5 indie authors you need to read UPDATED: 6!

There's no way to fit these writers into the same box, other than to say that they're fiercely independent-minded and they're all swimming against the stream in one way or another. They all write speculative fiction -- sci-fi, fantasy, alternate history, horror -- but in very different styles. And more than anything, they all aim...

Short Story Thursday: Nature Calls the Lookout Man

Here's the very first story for Short Story Thursday. I started this story at the end of National Not-Novel Writing Month in November and finished it in December. Nature Calls the Lookout Man Sunny Jim watched enviously as his two companions worked. He had thought he could ride and rope -- and he could, well...

Recap: Not-Novel Writing Month is much better than the real Novel Writing Month

For anyone who may not know, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), when writers attempt the Herculean labor of writing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. This year, I got wind of a different challenge; a not-novel writing month, as it were, in which the goal instead is to write a flash fiction story every...

National Not-Novel Writing Month, day 21: Return of the Silent Kid

This is a followup to The Silent Kid, which is the first Not-NaNo story I posted three weeks ago. I wrote this on Nov. 21 at a NaNoWriMo write-in I went to with my daughter. She's doing the regular NaNo, while I'm doing something a little different. A ghostly smile flitted across Sunny Jim's face...

A novel non-noveling idea for National Novel Writing Month

A new flash-fiction story -- 500 to 1,000 words -- every day in the month of November. That's the challenge. I had all but decided to ignore National Novel Writing month this time around until I found this non-noveling NaNo idea over at EmperorPonders. The last few attempts at NaNoWriMo have left me jaded on...