One of my favorite pieces of plotting out a novel is the process of casting characters for all of the parts. A dear friend of mine, BC film writer and YVR Screen Scene maven Sabrina Furminger and I once even cast an entire novel full of Canadian actors. Some may call it procrastination, we called it character study!…
The necklace of Rhea Silvia is one of the fantastical elements of the ancient world. The Sibylline Chronicles is actively incorporating provocative relics from the ancient world – many of which disappeared between 391 and 415 c.e. The Necklace is actually wonderfully mythological and full of mystery. It hung around the neck of her statue in the Temple…
Hand-drawn maps are life-savers. One of the most daunting parts of writing historical fiction based in times thousands of years in the past is a very limited public historical record. It’s one thing to recount history in a reference book. Something entirely different to create the intimate relationship to place required for a novel. I’ve…
When you are diagramming a scene, you can see the characters in it. Writing is an art steeped in the lyrical use of words (stunning revelation, I know). Figuring out the magical combination of phrases, nouns, verbs and a participle or two is something we as novelists fret over on a minute-by-minute basis. Jumping in today…