Behind the Book: Grim
Grim began with one scene at the crucifixion and grew into a novel about a reaper who attends death across all of history. Here is the story behind it.
Category: Writing (Page 12)
Behind the BookBehind the Book: The Woman Who Walked Through Walls
I started at the execution scene and wrote backward. Here is the story behind three women, a device that removes consequences, and what people do when they cannot be caught.
Behind the BookBehind the Book: Family on Ice
I wanted to write prehistoric people as they were, not as primitives. Here is how the real Toba supervolcano and a single family became Family on Ice.
Behind the BookBehind the Book: Complications
Complications was a deliberate turn away from my usual military and science fiction. Here is why I set out to write a book women would enjoy, and what it taught me.
Behind the BookBehind the Book: Peacekeeper: To What End Peace
I started Peacekeeper when I was fourteen and finished it forty-five years later. Here is the story behind an immortal admiral, an empire's peace, and the price of both.
Behind the BookBehind the Book: Shield of Ashes
Shield of Ashes asks what a real nuclear war would look like in a multipolar world. Here is how a short story about one launch became the biggest book I have written.
Behind the BookBehind the Book: Unlikely Hero
Unlikely Hero started with a single image, a nuclear bomb near Los Angeles, and became a two-character story about a criminal, a cop, and one impossible choice. Here is how it was built.
WritingCharacter Naming Handbook
A name is the first sentence you write about a character. Readers form opinions before the first line of dialogue, so choose the signal instead of stumbling into it.
WritingChristian Writer’s Handbook
Cardboard saints are built from doctrine. Real believers approach God through their attachment patterns, and faith on the page only convinces when the psychology underneath it is real.
WritingDynamic Backgrounds Handbook
Readers skip description because they have been trained to. Route every detail through a character's perception and it becomes story, and readers cannot skip story.
WritingTheme and Meaning Handbook
Abstract concepts are labels you put on finished work. Practical themes are questions your story cannot stop asking, and they decide your scenes, your arcs, and your ending.
WritingSteampunk Writer’s Handbook
The goggles and brass were never the point. Steampunk has been asking one question since Verne: what does it cost to build a world with this technology, and who pays?