Point of View – Page 29 – J. Scott Coatsworth

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POINT OF VIEW: Switching Gears

October 22, 2018 by scott

Hey all, For the last three years, I’ve been deep in the weeds of writing not one but two sci fi trilogies – “The Oberon Cycle” (Skythane, Lander, Ithani) and “Liminal Sky” (The Stark Divide, The Rising Tide, and The Shoreless Sea). I love-love-love sci fi, but even as a reader, I would take breaks, often alternating between sci fi and fantasy to cleanse my reading palette. And so it is with my writing. Two months ago, about two-thirds through “The Shoreless Sea,” I took a break – well, not so much took a break as a double-time – writing … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Life is Short

October 15, 2018 by scott

Hey all, I’m writing this from a place 868 miles away from home. I’m in Tucson at my Mom’s house, and I’m here because my stepdad Tony passed away four days ago on a trip to visit his sons in Australia. We think it was quick. We hope it was. He went to sleep, and in the morning he was gone. We forget how mortal we are. We get caught up in the day-to-day details of our lives, and forget the big picture. We forget how our time on this mortal plane could end at any time. When we were young, … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Hope and the Holidays

October 8, 2018 by scott

Hey all, I am not going to say much about the events of last week for the moment. I am still too angry. But I will say this. Vote. Get everyone you know to vote. Phone bank and text and email. Because women matter in this country. And a price has to be paid for what happened this week. *deep breath* This is still a writing blog, though. I remind myself of that, just like I remind myself that I have to take care of myself and my husband Mark. That we have to sometimes shut off the TV. Take … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Hope

October 1, 2018 by scott

Hey all, I’m feeling an unreasonable groundswell of hope this week. Totally unwarranted, based on the world we now find ourselves living in. An aberration, really, out of line with this grayer, meaner country. But maybe it’s not. Some of my hope is writing-based. I got a couple pieces of great news about my Liminal Sky series which I’ll share with you soon. I have my first legit bookstore reading this month (join me at 7 PM Thursday at Time Tested Books if you live near Sacramento). And my mother shared “The River City Chronicles” with her pastor. That one … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Romancing the Stone

September 24, 2018 by scott

Hey all, Over the last weekend, I attended the Dreamspinner Retreat in Orlando, an amazing opportunity to meet the staff and to learn more about how to write better. (On a side note, I was in the heart of the Disney World Resort and didn’t see anything other than the hotel *cries *). It was a great retreat – I learned a lot as an author about my craft, and got some fantastic news I will share with you all when I am able. One of the hilights of the retreat was a showing of the 1984 Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Spicing Your Story Up With Slang

September 17, 2018 by scott

Hey all, Today’s column will be short but sweet, as I am in the throes of preparing to go to the Dreamspinner retreat in Orlando Thursday (*waves at all my author friends*). So I thought I’d talk a little more about my new holiday story “Melt.” It’s set in Antarctica, and I found a cool site that includes some Antartcic slang. Whether you’re writing a future world or something in the next city over, including some local idioms and slang can add additional layers to your storytelling. Here are a few from CoolAntarctica.com: Antarctic 10 – A person of the opposite … Read more

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Point of View: This Has All Happened Before

September 3, 2018 by scott

Hey all, I was wandering down memory lane earlier this week when I remembered something that I wanted to share with y’all. One of the things Mark and I do is to build directories and communities – Queer Sci Fi, QueeRomance Ink, and a number of others that bring together various parts of the LGBTIQA community. For today’s column, I thought I’d take you back a couple decades, to the beginning of the world wide web, when America Online ruled the Earth. Yes, there was actually a time when the web didn’t exist. It was a strange era, when you … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: How Would a Civilization Evolve If…

August 27, 2018 by scott

Last week I shared insights from a great author panel at WorldCon76 in San Jose. This week I thought I’d share another. The full title of this one was “How Would a Civilization Evolve If…: How Human and Nonhuman Concepts of ‘Universe’ Is [sic] Shaped By Their Environment.” It was a fascinating chat between an astronomer, a biologist, and a — for lack of a better term – historian/philosopher. It reminded me of nothing so much as those classic sci fi tales where aliens arrive on earth and a team of varied scientific disciplines (and one guy out of left … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Writing Epic Fantasy

August 20, 2018 by scott

Hey all, Mark and I just spent a few says at WorldCon 76 in San Jose, and one of the best panels we attended was the one on how to write epic fantasy. It was a two author chat between Kate Elliott, a veteran author with thirty years of publications under her belt, and Rebecca Roanhorse, a hot new “own voices” author who infuses her Anasazi and black heritage into her work. I thought I’d share a few of the insights from the panel here. 🙂 Background Kate started out by saying that epics happen in every culture – they … Read more