LAURENCE MACNAUGHTON

  • The two gentlemen comprising Midnight Syndicate make what is possibly the scariest, most evocative music in the world.  I know this firsthand, ever since the night I was driving down a particularly lonely stretch of fog-shrouded highway and popped their…

  • A moment of silence, please, for the passing of author and producer Stephen J. Cannell.  He wrote a ton of 70s and 80s action TV shows: the Rockford Files, the A-Team, Hunter, Hardcastle & McCormick and others. All favorites of…

  • Looking for some spooky music to set the Halloween mood this year?  Look no further than Midnight Syndicate, one of my favorite bands of all time.  (And that’s no joke, by the way.  I have nearly every one of their…

  • Ray Bradbury never said anything about prunes.  How do we know?  He said so! And (just in case you need it) here’s a link:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5NxG_rr5aU Just when you thought the Sixties couldn’t get any weirder . . .

  • Harry Connolly is the author of Child of Fire, one of Publishers Weekly’s “Best 100 Books of 2009.”  It’s an urban fantasy packed with sorcery, monsters, a gripping mystery and a tough-guy hero in over his head.  Now, Harry Connolly…

  • As a kid, I had a brief brush with fame when I met the local Asteroids arcade champ, Joel, an “old timer” of about eighteen.  Joel had braces like a Cadillac grille and a truly awe-inspiring white-guy fro.  He earned…

  • True to all things geekish, I give you my review of Margaret Weis Productions‘ newest role-playing game, based on the Leverage TV show.  In a nutshell: This is a fun little trial-sized game with a slick, big-budget wrapping over a…

  • It’s always a pleasure to feature a Colorado science fiction author, and Laura E. Reeve is no exception.  Fans of David Weber or Jack Campbell will enjoy her military science fiction series about flawed but likable pilot Major Ariane Kedros. …

  • In an age of smart phones, iPads and Google Docs, there doesn’t seem to be much of a place for an old-style word processor.  Unless, of course, you happen to be a writer.  Nothing’s worse than struggling to write a…

  • Fresh on the heels of “They Fight Crime!” comes the Instant True Story Generator by Nathaniel Jones.  Go ahead, click it.  You deserve a laugh. Shakespeare this is not.  In fact, when I read this, I hear the voice of…

From the blog

  • Want to Get Published? Read This.

    I’ve talked to dozens of best-selling authors about their early years, before they were published. And the similarities between them are striking. On average, they wrote about half a dozen unpublished manuscripts before they sold a novel. (By the way, this is what I call the Myth of the First Novel. Because it’s hardly ever…

  • Compelling Character Arcs in 4 Easy Steps

    I’ll let you in on a secret: readers want your character to change. They know, deep down, that your character is unhappy with the status quo at the beginning of your book. Something is terribly wrong in your character’s life, and things can’t keep going on this way. Something’s got to give. Readers fervently hope…