Once upon a time in a house deep in the woods of Northern BC, a strong, thoughtful woman invited all her family and friends to Thanksgiving dinner¬—her parents and in-laws, convict brother-in-law, divorcing neighbours, and her two children: ten-year-old Tommy and his teenage sister, Charlotte. There were twelve in all, as one couple didn’t appear; …
DONALD H. ROBERTS I inhaled a burger made from laboratory beef and a synthesized bun with hothouse fries and washed it down with a good old-fashioned beer made on Earth. Randy’s Nostalgeria Bistro was packed with mid-afternoon transferees waiting for the train to Lunar Station #3, the only international terminus orbiting the moon. Most people …
Continue reading Travis Lock Mysteries: The Girl in the Hologram
The Conductor strode easily up and down the aisle of the train moving from car to car assisting where needed and admonishing where necessary. Mostly he simply observed, but his attention had a shadow to it masked with a sly grin.
What do I need to reach the delicious writing goal? You need a host of fresh characters, imaginative plotting, soupçon of back-story, descriptive settings, minimal but creative description, tension leading up to conflict, theme, subtext, allusion, pacing, climax, resolution, logic, whimsy, surprise, and prose.
I write my novels using the Three Act Structure, with aspects of The Hero’s Journey. Since the middle act is twice as long as the others, I treat it as a four-act structure. As I finished Winter’s Rage, it struck me that the first three books in the series echoed the first three acts of each novel.
