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Want two installments of serial novella BABY DRIVER, available only through subscription, in your mail each month, along with access to a lively community of writers and readers, free classes, co-working sessions, random pictures and MORE for as little as $2? Check out Cat’s Patreon campaign.
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Recent Posts
Guest Post: Nerine Dorman on Making a Cooperative Initiative Work
It all started innocently enough about five or so years ago. A fellow author sent me a link to an article about the Book View Café, and we figured: why don’t we do something like this? By this stage many of … Continue reading →
Guest Post: Brandon Cornett on Creating Believable Characters in Speculative Fiction, With Diaries
A pop quiz for speculative fiction writers. Think about your current work-in-progress. Maybe it’s a short story, a novel, or a play. Now, thinking about your protagonist or main character, answer the following questions: What are your character’s greatest fears … Continue reading →
Chez Rambo in the Time of the Pandemic, First Week of April Check-in
My mason bees are all hatching and it’s quite entertaining to sit out on the porch and watch the tiny perfect new bees encountering the world for the first time. When they reach the sunlight they stop and preen themselves … Continue reading →
Guest Post – Knives Out: A MICE Case Study by Ziv Wities
Rian Johnson’s superb Knives Out has stabbed its way into our hearts and minds. It’s not often that a screenplay so expertly crafted makes this kind of a splash. So, let’s use Knives Out to learn about MICE—a handy approach to story focus and structure, incredibly useful for writers and re-writers. And as we go, we’ll use MICE to examine some aspects of Knives Out’s intriguing construction.
Continue reading →Guest Post: Krakens Are Friends, Not Food by AJ Fitzwater
“But ser,” broke in one of the deckpaws. “The greatest jewel in the world is said to be guarded by the fearsome kraken, as tall as the queen’s castle with tentacles longer than ten vessels nose to tail!” “Which is … Continue reading →
Video: Decluttering, Rewarding, and my Three Favorite Breyers
Cat reports on how the first co-cleaning session went, talks about upcoming Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers events and classes, and then discusses goal-setting and achievement-celebrating for writers, showing three examples.
Continue reading →Announcing the On-Demand Version of Writing Interactive Fiction with Kate Heartfield
I’m hoping eventually to have the bulk of the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers classes up as on-demand versions, but it’s slow going. I’m so delighted that Kate Heartfield has turned her awesome Writing Interactive Fiction live class into an … Continue reading →
Guest Post: Mystery Cults and the Secret World of the Occult in Urban Fantasy by Laurence Raphael Brothers
The premise of magic-done-only-in-secret is not exactly an original conceit, and indeed it has become so familiar over not just years but generations of fantasy literature that it is hardly something to be questioned when it appears. It’s a convenient explanation for how magic can possibly exist in our familiar and ostensibly non-magical world.
Still, the idea of a very widely-kept secret to which thousands of people are privy may seem rather implausible. Surely someone would let the information slip? But as it happens, there are quite a few historical examples of widely-held secrets that were kept so well we aren’t sure what the truth of them was anymore.
Continue reading →
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Want to Support Cat? Buy Some Books!
Twenty fantasy stories of our world and others. Publisher's Weekly called them 'crisp and compelling'.
"If you want some really excellent stories, get the e-book. If you also want a physical object to warm the heart of any print-book collector, go for the paper version." Don Sakers, Asimov's
Cat's first nonfiction book talks about how to set up and maintain an online presence -- without cutting into your writing time.
Clockwork Fairies, a steampunk short story, originally appeared on Tor.com.
