by Penny Freeman | Oct 13, 2015 | Authors, Editor's Notes
Aunt Betty is eccentric, but how much is ghost, how much is medication, and how much is just plain crazy? Ginger C. Mann is a poet, musician, and digital security engineer. If you can’t find her doing those things, look for a woman chasing around her small children...
by Penny Freeman | Jan 29, 2015 | Editor's Notes, Publisher's Desk, Writing
BY PENNY FREEMAN Dodging the Grammar Police We’ve been tackling that ticklish subject, voice. Of my six bullet points, we have thus far addressed: The writer’s vocabulary and speech patterns The characters’ vocabulary and speech patterns Now,...
by Penny Freeman | Jan 22, 2015 | Editor's Notes, Writing
BY MCKENNA GARDNER Writing Conflict The best conflict in literature stems from genuine human desire and motivation. When you have two primary characters, presumably the hero and the villain, or the hero and the heroine, with opposing outlooks on life, an inevitable...
by Penny Freeman | Jan 17, 2015 | Editor's Notes, Writing
BY MERILYN OBLAD Accuracy in Historical Fiction, Part Two: Shifting Mental Gears In my last post , I wrote about how to do proper research for in-depth historical novels. But what do you do for backdrop historical novels, ones that take place in the past but the story...
by Penny Freeman | Jan 16, 2015 | Editor's Notes
BY SARAH-BETH WATKINS I am delighted to be a new assistant editor for the mad world of Xchyler, so I thought I’d better introduce myself and let you know a little bit about me before I attack your work! I began writing many moons ago—fantasy stories to utilise...
by Penny Freeman | Jan 13, 2015 | Editor's Notes, Writing
BY JESSICA SHEN Vision Boarding: Oftentimes we may find that we lose inspiration, or have trouble visualizing parts of our story, whether it’s a character, or a room, or the whole scene itself. For you crazy creative types with overactive imaginations, this probably...
