The Art and Writing of James Baldwin

LILIUM 1: Our Lady of Sorrows teaser

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 05:03:07 +0000

OUR LADY OF SORROWS (OLoS) is the story of Sapheda, a Nephilim supersoldier serving a totalitarian, post-apocalyptic regime. A mission to kill a rogue Nephilim thought to be responsible for the assassination of a senior Party official leads to discovering secrets she was never meant to know – information which eventually leads to the extermination [...]

Blunt Metaphor: A Writer’s Tale

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:15:26 +0000

Last week, I committed to joining a writer’s group. I figure that if I am aiming to be published, I need to get used to relative strangers tearing my novels apart. The prospect of exposing my soft, meaty belly to a pack of relative strangers was not an especially pleasant one, but hey – that’s [...]

The novel writing process

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Thu, 27 Dec 2012 03:01:05 +0000

I am eyeing my book, and my book is eyeing me back. Like: “Come on, motherfucker. Write me. I dare you.” 7500 words to go on this draft. If I’m roleplaying, or chatting, or doing things for my editorial job, I can do that in two hours. With my novels, though, the words always seem [...]

MEAT CAKE: The Reckoning

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 04:54:09 +0000

After 5 months of adventuring around the world (adventures I hardly ended up writing about: but I lived in Ireland for 3 months and Germany for 1 1/2), I return to my adoptive city of Seattle. One of the House members had her birthday on the 6th December, and so I decided to bake her [...]

Jana Volotsya

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 23:16:01 +0000

Jana Volotsya: Crooked lawyer and security fixer. A hardcase centre in a white, pristine shell, she’s almost the lady of Alexi’s dreams Name: Tetyana (Jana) Ivanova Volotsya DOB: 4/4/1958 Height: 5ft 5in Weight: 132lb Eye Color Bright blue Nationality: Second generation Russian-American Hometown: Boston, MA Current Residence: Sheepshead Bay, NYC Siblings: Like Alexi, Jana is [...]

Building a plot: using ‘key action points’

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Fri, 16 Nov 2012 22:32:08 +0000

Developing plots for your novels is actually one of the hardest parts of writing a book for most people. On a good day, the story seems to spool out from our mind-brains. On a bad day, it can feel like chipping at a huge block of ice with a wooden spoon. This post is relatively [...]

NaNoWriMo, Week Two: 15 Practical Character Creation Tips

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 03:57:42 +0000

When it comes to writing a book, your most important ingredient in the whole mix is going to be your characters. Some may dispute this, but generally speaking, if your characters fall flat, readers lose interest very quickly. As a storyteller, your characters are the most important element to your novel because they are the [...]

My shrine to the awesome that is Jeremy Brett

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 20:40:24 +0000

Jeremy Brett. Ah, how I love thee. Jeremy Brett, the man who bought Sherlock Holmes to life. Here are some of the best photos of him off the web: Jeremy Brett wasn’t only Sherlock Holmes, but it is probably that role that he is best remembered for. I can only wish that I’d been around [...]

NaNoWriMo, Week One: The core framework of your novel

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 01:43:44 +0000

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo per-se this year – I’m working on the second draft of my novel, as well as developing the core frameworks for several others. Instead, I’m going to share everything I know about writing fiction on this blog over the four weeks of November. Here are what I believe to be the [...]

Vassily Lovenko

M. James Blood | @MJamesBlood — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 19:03:19 +0000

Vassily Lovenko: the light to Alexi’s dark, Vassily has his own share of demons to face. Vassily is clever where Alexi is learned, flexible where he is static, and weak where he is strong. He lives an enviable life of parties, drugs and crime, but lacks meaning… an absence he feels more and more over [...]