by Melinda Snodgrass | Jul 10, 2020 | About Writing, The Craft of Writing, Wild Cards
I was scrolling through Twitter this morning and came across a gif of a group of cows jumping over the white line on a road. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHneXbfFwsc And it reminded me of a funny Roger Zelazny/Wild Cards story. Also how Roger was freaking brilliant and one of the finest writers ever to grace the field of science fiction and fantasy. Anyway, we were working a particular volume — Down and Dirty — where Roger’s iconic character Croyd Crenson aka The Sleeper...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Jul 5, 2020 | Blog
I don’t often do this, but in this “splendid” Covid isolation I don’t have anyone to talk this out with so I’m going to pour it out on the page. Typical writer, right? So on Wednesday evening a lovely family came and took away the sort-of-antique-beds that were in the casita. The bed I had in Los Angeles will be coming back to New Mexico and I decided a queen with a really good Tempur-Pedic mattress was a better choice for any guests I might have once the plague...
by Melinda Snodgrass | May 8, 2020 | Blog
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”― Edmund Burke We are where we are — 76,740 dead from Covid-19 — because of the cowardice of putatively good men, brave men, intelligent men, patriotic men. Where is Rex Tillerson who reputedly called Trump a “fucking moron”? You have anything to say? Where is General Mattis who said Trump had the understanding of “a fifth- or sixth-grader,”, and ultimately resigned, but now refuses to speak out about what he has...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Apr 20, 2020 | About Writing
I’ve been pacing and staring at the white board trying to lay out the full plot for book 4 of the Edge series. This one’s called The Edge of Infinity. I know the final scene of the book, I have major (tent pole) scenes, and lots of plot threads some of which are to tie up hanging threads from other books. But what I don’t have is the unifying bad guy. I had been considering using the Old One disguised as a homeless Jesus figure, but then I was texting with a friend this...
by Melinda Snodgrass | Apr 6, 2020 | About Writing
You become invested in the characters you create for your books and even scripts if a character becomes a recurring character on a show. I had that happen on Reasonable Doubts, and it was cool. It was very hard for me to write the end of the relationship between that character and Marlee’s character. I got a bit teary as I typed. It is said that when Dumas killed Porthos in The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later he laid down his pen, unable to continue so great was his grief. I can...
