advice for writers -

26Mar 2015 by Dianna L. Gunn

Author Spotlight: Mark Cantrell

Today's author is another Inspired Quill author, Mark Cantrell, who works as a journalist during the day and writes his novels by night. He's here to discuss his career as a writer and his newest novel, Silas Morlock. Please give Mark a warm welcome. 1.Can you tell us a bit about your novel, Silas Morlock? Silas Morlock is a dark urban fantasy with shades of the macabre horror thrown in. It's a story about good and evil, the darkness that resides inside all of us, and what happens when that darkness escapes to smother the world in shadow. The book deals with a last-ditch struggle to save the human soul from extinction. By that, I don't mean some intangible and metaphysical entity, but something with a real physical existence – books,…

Do you have to wake up early to be successful?

Inspirational, Writing

I follow a number of blogs and newsletters, and lately I've been noticing a trend: a number of my favourite newsletters and blogs recommend waking up an hour earlier to get your writing done. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially because it was one of the key recommendations in COMMIT, the self-help book recently published by Linda Formichelli of The Renegade Writer. I know this strategy works for a lot of people, but I resent the idea that in order to be successful, I have to wake up earlier. Instead, I believe in a concept introduced to me by DIY MFA: magic time. Magic time is the time of day when you are at your best. It is the time when you can accomplish all your work in half the…

The Power of Re-Reading

Reading Related

[caption id="attachment_2065" align="alignleft" width="200"] The book I'm re-reading right now.[/caption] As a kid I re-read books fairly often, but eventually I grew to hate re-reading books. I have a pretty good memory so if I've read it in the last couple of years, I'll only find surprises if it's a really well written book. Besides, there are so many amazing books I haven't read, and more being published every day. I'll admit, I have a more personal reason: some of the books I loved most as a child seemed awful when I re-read them. The characters were flat or I had simply changed too much to like them. For the first time, I noticed pacing issues and once in a while even realized the story wasn't all that interesting. If…