DeAnna Knippling

My horror/dark fantasy short story collection, A Murder of Crows: Seventeen Tales of Monsters & the Macabre is 30% off of $1.99 today with the code OCT30. You can use the same  code on a ton of other Kobo titles here.    

When you’re working a day job, there’s a clear set of guidelines for getting stuff done:  show up and get paid.  There’s a performance review every year, and sometimes you’ll get feedback from your bosses and coworkers. And yet these metrics have nothing to do with whether you actually accomplished something, do they?  Not really.

Alice’s Adventures in Underland will be 30% off at Kobo through Monday if you use the following code at checkout:  SEPT30.  A ton of excellent books are on sale (besides my excellent book).  The full list is here.

Volume 1 of Alice’s Adventures in Underland: The Queen of Stilled Hearts is now officially released.  Right now, it’s $0.99 U.S., with comparably low prices across the globe, so if you’re going to impulse buy it, now’s the time.  Scroll down for links, blurb, FAQ, and first chapter. Links: Kindle ebook copies and print copies via Amazon here.

Alice’s Adventures in Underland: The Queen of Stilled Hearts will be officially released soon, August 15th.  You will be able to find it at most online ebook retailers (Amazon failed to make it enticing enough to keep it exclusive for any amount of time on Kindle). You can preorder it on Kindle or order a print

I asked for recommendations for writers of color of adventurous SF/F/H who feature the coolest, best, most awesome heroes and heroines of color, and received the following responses (as well as did some research on my own): Sabaa Tahir  N.K. Jemisin Daniel Jose Older Ken Liu Nalo Hopkinson Alaya Dawn Johnson Steven Barnes Justine Larbalestier

I just finished Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time, by Jeff Sutherland.  Fun stuff, if you’re into process, which I am.  (If you’re not, you may want to skip this.)  It seems like a no-brainer:  meta-skills, like learning how to learn, make everything else easier, faster, and even more enjoyable.

A question came up on how to display emotions of characters without blatantly stating them.  My take on it goes like this: — We can’t really talk about how to write character emotions without taking a second to lay down a base assumption about fiction:  The most efficient way is generally not the best way. The most efficient

Having just reread The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson (and having typed some parts of it in), I’m struck  by…I don’t know if I can sum this up well, but here goes: Classic ghost stories are often about things that the characters (and perhaps the audience) absolutely, positively MUST NOT KNOW; if you confront them

So a couple of years ago I started tracking my word counts:  how many new words produced daily.  I did pretty well, producing over half a million words two years running.  Over a million words!  Woo! However…at the same time I started tracking word counts, I experienced a massive reduction in putting out new indie work,