How I plotted my novel with help from LucasArts and Chrono Trigger

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Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

A man accidentally turns his fiancée into a golden statue with a cursed diamond ring. To break the curse, he needs to find an equally large diamond ring, but said ring can only be found on an island that no one knows how to get to. Well, save for one guy, who booked a gig for a band one time back in the day and had the map to the island tattooed on his back for some reason. Problem solved!

Except that this particular individual is asleep at an exclusive beach club into which no one may enter save members. Oh, and also someone stole the gold statue of your fiancée because this story does take place on an island full of retired pirates! Read More …


On Launching a Fiction Kickstarter Campaign

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We’ve all seen those Kickstarter projects where someone raises millions of dollars for a new smart watch or a movie of a cult hit TV show or even a card game about exploding felines. And there have been comics and board games a plenty that have built fanbases and even companies.

But until recently, fiction on Kickstarter has been a relatively quiet place. Michael J. Sullivan has been an early advocate of the platform and even started his own campaign on a dare to prove to an author friend that it could work. Seven campaigns later and Michael is putting out all of his new books first on Kickstarter. Read More …


how to create a secret magical organization

How to Create a Secret Magical Organization

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Although my first book is called Guild of Tokens, the eponymous guild spends most of the story off-page.

But when it came time to write the sequel, Guild of Magic, in which that organization plays a much more fulsome role, I knew I had my work cut out for me.

The broad contours of the Worshipful Company of Alchemists, otherwise known as the Guild, I had in the back of my head while writing book one, but the exact contours, membership, bylaws, and other details, those were just beyond the Hatch, so to speak.

Luckily, for whatever reason, popular media loves a good secret magical organization, so I had plenty of examples to draw upon, so much so that I distilled everything down into five easy steps that I used to guide my creation process. Read More …