Pushing The Envelope In Fiction; Navigating A PC-Centric Media Universe

[This article was originally published at civilianreader.com]

So you're going to be a writer? Awesome. You are never going to please everyone, so own it; the thin-skinned have no business being authors (or auteurs). Words have put the most popular and successful authors on the painful side of a controversy (Sometimes it's intentional.) That said...keep an open mind to the opinions of critics and friends. If you are going to create fictional scenarios that skirt the edge of mass acceptance, know why you are writing those actions. When George R.R. Martin decided to have brother and sister lovers in Game of Thrones, he was setting up the premise of the entire series. The question of legitimate authority and unraveling of Westeros as a society came out of that relationship. Everything that happens in your story, no matter how taboo, should serve the narrative.

Why It Takes So F#%&!^g Long To Write a Novel

A fan at my BEA book signing said she had been waiting a long while to get The Lost Prince, the sequel to Awakenings. She's right. And though I've written about the real-life challenges of trying to write novels while holding a day job and promoting one's book, the other part of that delay is the work (i.e. minutia) involved with writing a coherent, well-thought out story. Many literary writers (my favorite being Jonathan Franzen) go years between books, but we seem to expect a faster turnaround from genre writers. The delays go beyond plot, narrative, character arcs, and story development, although those too are time consuming. What I'm trying to bring to light are small moments that pull a writer aside from the bigger picture. A lot of you can read a paragraph in less than 30 seconds, but are not aware of how many hours it took the writer to make those four or five sentences ring as true as can be.

Lysa Arryn: The Poster Parent For Attachment Parenting

Sorry, but when I saw the new TIME cover out this week, this was the first thing that came to mind. Yes, for a serious writer I am a bit of a Geek. If you haven't watched HBO's Game of Thrones, or read TIME, the reference may be lost.
(This is definitely a parody, folks.)

















Ed Lazellari is a blogger, humorist, and fiction writer. His novels Awakenings and The Lost Prince from Tor Books are available at Barnes & Nobles and Amazon.com.