Professor Beej

When I first started seriously working on my novel, I said that “I definitely want to outline.”  I knew that going into writing something as complex as a novel without a plan would lead to failure. So I sat down and thought about what I wanted to happen in my novel.  I broke it down [...]

It’s done.  Finished.  At 85,953 words, the first draft of my first novel is complete.  And I feel so incredibly strange now that I want to jump right back in and get back to writing. But I can’t. I have to step back, take a few—many—deep breaths, and just let it sit.  My wife is [...]

Sometimes, I’m prone to hyperbole.  I’ll state that Stephenie Meyer is the worst writer who’s ever lived, when I’m pretty sure there are worse ones who have gone unpublished.  I might say that the Wizarding World of Harry Potter is the best theme park ever created, but I haven’t experienced every theme park in the [...]

The Red Pyramid is an interesting mix of YA urban fantasy and mythology that Rick Riordan made famous with his Percy Jackson series.  And while I have not read those Greek-mythology inspired novels, I fully expect to since I enjoyed The Red Pyramid pretty well. Riordan also takes an area of mythology that I have [...]

My wife and I had planned our trip to Florida (our vacanymoon to steal a term from a friend) around the biennial Joss Whedon conference Slayage.  We thought we were getting incredibly lucky because Universal Orlando’s new theme park—The Wizarding World of Harry Potter, obviously—had been pushed back to a Spring 2010 opening.  When we [...]