Almost nobody would publish my funny little ditty, Never Kill A Dog Or Cat In Your Novel, because they found it a tad too disturbing. Cue Slackjaw, a humor journal that specializes in over-the-top weirdness. Thank you, Slackjaw, because without you I'd be forced to...
By Cara Lopez Lee I’ve been getting rid of them this week. The extra words. I often say too much. My obsessive compulsive disorder makes this so hard to control that sometimes it feels like I only have two options: say everything or nothing at all. Sometimes I write a...
Writers, today at The Blood-Red Pencil I talk about that thing I never wanted to do because I feared it would stunt my creativity, but which has instead increased my creativity: outlining.
How do fiction authors create believable bad guys? I find I must explore the existence of my own inner villain. Today at The Blood-Red Pencil, I explore this confronting approach to writing antagonists, with a post called I'm The Bad Guy?
It happens to writers sometimes, but I never thought it would happen to me. No matter how much we love them, no matter how hard they work for us, no matter how sure we are that they cannot be replaced: sometimes we have to fire our protagonists. Today at The Blood-Red...
Fiction writers, who is the boss of what happens in your stories: you, the characters, or some other mysterious force? That's the question I ponder today in my post at The Blood Red Pencil, Who's Telling This Story Anyway?
Today at The Blood-Red Pencil, I consider how both introverted and extroverted writers deal with the ecstasy and the agony of writing conferences. Whether you're a writer or a reader, or just an introvert or an extrovert, I believe you'll relate to my post: An...
Today at The Blood-Red Pencil, I share a few thoughts about marketing and the behemoth bookseller, Amazon. I've found gardening a great metaphor for many of life's challenges, and marketing is no exception. It turns out that reinvigorating my aging orange tree is a...
Are you a sucker for romance even if you don't read romance novels? Check out my interview of bestselling novelist Andrew Sean Greer (The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells), today at The Blood-Red Pencil. It's part of that blog's February look at Men and Romance. Greer...
Sometimes when I wrap up a writing project - heck, sometimes when I wrap up anything in life - I run smack into that most horrifying of human terrors: completion. How do we know when we're finished? This month's theme at The Blood-Red Pencil is "What's New?" but in...
Cara Lopez Lee is the author of the novel, Candlelight Bridge, and the memoir, They Only Eat Their Husbands. She’s a winner of The Moth StorySLAM and is featured in many personal storytelling shows. Her writing appears in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, Manifest-Station, and Rivet. Cara and her husband love traveling, but their home is coastal Ventura, California, where they enjoy tending their Certified Wildlife Habitat full of birds, bees, and butterflies.
