Recent content by Bruce McKnight

Of course Patrick Rothfuss has his thoughts on beekeeping, too: This Author Bought a Flow Hive: What Happened Next Will Amaze You! There's not a lot of content in his actual post, but it is entertaining - the one he links to, however, is very informative and may help you with some bee and honey...

Watts Updog - a streetwise young man from present day, bearing a striking resemblance to an extra from Fresh Prince of Bel Air, unwittingly transported back in time where he is captured and sold into the servitude of the actual Prince of Belair. He must use his outlandish tales of the future...

My process recommendation (acknowledging that everyone is different, but this is how I do it): 1) Download Feedly (to read RSS blog feeds) 2) Subscribe to blogs about the writing craft (Flogging the Quill and Creativity Hacker are great for critiques. I also like the advice in Fiction...

Yeah, that's a big point of consideration. I use (and love) GIMP (like a free version of Photoshop), but it took some time to figure out. The good news is that once you figure it out, you can literally do anything without being limited by the tool. The great news is there are tutorials all over...

I always thought of wizard and magician as gender-neutral terms, but I never read Harry Potter. Witch and warlock were terms I always felt were gender-specific, even if WoW didn't see it that way. I guess that means it's all up to the individual- so I'd say make it how you want it and stay...

Don't forget to draw on history for story ideas as well. The Salem Witchcraft Trials have all sorts of great examples of what happens when people fear magic, and magic wasn't even real. People accusing others a death-sentence crime out of a misunderstanding, retaliation, political gain, or just...

For names, I will use "location" items (Greenview, Rockford, Deerfield, etc), but I feel like I get my best names from Google Maps. I pick a culture that is similar (UK in my world) and zoom in real close to look at street and neighborhood names. There's all sorts of good stuff there. When I do...

Similar thoughts to Banten... Consider the temperament of the conquerors. Are they a group that would force their culture on the conquered (join us or die), would they let them live however they want as long as they pay tribute (do whatever you want, just pay your taxes and don't revolt), or...

Good point. The other thing that it took me a while to realize as a reader was how an author lets us peek into the world. I used to look at grand scope works by Tolkien or Martin and think there were just too many coincidences. "Really? It just happened to be the same elf?" and "Oh sure, they...

It's a tough subject and it's hard to get readers up to speed without being overt. Like thedarknessrising said, you don't want to play coy - that get's even more annoying than just listing everything out in bullet points. It can be done well, though, because Caged Maiden made me go pull out Lies...

Everyone works different, but I encountered a similar issue. I loved how great authors were able to just drop small pieces of historic or cultural references into their stories. I wanted to do that, too. I figured I could get by, dropping little pieces and jotting them down to the let the story...

I like the idea. Medieval scale armor was just a metal replica of the animal version, so why not use the natural version: creatures with hard scales. Serpent skin seems more decorative to me, unless they had tougher skin than the normal kind. Personally, I'm partial to gator skin.

Almost always a boring dark muted color. I'm not a fan of hair or eye color being a big dominant differentiator. Size, build, or complexion is a different story.

As much as I don't like supporting Microsoft, I found that feature and the automatic Table of Contents very helpful.

Ever try LibreOffice? All the core functionality at a 100% lower cost.