A Drift of Quills is here again! We’re like clockwork that way, every Friday! Today we’re doing “miniviews” — shortshortshort interviews with some of our favorite authors. We each picked a victim, er… writer, and asked them the same three questions. Read on to see how they answered. A.E. Marling leaped into the indie writer scene about three years ago with his impressive debut, Brood of Bones. (Not that I’ve talked about that before, but who’s counting?) Behind the book’s gorgeous cover is a story about an enchantress with a sleeping problem and a city full of pregnant women. All […]
Category Archives: A Drift of Quills
Bookshelf Scavenger Hunt!
It’s the first Friday of a whole new year! Hello, and Happy New Year to You! As usual for the first-Friday-of-the-month, A Drift of Quills comes together to deliver you something wonderfully bookish—and this time we’re doing a scavenger hunt! You might have seen some others around the cyber world, but we decided to make up our own. We’re adventurous that way! Rummaging through my bookshelves (both physical and digital) makes me feel like a dragon admiring its treasure. I have silver and gold, precious jewels, priceless collections of beautiful words at my very fingertips! The hardest part of this […]
The Author’s Secret Sauce
It’s the first Friday of October. Already! You know what “first Fridays” mean, right? It’s the coming together of A Drift of Quills to chat about different aspects of reading and writing. It’s the latter we’re focusing on this time, with two questions we often get: Where do we get our story ideas? How do we keep track of them when they come to us? And joining us today we have author Joshua Grasso. Please give him a warm welcome! JOSHUA GRASSO Author of The Count of the Living Death and The Astrologer’s Portrait Joshua’s blog My ideas always come from the same source: […]
Books We Love
Welcome to the Friday Feature of our Fantasy writers group, A Drift of Quills! We Quills get together once a month to chat up aspects of reading and writing. We’re returning to the topic of books we love best—and this will be something we revisit from time to time, because hello! we’re readers *and* writers. Being a writer (or an editor) changes the way one reads things. It’s not strictly for entertainment anymore, but how cool is it to do your favorite thing for work? Still, the quality of a book obviously affects enjoyment. For me to forget about the […]
Picture This!
Welcome to the Friday Feature of the Fantasy writers group, A Drift of Quills! We Quills get together once a month to chat up aspects of reading and writing. This month we’re choosing a picture we think best represents some person, place or thing in one of our works. I don’t know about you, but I love seeing the pictures that have inspired my fellow authors in their writing. Sometimes their choices are surprising, and at others I nod my head madly and say yes, yes! So—wanna see what we’re envisioning? Read on! The character Crow, from my novel As the […]
The Freedom Conundrum
“The Freedom Conundrum…” Sounds like it could be the title of an exciting thriller, doesn’t it? (Must add it to my list of ideas!) It’s the first Friday of the month—and Independence Day, to boot! What better day for A Drift of Quills to talk about what freedom means to us individually and how the topic figures (or not!) in our novels? It’s not all about baseball and apple pie, though. Joining us today is guest poster, author Raymond Bolton. Please give him a warm welcome! RAYMOND BOLTONAuthor of Awakening: The Ydron Saga Vol. 1Raymond’s WebsiteFreedom is a difficult concept to wrap […]
Authors + Readers + Pinterest = Connection and Creation
It’s time for another Panel Discussion! This month A Drift of Quills is discussing how to use Pinterest to build worlds and connect with readers. You know what this means?? You, Dear Reader, get a look behind the scenes… YOURS TRULY Author of As the Crow Flies and two short stories My website (You can use this link or you could use the menu at the top. Whatever floats your boat!) I love Pinterest. If you haven’t been to the site, it’s an awesome visual discovery tool. Sometimes I spend more time on the site than is practical, but it’s such […]
Books We Love
Welcome back to the Friday Feature of our Fantasy writers group, A Drift of Quills! We Quills get together once a month to chat up aspects of reading and writing—and this time we’re talking about books we love best. Grab your chocolate, sit back, and get comfy. KRISTIE KIESSLING Author of the short story, Sanguis Dei and a poetry collection, Light and Dark Kristie’s Blog When faced with the topic for this first Friday, Books We Love, I immediately considered the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but a commentary or review of any of those would take far […]
The Effect of the Day Job
It’s the first Friday of the month! It’s Quill Time!Most authors have other jobs besides writing—and that includes being a full-time parent (which is hard work!). Along the route we’ve picked up various sorts of education, training or experience. We thought it might be interesting to discuss how our other jobs or experiences influence our writing. Does it make it easier? Harder? PATRICIA REDINGAuthor of OathtakerPatricia’s websiteLike most writers, I also have another “life.” I practice law. For the most part, my legal background is a benefit to writing. Admittedly, however, there is at least one downside to it . […]
A Question of Honor
This month A Drift of Quills is asking our protagonists an important question: “Do you consider yourself honorable? Why or why not?” What a fun thing to do—fun to respond to, and fun to read what’s going through the minds of other characters. As you will see, they’re all quite different, but equally engaging. You might notice that we’re down by one panelist. C.M.J. Wallace has decided to resign in order to better focus her attention on other things (you know, like writing!?). We will certainly miss her wit and candor—but hopefully we’ll be able to convince her to visit now and then […]