest lords place a high-stakes wager on whether a popular set of books, which claim that the author has traveled to many unknown places, are truth or, more likely, wild fiction. First Light is an epistolary novel, told primarily through former aide-de-camp Gregory Conan Watts’s journals and letters to his fiancee from the airship Dame Fortuna. The first recruit is, necessarily, the airship’s owner: war hero, famed genius, and literal knight in steam-powered armor Sir James Coltrane. Persuading him to lend his talents and refitted airship to the venture requires bringing along his sister, his cousin, and the crew that flew with him against Napoleon. Then they must track down a Scottish rifleman, a pair of shady carnies, and a guide with a personal investment in the stories. When they set out, the wild places of the world – including the far American West, the Australian interior, and darkest Africa – are thought to be hostile enough. No one expects the trip to involve a legendary storm – or the Year Without a Summer of 1815-1816. Additionally, some parties are not at all happy with the post-war political map. Most problematic of all, the crew hired by the other side of the wager seem willing to win by any means necessary. Dawn of Steam: First Light follows these adventurers as they open up the world and lay the foundations for an age of enlightenment and technology to come.

This book is available from Amazon. Continue reading “Book Brief: Dawn of Steam – First Light”