This year will be my eighth year taking part in National Novel Writing Month, referred to as NaNoWriMo or NaNo by participants. For those who’ve never heard of it before, NaNoWriMo is a global personal challenge for writers. The goal? Write 50,000 words in one month. For some, that may sound very easy. For others,…
I am one of those people who are entirely susceptible to nostalgia and fan service. I admit this with no shame whatsoever. By the time I reached By the Sword, Lackey’s first standalone book in the world of Velgarth, I was so hooked that it could have been about anything. She and her world had…
Over the years, I’ve experienced what many refer to as writer’s block. However, I don’t think that name is entirely appropriate to the feeling. Instead, it’s more of a malaise. I simply don’t want to write what I know I “have” to write. So, I don’t write, not a single word. I’ll avoid emails, text…
Fantasy Recommendation: The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Growing up in a fairly conservative household, the first hints I had that homosexuality was even a possibility were in Mercedes Lackey’s books. There are minor lesbian characters in her Heralds of Valdemar trilogy, which I believe was her testing the waters for her next idea. The Last Herald-Mage…
Since I began writing as a teenager, I’ve always had multiple stories in the works at once. I think my highest number was twelve! Just like I’m a mood writer incapable of sticking to a To-Be-Read list, I’m a mood writer as well. I consider myself incapable of being monogamous to my stories, but I…
We rarely get a good example of unrelated women in a platonic, close friendship in older, more traditional fantasy stories. All too often, women are singular additions to a group of men, the love interest of the male main character, or the single character going it alone against seemingly unbeatable odds. While more recent fantasy…
I wrote my first fanfiction story when I was fifteen, and I had no idea what I was doing as far as plotting and planning. It probably exists somewhere out there in the ether of the Internet, although I haven’t checked in a long time. It definitely exists in my files, a reminder of how…
As the first true fantasy series I ever read, many books based in Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar hold a special place in my heart. Introduced to the idea of fantasy as a genre in sixth grade through a story in my Language Arts textbook, I immediately went to the library to find more to read by…