Many of us have seen instances where authors take their fictional characters beyond the books that spawned them: interviews with a character, blog postings by them, Facebook pages, Q&A sessions with readers. Recently, however, I came across something that was new to me. Tim Jackson, author of Mangrove Underground, has created a newspaper blog for Blacktip Island, the location where his book is set. Tim describes the site like this:
South of Imagination and east of Flor de Caña lies Blacktip Island, the setting for Tim W. Jackson’s forthcoming second novel, Blacktip Island, and for his many short stories. The Blacktip Times is a weekly record of news and events in the island’s small community of dreamers, reprobates and ne’er-do-wells.
Seeing this as a rather unique spin-off of a book, I decided to interview Tim and find out the behind-the-scenes story. Continue reading “Creating a Fictional Newspaper Blog”
It’s easy to fall into bad habits with our writing — lazy prose we’ve become so accustomed to that we don’t even notice it, even during the editing process. I had fallen into a really bad habit without even realizing it, and it wasn’t until I read an article on filter words that I had my lightbulb moment.
I’m lucky to live in an area where you can’t throw a Kindle without hitting a writer. Not that I recommend you do that; it makes them cranky and it hurts the Kindle. But it does offer the opportunity to