Recent content by A. E. Lowan

I think so, too. You can really make it work for animals and communicate that "in the now" state of their minds.

What I would do, and I actually use this for our dream sequences, is I would change up tenses as well. Third Person Limited, Present Tense. This is what that looks like on the page. ~~~ “I don’t know why I’m doing this.” Etienne swirls the dark beer in his coarse, earthen mug, breathing in the...

We have what we call "named objects." The first few we introduce are indeed swords - for example, this below is Keeper, which cannot strike a mortal blow but can entrap even the strongest of beings - but very quickly we expand on that. Our faerie knight bears Agmundr, the Gift of Terror. It's a...

I can't pants my way out of a paper bag, and my two partners are supportive. Our last outline came in at about 100 pages. Book's 660. Next two are looking about that, too.

It's really going to depend on your flavor of fantasy. For example, our series, the Books of Binding, is Urban Fantasy with a strong Five Minutes in the Future vibe because we're trying to avoid dating ourselves too much and too quickly. Too bad technology's never caught up with that. lol So...

If your magic system is boring you, then yes, it is boring. And boring is a fairly easy fix. Ask yourself and the magic system and the sentience that drives it what the worst thing that could happen is. Then do it and when it's over count the bodies. I love playing the What If game. It can steer...

Personally - and bear in mind I am a thoroughly mediocre writer and as such all advice is highly subjective - I think that there is no "better." There is no "right way." There is only your way, your characters, and your story. Writing is the Olympics of You Do You. Everything else is just...

Svrt's dad sent me a friend invite a while back, and I always wish I could be cool enough to understand Swedish like he can English. I blame the Pilgrims.

Yes. Yes. A thousand times yes. I totally understand that these days most young writers are limited - weird word for this - to the internet for their literary and professional educations, but TV Tropes and the like do not a Lang and Lit Department make, and can give an unrealistic expectation of...

Yeah, that really does sound Roman, but not like an homage or an analogue. The Romans were world champions of hedging their bets, so they would collect gods like one would collect Pokémon. If you've seen The Mummy, the good one with Brendan Frasier and Rachel Weisz, you'll probably remember...

We also have goblins, but they're a little different. Still fun, though. (This is part of a game of hurley. The sliotar is the ball. The hurley is the stick.) ~~~ From Beneath a Stone Sky: The Third Book of Binding ~~~ The goblin grabbed up the sliotar and ran, the sliotar high above its...

Ah! Okay, I think I've heard that reference before. I play a lot of video games, specifically WoW. When I hear 'goblin coded,' I see greed wrapped in green and tacky pants.

As usual, I'm a bit behind on the lingo. What do we mean by 'goblin coded' for the sake of this discussion?

Deux ex Machina can be a lot of fun when dealt with delicately. We've got one running around and we've seen him in all three books so far. So far, so good. :D

Sounds a lot like how religion was viewed in Rome, Republic to early Empire or so. It worked well.