Tag Archives: writing

First Person Narrative – a guest post by Juliet E McKenna

Posted on October 12, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

Thoughts on writing a first person narrative when that person isn’t you. Early reviews for The Green Man’s Challenge are coming in, and readers are commenting favourably on the way Dan Mackmain’s character comes vividly off the page. This isn’t … Continue reading →

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Random Pics from Milford 2021 to Give You a Flavour of the Week

Posted on September 28, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

Can’t wait to go back there. We still have places for the writing retreat in May 2022. All places for the Milford critique week in September 2022 are booked up but we operate a waiting list system. We are now … Continue reading →

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The Subtle (and Unsubtle) Art of Critiquing

Posted on September 7, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

At the end of August I did a post about the run up to Milford. It starts next Saturday so I’m deep into reading and critiquing the 23 pieces submitted by the fifteen attendees. I’m obviously not going to comment … Continue reading →

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The run up to Milford.

Posted on August 24, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

I’m very busy with the day job this week. I’m a music booking agent for folk-type artists from a Canadian-Cowboy bluegrassy duo called Over the Moon, to a troupe of Zulu singers and dancers from KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, called … Continue reading →

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How to Write a Speculative Fiction Book

Posted on August 3, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

I’m not going to be able to teach you how to write a book in the twelve hundred or so words in this blog post – even presuming I have the skills. Yes I’ve written books, seven published so far … Continue reading →

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Space Opera

Posted on July 19, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

I write science fiction. I’m pretty sure my sub-genre is (so far) space opera. I’m happy with that definition. I grew up reading my dad’s Lensman books and the distinctive Gollancz yellow jacketed SF which (sadly) I only have a … Continue reading →

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What Am I Working On?

Posted on July 6, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

C-19 Lockdown hasn’t been a very productive time for me, writing wise. When self-isolating should have given me loads more time to write, for some reason I simply couldn’t get started on anything. I’m not alone in this. Talking to … Continue reading →

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Sorry I missed…

Posted on June 22, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

I missed last week’s blog post – mainly because I was engrossed in editing, so engrossed that Tuesday came and went without me really noticing what day it was. I’ve worked from home since 1980, so you’d think I’d have … Continue reading →

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Back, Just, and Other Superfluous Words

Posted on May 25, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

I’ve recently finished a structural edit on a YA manuscript, involving swapping some scenes around, making changes that needed to be worked through from beginning to end. In other words a proper structural edit, not a copy edit (which will … Continue reading →

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Sherwood Smith – Rondo Allegro – For Your Reading Pleasure

Posted on May 5, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

I’ve always enjoyed reading Sherwood Smith’s fantasies, in particular the Inda sequence, and I just realised there are more books in her bibliography that I misse4d, so I can see I’m going to have to spend some time catching up. … Continue reading →

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Flashing Back

Posted on April 21, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

It’s generally easier to start writing a book at the beginning, keep on going until you reach the end, and then stop. A story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Sequential storytelling mirrors the world we experience on … Continue reading →

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What have I learned about writing?

Posted on March 23, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

Writing is a funny old business. Writers probably learn most by reading. You are what you read. Reading develops your ear for tight prose and snappy dialogue. Without even thinking about it, you learn about character and plot. The difficulty … Continue reading →

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Patricia Briggs: Steal the Dragon – For your reading pleasure

Posted on February 16, 2021 by Jacey Bedford

There are no dragons in this book – well there is one, but not a significant one and it only appears on the page once, in a dream.  So having got that out of the way, this is early Briggs … Continue reading →

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Looking Both Ways – 2020 and 2021

Posted on December 29, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

As a year, 2020 sucked bigtime. It was not fit for purpose. If I’d paid good money for it I’d want a refund. Sure, it wasn’t too bad in January and February. The weather was miserable so I mostly stayed … Continue reading →

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In My Other Life

Posted on December 15, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

I have two blogs, this one and a book blog at https://jacey.dreamwidth.org/ where I blog every book I read and every movie I see in the cinema – that one’s a bit thin on movies this year, but rich on … Continue reading →

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Scene 1 of Winterwood – author analysis

Posted on December 1, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

This was first written for Tiffani Angus’ blog. Tiff teaches creative writing and publishing. Story interspersed with my comments in bold italic. This first scene pretty much sprang into my mind fully formed. When I started to write I didn’t … Continue reading →

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Style Sheets

Posted on October 6, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

Posted on February 7, 2017 by Jacey Bedford There’s a lot of information to keep in your head if you’re writing a book. There’s even more if you’re writing a trilogy or a series. I happily wrote seven books without … Continue reading →

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The Rule of Three

Posted on September 22, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

This post first appeared on David Tallerman’s blog. As humans we look for patterns. Three is the smallest number of elements that can form a pattern. Superstition suggests that three is the magic number, or that both bad things and … Continue reading →

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Space Opera

Posted on September 8, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

I write science fiction. I’m pretty sure my sub-genre is space opera. I’m happy with that definition. I grew up reading my dad’s Lensman books and the distinctive Gollancz yellow jacketed SF, however I wasn’t aware of any distinction between … Continue reading →

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Game of Thrones Revisited

Posted on August 25, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

Just after Game of Thrones finished, Iain Grant sent a few of us some revealing questions about Game of Thrones. I know the ending was contentious, but though I would have wished for a happier ending, I wasn’t honestly expecting … Continue reading →

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The Geography of Words

Posted on August 4, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

Writing science fiction and fantasy involves worldbuilding. Sometimes we take a concept, strip it right down to basics and invent a planet where the sea is pink, the sky is upside down and the dominant life form has seven tentacles … Continue reading →

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Getting Things Done – a guest post by Gail Z. Martin

Posted on July 7, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

I’ll admit it. I have a reputation for getting a lot done. People ask me if I sleep, or take vacations, or have down time. And the truth is that I generally log about seven hours sleep a night, take … Continue reading →

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How Long is a Piece of String?

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

Chopping and Changing – Revisions, Cuts and Additions. How long should your story or novel be? A piece (story, novel or poem) should be as long as it needs to be – but that’s not always as long as you, … Continue reading →

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A Moment of Stuckness

Posted on May 19, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

Anyone who knows me will testify that I’m not usually stuck for words. It’s not that I don’t believe in writer’s block (obviously it is a thing) it’s that I’ve rarely experienced it. However, recently I had a period where … Continue reading →

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How I Got Here From There

Posted on May 5, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

First published on Gillian Polack’s blog in March 2020 for Women’s History Month It took me a long time to get here, possibly too long. If I’d known then, what I know now, it might not have taken so long… … Continue reading →

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Fiction Must Make More Sense Than Real Life

Posted on April 6, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

Fiction must make more sense than real life. I think we all know that real life isn’t making much sense at the moment. If we wrote about a global pandemic in which presidential staff held hands and prayed that it … Continue reading →

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House Arrest

Posted on March 24, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

Due to Covid 19 we’ve pulled up the drawbridge and dug a shark infested moat around Bedford Towers. No, we’re not sick, but I’m diabetic and my other half has suddenly become classified as elderly. How scary is that? Our … Continue reading →

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Reading Writing and Rewriting

Posted on March 10, 2020 by Jacey Bedford

I was a voracious reader as a child, working my way steadily through the stock of my local public library children’s department. My literature of choice was anything with horses or ponies in it. Some of the books in my … Continue reading →

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Creativity and the laugh-track of my life

Posted on December 3, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) at the beginning of November, a commitment to write 50,000 words in a month. It’s fewer than 2000 words a day, so it should be—if not easy—not all that difficult. I’ve … Continue reading →

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Process

Posted on November 19, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

I’ve been thinking about process over the last few weeks. I’m writing a new, story which I hope will turn into the next novel project. It’s as yet untitled, and if I had to describe it at all it would … Continue reading →

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It’s not too late to join up – NaNoWriMo

Posted on November 5, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

NaNoWriMo – National NovelWriting Month-takes place each November. You sign up Her: https://nanowrimo.org and commit to writing 50,000 in November, which means writing just a little under 2,000 words a day. It’s only 3rd November, you still have time to … Continue reading →

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Retro-Blog of a Pre-published Writer from Autumn 2008

Posted on October 22, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

With hindsight this is really interesting. This (edited) collection of blog posts is from the early days of writing The Amber Crown, which then had the working title of Spider on the Web. (Sometimes the working title became That Bloody … Continue reading →

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Writers Injuring Characters

Posted on October 8, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

I went to visit my dentist for a particularly difficult tooth extraction today, so as I write this I’m sitting nursing a sore jaw as the anaesthetic is wearing off. I can’t deny that I felt a bit wobbly after … Continue reading →

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Generating Ideas – a guest post by Joshua Palmatier

Posted on August 27, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

The three new themes for Zombies Need Brains’ Kickstarter have been revealed (apocalypses, food, old tech finding new life) and I thought I’d offer up a suggestion here for how to generate an idea that fits a theme AND make … Continue reading →

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My Other Journal in a Galaxy Far far Away

Posted on August 13, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

In 2008 I started a blog on LiveJornal (and later moved everything over to Dreamwidth, but that’s another story). These days I mostly keep Dreamwidth for book and movie reviews, but in those early days my blogs were much more … Continue reading →

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Science for Fiction 2019

Posted on July 16, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

Science For Fiction is an annual event organised by Dr. David Clements at Imperial College, London. It’s a series of lectures by scientists at the cutting edge of their field, specifically aimed at writers. (Unsurprisingly a load of Science Fiction … Continue reading →

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For the Love of Prequels – A guest post by Gail Z. Martin

Posted on June 27, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

One of the tricky parts of telling a story is knowing where to start. The beginning of the interesting part isn’t always the place to start the main tale. That’s especially true when the main story is truly epic in … Continue reading →

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Submission, Rejection, and my Coping Strategies

Posted on June 18, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

I’ve always written. I started my first novel when I was fifteen. (It was dire, and I never finished, but I loved writing it.) It took me years to actually tell anyone I wrote, and even more years before I … Continue reading →

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Milford Writers’ Retreat

Posted on May 7, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

So here I am, in the wilds of Welsh Wales on a writing retreat organised by Milford SF Writers (of which I am the secretary – so yes, theoretically I organised it myself). The venue is Trigonos, the village is … Continue reading →

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The Long Haul

Posted on April 23, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

Now, here’s the thing… when you write a trilogy you are in it for the long haul. To all those people who write a single book, I salute you. It’s not easy. It takes dedication and effort. Now imagine you … Continue reading →

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What I Like to Read, and Why

Posted on March 26, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

Though I have a large collection of paper books, some of them from my childhood, I mostly read fiction on Kindle these days. It’s not that I prefer electronic to dead tree books, but books are books and it’s the … Continue reading →

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Updated Blog Archive: 2013 to 2018

Posted on March 12, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

2013 Bated Breath Seven Short Men and a Waif Preparing for Milford Jumping in at the Shallow End Serendipitous Book Browsing Four days to go Three Book Deal Milford Writers Publishers Marketplace Announcement Editor Talk New Book Log on LJ: Karen Traviss: Star … Continue reading →

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It’s never too late to talk about a book

Posted on February 26, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

Unless you are lucky enough to live in a city which has good bookshops, or even better, specialist science fiction and fantasy bookshops, your browsing of new SFF titles may be limited. My little local bookshop sadly closed last year, … Continue reading →

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Writing Tip: Using Wordle to highlight overused words

Posted on January 15, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

Wordle used to be a web-based utility, a web toy that allowed you to paste in a piece of writing to make a word cloud. The more frequently a word appeared in your text, the bigger it appeared in the … Continue reading →

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Looking Back and Looking Forward: 2018 and 2019

Posted on January 1, 2019 by Jacey Bedford

It just so happens that my alternate Tuesday blog falls on 1st January 2019, so it’s a good time to assess 2018 and see if I can peep into the future to 2019. I’m not sure where 2018 went to. … Continue reading →

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My Week at Milford

Posted on September 26, 2018 by Jacey Bedford

Many thanks to last week’s guest blogger Joshua Palmatier for doing a post for me while I was away at Milford SF Writers’ week in Snowdonia at the lovely Trigonos, Though they do have wi-fi there now, it tends to … Continue reading →

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Finish What You Start – Or Don’t

Posted on September 11, 2018 by Jacey Bedford

Unless you stop faffing about re-writing the beginning of your story/novel, you’ll never finish it. Believe me, I know this. I am an expert in faffing around. I’ve spent untold hours/days/weeks/months getting the start of my novels just right. Sometimes … Continue reading →

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Character self-determination

Posted on July 17, 2018 by Jacey Bedford

There’s one of those little graphics floating around Facebook that says: Main Characters: You do everything you can to raise them right, and as soon as they hit the page they do any damn thing they please. Yes, fellow writers, … Continue reading →

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Writing New Series Vs. Sequels – A guest blog by Gail Z. Martin

Posted on June 21, 2018 by Jacey Bedford

Readers ask, “What do you like better, starting a new series or writing another book in an existing series?” That’s like asking, “What do you like more, going to visit old friends or taking a trip somewhere you’ve never been … Continue reading →

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Make me Immortal with a Kiss

Posted on June 13, 2018 by Jacey Bedford

Zombies Need Brains press ran a Kickstarter in 2017, to fund a set of three themed anthologies. Each anthology has New York Times bestselling authors alongside authors who’ve just made their first professional sale. One of the anthologies in this … Continue reading →

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