Category Archives: Writing

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Lore Seekers Press, Writing

Another Stop on the Blog Tour

Overtelling, pointing out the already obvious, undermines our writing. In a sense, “Trust your reader” is another way of saying “Trust yourself.” Err on the side of telling too little. Let your story speak for itself. And if your Beta readers or your editors don’t understand something, they’ll let you know and you can bolster the narrative with a bit more exposition.

Today on the blog tour, I stop by to visit with the wonderful Melissa Gilbert. My post on Melissa’s site (The Enchanted Alley) is on things I’ve learned in my years as a professional writer. You can find the post here, along with more information about my LonTobyn Chronicle, which I have edited and re-released . I hope you enjoy the post, and I hope you’ll check out the books!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

A Quick-Tip Tuesday Post About Deadlines

“But,” you say, “what if an editor asks me to make that two month deadline?”

Be honest with her. Tell her that two months won’t work, but you can get it done in three, or three and a half. When it comes down to it, the editor is going to get the book at the same time no matter what. You can only write so fast. Faced with the choice between A) an honest assessment of your writing pace and a book handed in when she expects it, or B) a book promised on an unattainable schedule and then handed in a month late, just about every editor will choose A.

Today’s Quick-Tip Tuesday post is up at the Magical Words blog site. Todays topic: Deadlines! We writers hate them, but meeting deadlines is part of being a professional. My post offers a few tips for setting realistic deadlines and sticking to them. You can read the post here. I hope you find it helpful.

Keep writing!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Lore Seekers Press, Writing

Two Stops on the Blog Tour!

I’m pushing myself to take all sorts of creative chances, following bolder storylines and developing exotic characters. I’m writing leaner, sparser, the way I wish I’d written the old books. In short, I’m trying to make this next project something that the younger me would think was totally cool and the older me sees as an expression of all I’ve learned through my career about writing and storytelling.

Today I’m pleased to direct you to two stops on the 2016 Fall Blog Tour (formerly known as the 2016 Summer/Fall Blog Tour). First, Bea’s Book Nook has (very positive) reviews up of the Author’s Edits of Children of Amarid and The Outlanders, the first two books in my LonTobyn Chronicle. You’ll also find excerpts from both books. You can see the reviews and excerpts here.

I also have a post up at the Beauty in Ruins blog spot. The title of the post is “A Creative Dialog with Myself,” and it’s about the challenges and rewards of going back to edit the LonTobyn series, which was my first published work. Visiting this site also gives you the opportunity to enter a contest to win copies of the books. You can find this post here.

 

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Lore Seekers Press, Writing

Another Day, Another Post!

This bond allows them to draw on the power within the birds to heal, to do battle and protect themselves, and to cast a host of other spells. The birds themselves are characters in the stories, and to this day people who can’t remember any of the titles will talk to me about how much they loved the books by saying “You know: the ones with the hawks and owls.”

The blog tour continues today with a post at Book Whispers about the magic system in my LonTobyn Chronicle, which I am re-releasing this year in edited form. The magic for these books grows out of my lifelong interest in birds and my love of birds of prey: raptors and owls. You can find the post here.

The Author’s Edits of books one and two, Children of Amarid and The Outlanders, are now out and available in ebook and paper formats. And the ebook of Eagle-Sage, the final book in the trilogy, is now available as well. The paper version should be out soon.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Lore Seekers Press, Writing

New Post, Old Stop on the 2016 Blog Tour

I didn’t want to change anything with respect to plotting, character, world building, magic, setting, etc. Quite the opposite: I wanted to be faithful to the original story. The LonTobyn books had — and still have — a lot of fans, and I didn’t want to change things that those fans might remember fondly. My purpose in editing the books was to clean up the writing so that the other elements of the story could really shine.

The Outlanders, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)The 2016 Blog Tour has returned to the site of my friend, Ken Schrader, who has been kind enough to host me for another short interview. The last time I was with Ken, the Author’s Edit of Children of Amarid, the first book of my Crawford Award-winning LonTobyn Chronicle, had just come out. Now we’re marking the re-release of the second book, The Outlanders. This is also an Author’s Edit (think “Director’s Cut”) and this book, which has long been one of my favorites, reads better than ever. You can find the new interview here.

Eagle-Sage, book 3 of the LonTobyn Chronicle, by David B. Coe (jacket art by Romas Kukalis)And it’s worth noting that the third book in the series, Eagle-Sage, has just been released in ebook format. The paper edition should be out before long. That’s right, the whole series is available, and just in time for the holidays. Woot! Check them out. And thanks so much to Ken for welcoming me to his blog.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Thieftaker Chronicles, Winds of the Forelands, Writing

Keeping On With a New Quick-Tip Tuesday Post

It would be so easy to give up, to set writing aside for a while. Because when we write, by necessity we access emotion, and that’s not a place I particularly want to go right now.

To which my inner voice says, “Too fucking bad.” Emotion informs art, and art is what I do. It hurts a little more at the moment. So what? Given the shit I do to my characters, I really have no right to complain.

Today’s Quick-Tip Tuesday post is up at Magical Words. It’s been a tough fall for many of us, and this is a post about soldiering on, taking stock, moving forward. It was helpful to write, and I hope you find it worth reading. You can find the post here.

Keep writing, friends.

D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Not at all Writing Related, Writing

For Melanie

Which brings me to today’s Quick-Tip. It’s a terrible cliché, but clichés arise because on some level they convey an essential truth. As much as I would encourage you to write, to devote yourself to improving your craft and following your ambitions, today I want you to do the opposite. Put away your computer, your writing pad, your pen. Kiss the person you love — not a peck; kiss with passion.

Today’s post on Magical Words — a Quick-Tip post of a different sort — is for my friend Melanie Otto, who was taken from us far too soon.

Read it, share it with someone you love, please take it to heart.

We live in a time of division, of conflict, even of hate. Let’s try something a little different today. For Melanie.

The post is here.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Quick-Tip Tuesday Post on Music and Writing

I usually write with a good deal of structure in my process, and so I thrive on relatively unstructured music to inspire my creative process. So, I thought, what if with this project, to which I’ve taken a relatively unstructured approach, I listen to classical music and use that high level of musical structure to impose some order on my writing?

My apologies for this going up so late. I’m on the road and didn’t have access to the internet for much of the day. But today’s Quick-Tip Tuesday post at Magical Words is now up and ready for viewing. It’s about a couple of lessons I learned last week while attending a phenomenal concert. One concerns sharing works-in-progress with audiences. The other focuses on the ways in which the music we listen to as we write can influence our creative process. You can find the post here. I hope you enjoy it.

Keep writing!!

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, Writing

Quick-Tip Tuesday: More Fixes for a Broken Manuscript

By the time we hit that 60-70% mark, things look dire for our good guys.

And at that point we often discover that we have no idea how to get from where we are — often a world gone to shit — to the happy ending we’ve intended to write all along. There seems to be this unbridgeable chasm between the story as it exists, and the final product as we’ve envisioned it. Cue panic.

It’s Quick-Tip Tuesday over at Magical Words, and I have a post up on more ways to fix a broken manuscript. As some of you may remember, I tackled this subject a couple of weeks ago, but there are always more ways to get at a problem. So if you’re dealing with problems in your work-in-progress, this newest post might help you out. You can read it here.

Blogging, D.B. Jackson, David B. Coe, LonTobyn Chronicle, Lore Seekers Press, Writing

Inspiration, Knowledge, and Speculative Fiction: The Blog Tour Continues

Whether we write horror or science fiction, epic fantasy or paranormal romance, we who write in this genre seek innovative — at times fantastical — perspectives on the familiar. At its best, speculative fiction is a mirror through which we see our own world. The reflection is imperfect to be sure, but frequently more effective because of those distortions and variations.

The Summer/Fall 2016 Blog Tour rolls into FantasyLiterature.com today, with a post about the inspirations and loves that we bring to our writing. The post touches on the inspiration for my first series, the Crawford Award-winning LonTobyn Chronicle, which I am in the process of re-releasing. The Author’s Edit of Children of Amarid, the first volume, is out as an e-book and trade paperback. The second novel, The Outlanders, will be released within the next month, and Eagle-Sage, book III, should be out before year’s end.

This post is called “Writing What We Know (Or Not)” and you can find it here. I hope you enjoy it.