Recent content by J.W. Golan

I've been releasing my latest novel on Vella, just to see what it has to offer. My observations and experiences have been mixed. On the negative side, Vella doesn't offer many of the tools which have historically been available for promoting your work on Kindle. Can't offer a free...

I would add a slightly different interpretation to this subject: it’s not so much about whether monotheistic and polytheistic religions can coexist in the same society. They can and do in our modern world, and have done so successfully at various crossroads throughout history. It’s really a...

To be tidally locked with a retrograde moon, the parent body would have to reverse its direction of rotation. Stop for a moment an consider just how much momentum you’re talking about transferring. The moon will lose orbital momentum and pass the Roche limit long before then. Also, recall that...

That’s if the orbit is prograde. As I mentioned before. Earth’s moon experiences tidal acceleration, its orbit gradually raised over time. A retrograde moon will experience tidal drag, its orbit lowering until it reaches the Roche limit.

You are correct that they don’t commonly form - but they also experience orbital decay due to tidal forces that a natural satellite will not experience. Neptune’s moon Triton, for example, is expected to eventually pass inside the planet’s Roche limit, where tidal forces will tear it apart.

It should be pointed out that all of the examples provided for moons in retrograde orbits are bodies that are much, much smaller compared to the planet they orbit, than Earth’s moon is compared to the Earth. This is not an accident. A larger body in retrograde orbit would cause tidal drag on...

My middle daughter likes to classify characters (mine and others) into MBTI personality types. I believe if you’ve done your job as a writer, your characters will be consistent and will fit into one real-world personality class or another. But that’s probably because there are real people whom...

I begin knowing the beginning, the end, and a few key scenes in between. These are the first things I’ll write down. From this I’ll assemble a chapter-by-chapter, scene-by-scene outline, to help me connect the elements of the story and fill in any gaps. From there I’ll complete the first draft...

Congratulations. I still find it depressing, however, that the small publishing houses you had previously worked with went belly-up. Like passing a boarded up store in the shopping center. It seems to be a trend in certain genres, where other than the Big Five, no one can really make a good...

They were an imprint of a university publishing house, and again, my first book was non-fiction. I have heard similar stories, however, from fiction authors who hooked up with a smaller publishing house. Unless it’s one of the big five, the author is being asked to shoulder more and more of the...

When I was accepted, I was assigned to an in-house executive editor. That means they were not expected to do any actual editing. They told me who I was going to be in contact with (who the copy editor would be, who the cover artist was and so forth), what the schedule was for each step of the...

As someone who published my first book (non-fiction) traditionally, let me clarify this misconception. In this age, the author pays for the proof-editing. The publisher might suggest an editor, but it comes out of the author’s pocket. The only editor the publisher paid for was the copy-editor...

My first book, a non-fiction historical text, was published traditionally. For that particular market, I needed the inroads that only a university publishing house could provide, for an audience that tends to shun eBooks. I learned a lot from that exhaustive editing process, and have no regrets...

Part of it has to do with the pace and style of your writing. A lot of us will have chapters that are really all about character development, with little or no plot evolution. Character development is just as important as developing the plot. If the readers can’t relate to or sympathize with the...

I typically have key scenes clearly in mind before I start writing. Usually the beginning and the end of the novel are very clear to me, as well as a few scenes in between. Often, the key scenes from the novel are just too clear, too compelling for me to leave them as mere images in my mind...