K.Childs

The journey of writing book 2   Okay so today’s blog post is going to be self-indulgent because I like indulgence. I’ve got two hours being the group is coming over for D&D and I haven’t touched my novel since Saturday last week. This is sort of normal when I’m not on a deadline because sometimes scenes need to settle- othertimes I’ve just been busy. If I were being a good girl, I’d be up to 40k by now. I’m just now hitting the halfway mark of 30k, and because I haven’t immersed into the world in a few days, I’m re-reading the last few pages. Book 2 of the Clockwork Myth series is nominally titled ‘ A Study in Shadow ’ although I am presently thinking about renaming it to ‘ A Theft in Shadow ’ or ‘ A Thief of Shadows ’ since this is a caper/heist novel. I’m still on the fence about the title so suggestions are welcome! That is the brilliance of being able to bounce ideas off others. Originally this was supposed to be the third book in the series but after discus...

The importance of working hard—yourself. It’s no secret in my realm that I’ve got a novel coming out in the nebulous future of soon. This might have something to do with me being awful at keeping my mouth shut, or being a little over-excited. About a week ago a gentleman mentioned that he too had finished a military sci-fi unlike any other book in the whole world.  The emphasis he had was that there was nothing else quite like it which made me a little worried because this is a common misconception in overconfident, typically less experienced writers. First, of course your book is unique- you are a unique person with your own world to make and words to splash about. Second, of course your book is not unique- because no idea has not been written in some form or another already.  This dichotomy of everything being unique and nothing being unique is something that you need to realize early on. Either you make peace with it, or you send folk embarrassing emails lik...

In the wake of my last post about prophecy, which was a great relief to get off my chest, I’d like to talk about villains in novels. Now, I’m going to use villain and antagonist interchangeably here, but you should know they aren’t always. A villain is usually an antagonist, but not all antagonists are villains. If you haven’t checked it out , Writing Excuses has a great podcast about the differences between villains, antagonists and obstacles. Go and check them out www.writingexcuses.com Obstacles are the sort of challenges that a lot of romance plots will place before their characters. Sometimes these obstacles are people, other times literal boulders for the characters to climb over.  A good example would be Pride & Prejudice- the title itself are two of the core obstacles the characters have to overcome. Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about villains and how to make them not suck. In my experience and opinion, the best villains are ones that...