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• Post #4066314

  #ScribesAndMakers July 24. What's something you feel you've gotten better at with your creative work this month? I had a lot of fun playing around with the radial symmetry tool in Procreate?

• Post #3332831

  #ScribesAndMakers June 16: Alix could finally see daylight... The main problem is that it was from entirely the wrong sun.

• Post #2819145

  #WordWeavers 20: Does your MC enjoy haircuts or hair styling? It's something that he mostly hasn't had to think about, given that there's been an illusionist around. Now no one cares. His hair is curly, floppy, and unruly, and does what it wants regardless of his own wishes.

• Post #2819144

  #PennedPossibilities 1019. Has your SC ever been bullied? By who, and for what reason? Absolutely and for whatever reason children bully other children—weird ears, glasses, being of Arab (and specifically Syrian-Palestinian) descent during periods of global tension. It means, however, that Shadi can easily shrug off Ian's general tendency to bully everyone around him, as nothing he's capable of saying really hits that hard.

• Post #2819143

  #WritersCoffeeClub May 20 - If not your current genre, what genre would you write? My next story ideas are for folk horror, historical fiction, and something that could absolutely be slice-of-life realism but may have genre elements.

• Post #2819142

  I'm speaking at the Don Mills branch of the Toronto Public Library on June 3rd. Come out for a cheerful discussion of writing dystopias in a dystopian present. The event starts at 7, tickets are free but the organizers would love it if you could register in advance. https://tpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/events/69d7adc78ddc1caf5f1bc962

• Post #2819141

  #WritersCoffeeClub May 21 - What targets do you set for yourself? To what frequency? My usual target is 1000 words a night, two nights a week. That has been hard to impossible lately.

• Post #2819140

  #PennedPossibilities 1020 — Does your MC consider themselves to be outdoorsy or do they prefer to stay inside? Ian is weirdly outdoorsy for someone who appears to never leave his office. He'd rather be walking in the woods than either in Parliament or living in a tunnel, anyway.

• Post #2819139

  #WordWeavers 5/21: "How do you make your MC likeable or relatable to in the 1st chapter?" I try not to. Ian is introduced as the villain of Cascade, and the viewpoint character, Tobias, is on a mission to end his reign of terror.

• Post #2819138

  #ScribesAndMakers 21: What medium would you choose to depict a visual image of a lake? Turner-esque oils

• Post #2819137

  #scribesandmakers 22 May Which book world would you like to live in for a week, and why? The Culture, and I'd stay there, and the Ships would help me stay there. Why? Because it's the best world.

• Post #2819136

  #WordWeavers: If your MC came with a warning label, what would it be? Caution: Explosive. Contains toxic masculinity.

• Post #2819135

  #PennedPossibilities 1021 — Have you ever co-written a story before? Yes, which I was reminded of recently. I kind of dropped the ball on it, tbh. It's a good story, due for a rewrite. Co-writing nonfiction is much easier, though.

• Post #2819134

  #writersCoffeeClub 22 May: How well would your current WIP work as a play? Well, there's a lot of dialogue, so that's good. You could do the bone tentacles with giant puppets. It's quite long, though.

• Post #2819133

  #writersCoffeeClub 23 May: C&R: Share a current creative frustration. Everyone: Prescribe a 'creative antidote', not as a solution, but as a disruptive exercise. Too many distractions, too little time.

• Post #2819132

  #pennedpossibilities 1022 — How would your MC like to be remembered after their death? What sort of legacy would they want to leave? Listen, he wants a goddamn statue and a national day of mourning, he wants Jonah and Maya to leave flowers on his grave, he wants tragic biopics with an actor who is much hotter than he ever was, he wants at least a dozen Sicilian mourners. Because he did what he had to do, goddamn it.

• Post #2819131

  #WordWeavers: If your antagonist came with a warning label, what would it be? Sweet but deadly.

• Post #2819130

  #ScribesAndMakers 23 May: if you were going to tell a story about a cryptid, which would you choose? Technically my demons are cryptids, and not like other demons, having once been real people and creatures corrupted by exposure to magic, and now they look like something out of a Hieronymus Bosch painting.

• Post #2819129

  #ScribesAndMakers 24 May Warp? I apparently use it a lot, and not for Star Trek reasons: The linoleum sizzled and warped where she’d left the spittle too long, a ring of black rot spreading from its perimeter.

• Post #2819128

  #WordWeavers May 24 - If your characters were pets, what would they be and how would they react? They are all cats that resist herding.

• Post #2819127

  #PennedPossibilities⁩ 1023: "Who would you personally trust the most out of your cast of characters?" JFC none of them. Kenny, I guess, if I had to. He's pretty honest and ride-or-die.

• Post #2819126

  #writersCoffeeClub May 24: What do you need in order to finish your current WIP? Time, cocaine, or some combination thereof.

• Post #2264512

  #WordWeavers 6. What writing-related challenges have you encountered recently? Beyond the usual time factors, I've had to plan for three author events, four podcast episodes, and two panels, all within a three-month period or so. Which is great, as it gets me out there, but as much as speaking to an audience is my favourite thing, prepping for that is not.

• Post #2049341

  #PennedPossibilities 852 — Tell us something you’ve always wanted to share about your story with readers. I envision it as kind of a sandbox world and my greatest joy would be to see how other people experience it and expand it.

• Post #1841264

  I got a mention on CBC along with serious authors: https://www.cbc.ca/books/canada-reads-authors-silvia-moreno-garcia-and-kate-beaton-shortlisted-for-canadian-sci-fi-and-fantasy-award-9.7176443

• Post #1607412

  #PennedPossibilities 993 — As we are approaching Prompt 1000 and there’s been a lot of reflection on this project (for the host, floofpaldi), let’s reflect on our writing journeys, how far we’ve come, friends we made, what we’ve learned along the way, etc. *raises a glass to @floofpaldi * Thanks for providing this space. It's weirdly an important part of my routine that gets me thinking about my project every single morning. And of course it's let me meet a ton of cool new folks...

• Post #1092793

  #WordWeavers 23/11 Finding good cover artists, beta readers, & editors is hard. Shoutout who has helped you. @zillanovikov (beta, enabling), @stromberg (editing), and Marten Norr (cover art).

• Post #1092790

  Self promotion is always awkward and even more so when the world is going to hell, but hey, the Aurora Awards opened up for nominations today and I have three works that are eligible. Consider giving me a nomination if you're a CSSFA member! https://www.csffa.ca/

• Post #1036415

  #writersCoffeeClub 5 Apr: How can the physical form of the writing become part of the storytelling? That may be a question for smarter minds than mine.

• Post #1036414

  #WordWeavers 5 Apr: How would the character from question 4 react to being invited? Lucy reacts with grace and poise; Jonah reacts with a shrug and a "hey what can I bring?" If you invited them to the opposite parties, Lucy would sit their stiffly, waiting for it to be over, and Jonah would find someone staffing the party to snark with.