The Importance of the Right Feel

There’s an element of storytelling that’s seldom discussed, even more seldom taught or mentioned in reviews, because for the most part it’s objectively unquantifiable. It’s a story’s feel. And it’s become for me the barometer of pop culture properties that pass through many hands before reaching the public. I first became aware of it thanks to Batman. In 1989, we … Read More

Who are the honorary Tufas?

How does one become an honorary Tufa, you may wonder? The criteria is really pretty simple. You must have a song that you’ve written quoted (with your permission, of course) in a Tufa story. So far, there are three honorary Tufas. The first was Jennifer Goree. You can find out more about Jennifer and her connection to the Tufa here, … Read More

Five Great Movies About Writers

Writers aren’t that exciting to be around when we’re working. What we do–staring into space, muttering to ourselves, typing then backspacing and typing some more–isn’t exactly dynamic. It might be why there are so few good movies about writers actually writing. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of good movies with writer characters in them; that’s fairly common. But … Read More

Did Orson Welles make Dracula romantic?

(October, the month of Halloween, conjures one name in our household: Dracula! This is the second of a series of posts on various aspects of Dracula and vampires in general. I’ll be giving away a two-pack of my own vampire novels Blood Groove and The Girls with Games of Blood to one lucky commenter per post, so comment early, comment … Read More

Of eddies, witches and titles

It’s no secret that the Eddie LaCrosse novels owe as much to mystery as they do fantasy, especially the hardboiled pulps and films noir of the 30s and 40s. So when I wrote Wake of the Bloody Angel, I knew its title would have to be a play on a title from the mystery genre, much as Burn Me Deadly … Read More

5 cool things about Dracula

As someone whose vampire novel will be published in the spring (Blood Groove, from Tor Books, will be released March 31, 2009), I’m fully aware that the gold standard, the top of the heap, the absolute pinnacle of vampire literature remains Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Without it, the vampire as a popular figure would have a very different image, … Read More