A Heaven for Toasters Wins Award

Nov 15, 2020 | My Publications

Last week, I got some exciting news: my romantic sci-fi novel, A Heaven for Toasters, had won second place in the 2020 International Digital Awards! Organized by the Oklahoma Romance Writers of America, this is an annual competition for the top romance book in various...

Bizarre Weapons: the Lantern Shield

Nov 13, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts, Quora

Robert Arthurs reports on Quora first seeing this wonder of medieval over-specialization on display in Vienna, Austria: Doesn’t it look awesome? Well, looks can be deceiving. You see that small hole in the top region of the shield? That is where a soldier would...

Top 10 SEO Tools That Are Helpful for Authors

Nov 3, 2020 | Marketing, Writing

As authors, we all have our websites. More often than not, however, they fail to generate much interest. Most of our posts languish unnoticed and unread. Some writers resort to ads to garner traffic. Others prefer organic—i.e. unpaid—traffic, as our marketing budgets...

Tips for Avoiding Grammar Mistakes

Nov 1, 2020 | Writing

Checking out grammar mistakes is quite easy—but only when you are not editing and proofreading your work by yourself. Otherwise, it’s almost impossible to catch things that would jump out of the page right away, were they written by someone else. Sadly enough, typos...

Five Paintings That Disappeared Without a Trace

Oct 25, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts

Art and art heists seem to go hand-in-hand. No wonder then that some of the rarest masterpieces of art have disappeared at different points in history under mysterious circumstances, leaving the cognoscenti speechless to date. Only reproductions exist today, thanks to...

5 Steps for a Successful Content Marketing Strategy

Oct 23, 2020 | Marketing

First of all, thank you all for your wonderful support. I’m lucky to have such a group of awesome people in my life. I’m returning today with a post on a topic dear to my heart: writing content. 2020 has been hard on everyone. Lockdowns, restrictions, and...

A Few Days Off

Oct 12, 2020 | Random Musings

Apologies for the brief hiatus. My dad passed last week from a sudden heart attack. He was on his feet until the very last moment, and we’re grateful for that. Still, the shock was great. He left no will, so my mom and I now have to go through a small forest of...

Basing Your High-Fantasy Towns and Cities in the Real World

Oct 7, 2020 | Writing

I wisely started the map and made the story fit. The above words, spoken by none other than J.R.R Tolkien, have been taken as sage advice by many an accomplished – or budding – fantasy writer who felt inspired to create their own world. While Tolkien, like many...

Bathing in the Middle Ages

Oct 5, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts

Continuing with my last post’s theme on bathing through history, this one deals specifically with bathing in the Middle Ages. While the Crusades are generally blamed for a number of things, they triggered significant advances in the West. Indeed, some scholars...

A Brief History of Bathing

Oct 1, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts

A reader of my fantasy sci-fi series, Pearseus, once joked that I have a strange fascination with showers. And it’s true; I think of them as a great example of things we take for granted but are actually pretty new. In this day and age, we enjoy a lot of...

Girl Power and the She-cession

Sep 27, 2020 | Maps and Infographics

I once had a look at my visitors and was pleasantly surprised to discover that most of them are women. I say pleasantly because, as the father of an, ahem, energetic 4-year-old girl, I know all about girl power. Nothing pleases me more than seeing women succeed (okay,...

The Future of Barnes and Nobles

Sep 25, 2020 | Publishing

The Passive Guy recently shared a post by Jane Friedman on the future of Barnes & Noble; a topic you may remember from my earlier post, “How Amazon Destroyed Barnes & Noble.” Quite frankly, Jane’s post made me sad. The latest chairman, James...

Ancient Travels

Sep 23, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts, Quora, Writing

I came across an interesting question on Quora the other day: What was the approximate travel time between London and Rome in the 13th century? As Frank Melling, author of “A Sixpence in the Settee,” points out, this is not a simple question to answer, as...

The Problems with Publishing

Sep 19, 2020 | Publishing

Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch recently shared a must-read post about today’s state of publishing, aptly titled Trainwreck, Fall Edition. As she explains, she tried in June to order a copy of a book she liked for her sister. However, she wouldn’t get the book...

Free Online Character Name Generators

Sep 17, 2020 | Writing

I have an unusual relationship with character names, probably because I have such a poor memory (as Electra likes to point out). Quite frankly, I don’t particularly like the process of coming up with names. As the saying goes, you don’t know how many...

Unknown Medieval Weapons

Sep 15, 2020 | Fun Historical Facts, Quora

Everyone’s heard of swords and spears. But how about the Goedendag, the Ahlspiess, or the Hussite flail? If you write historical fiction, you may appreciate this opportunity to spice up your weapons, courtesy of Quora. The Goedendag Essentially, the Goedendag...

How Fiction Can Inspire Business Writing

Sep 13, 2020 | Writing

Business writing includes memos, reports, proposals, emails, and a variety of other business-related written materials. It usually gets pretty bad press among both readers and writers. It is seen as boring and tedious, making for dreary reading – and even worse...

Remembering 9/11

Sep 11, 2020 | Random Musings

Every year, this is a post I wish I didn’t have to write. Will the pain ever fade? Remembering 9/11Powered By the Tweet This PluginTweet This...