Tag: writing

The Space-Time Continuum: Creating Magic Systems

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns, Writing and Editing
May 21, 2017
5 mins to read
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This is a belated posting of my column from the February-March 2017 issue of Freelance, the magazine of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. Don’t know how I missed posting it, but better late than never! Most fantasy stories include magic: that’s kind of what makes them fantasy. (In fact, if I had to distinguish between fantasy …

A long, in-depth interview with…moi! (Trigger warning: includes questions about religion and politics)

By Edward Willett in Blog, Writing and Editing
December 5, 2016
25 mins to read
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Recently Everitt Foster over the blog A Natural Reaction asked me to answer some questions for an online interview, one of a series he’s been conducting with authors who have been early adopters of the new social media platform Gab, a would-be Twitter rival. (My handle over there is ewillett.) You can read the interview …

What does writing success mean to me?

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books, Writing and Editing
October 30, 2016
4 mins to read
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The Flames of Nevyana blog tour has wrapped up! The final two stops of note were this long review of the book from Jorie Loves a Story (too long and detailed to easily excerpt, so read it in situ), and an interview from Melissa Yaun-Innes’s blog, of which here’s a large chunk (Just in time for …

A long interview with me from Books Chatter

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books, Writing and Editing
October 22, 2016
10 mins to read
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The Flames of Nevyana blog tour continued today with this long interview at Books Chatter. I had fun answering these questions. A very warm welcome to Edward Willett (a.k.a. E.C. Blake); thank you for joining us on BooksChatter! What was the inspiration for Flames of Nevyana? “I was driving from my home town of Regina, …

The world of Flames of Nevyana

By Edward Willett in Blog, Books, Writing and Editing
October 19, 2016
4 mins to read
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From the ongoing blog tour for Flames of Nevyana, here’s today’s guest post from Lisa’s Loves (Books of Course): The world of Flames of Nevyana began with a simple kernel of an idea: the magic of electricity. I was driving from my home town of Regina, Saskatchewan, to Meadow Lake (about 500 kilometres north) for …

Another Seven-Sentence Short Story

By Edward Willett in Blog, Writing and Editing
September 7, 2016
4 mins to read
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At When Words Collide in Calgary this summer I once again conducted a Seven-Sentence Short Story workshop, and had more people in it than ever before–30 or so, I’d guesstimate. This is a plotting exercise created by SF writer/high school teacher James Van Pelt, and it works great in this setting. Below is my story written …

How to write YA fantasy: more story, less pretentiousness

By Edward Willett in Blog, Writing and Editing
June 11, 2016
24 mins to read
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On May 30 I gave a talk at the offices of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild for the Saskatchewan chapter of CANSCAIP, the Canadian Society of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers (that’s their logo at left). The talk was live streamed and will eventually be on YouTube (I’ll post a link once it was) but here …

Answering some questions about writing

By Edward Willett in Blog, Writing and Editing
March 2, 2016
7 mins to read
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I was recently asked, by someone on Facebook, several questions about writing, and I though the answers might be of general interest. And so here they are! How do you decide what ideas/characters/plots/etc. are good? Or which to keep? Hmmm. Of course, I think they’re all good. When I was starting out and writing everything …

The Space-Time Continuum: Where do you get your ideas?

By Edward Willett in Blog, Writing and Editing
February 6, 2016
6 mins to read
1 comments

This is my latest column on writing science fiction and fantasy for the Saskatchewan Writers Guild newsletter Freelance… One of the challenges of writing a regular column (as I know from long experience, since I wrote a weekly newspaper column for many years) is coming up with ideas. Oddly enough, that’s also one of the …

The Space-Time Continuum: The world of fanzines

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns, Writing and Editing
September 15, 2015
5 mins to read
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Here’s my latest column from Freelance, the magazine of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild… Long before I ever subscribed, or even read, a copy of a professional science fiction magazine, I was reading—and even drawing illustrations for—science fiction fanzines. In those pre-Internet days, fanzines filled the place today taken by Tumblr and Instagram and myriad other …

My When Words Collide schedule

By Edward Willett in Blog, Writing and Editing
August 7, 2015
4 mins to read
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I’m really looking forward to next weekend’s When Words Collide conference in Calgary—always one of my favorites. They’re keeping me busy with several panels and, of course, the mass autograph session on Saturday night at 8 p.m., which is open to the public. But it’s not just me! Margaret Anne is taking part in a …

The Space-Time Continuum: Two Roads

By Edward Willett in Blog, Columns, Science Fiction Columns, Writing and Editing
June 28, 2015
5 mins to read
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Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. -Robert Frost When Robert Frost wrote his famous poem “The Road Not Taken,” he clearly didn’t have in mind the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which postulates there is a very large—perhaps infinite—number …