Author Archives: Pat Bowne

Who’s allowed to write about what?

The day after I write a post comparing rules for writing female characters to pickled fish in a jar, Amanitta Forna compares the activity of categorizing writers and deciding what they’re allowed to write about to collecting butterflies. As dead … Continue reading

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Rose Red Review, Winter 2014: response 1

Living up to my demand that bloggers actually review SFF instead of just telling us how it should be done. Though I am not good at the straight review, more at musing about things… anyway, the boom in SFF short … Continue reading

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You’ve told me how, now show me why

In the last two weeks alone, I saw three articles on blogs I follow about how to write realistic female characters. But how many of those bloggers review books that contain realistic female characters? This seems to be a pattern. … Continue reading

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And to make it even worse…

I was the only person at my club’s discussion of The Worm Ouroborus who thought its ending was horrific. Everyone else had a nice discussion about the history of fantasy and Norse mythology and mountain climbing, while I sat in … Continue reading

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Cue Bitter Laughter

Well, I did it. I persevered all the way through The Worm Ouroborus, though it seemed endless (yes, I know what I did there). I said to myself, ‘The writing is so beautiful, and eventually this stupid war nonsense has … Continue reading

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Something English teachers should probably not do to innocent authors

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Wisdom

From Ann Leckie: “…the “rules” and advice about what does and doesn’t sell and how stories ought to be is safety railings and nets that you think are helping you, except they’re actually keeping you from doing the thing you really … Continue reading

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Sometimes it all just fits together

Yesterday my class discussed Munchausen Syndrome by proxy. Then I came home and read an article about how Rachel Swirsky had spit in the faces of working men everywhere by writing a story in which three anonymous characters in a … Continue reading

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Happy About Sad Puppies

The Sad Puppies are back again, putting forward their slate of nominees for the Hugo awards. I haven’t read any of them, or any of the other slates that have been put forward (except for one story that had absolutely … Continue reading

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BookRiot Reading Challenge – BINGO!

One of my FB friends dared a bunch of us to do the BookRiot reading challenge. But her rules said we couldn’t share the names of the books we read until the challenge was over, so it has caused an … Continue reading

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