MATTHEW LOWES

Recently I rediscovered the wonders of fantasy role playing games. I bought the Pathfinder Beginner Box on a whim at Christmas, remembering fondly my years of playing Dungeons and Dragons when I was a kid. There’s something deeply appealing about role playing games. They are, at their heart, a form of collective story telling. The [...]

Read Full Post »

Writers and editors rely on manuscript format as a common ground for reading and preparing texts for publication. Unfortunately in today’s world of electronic submissions, each individual market sometimes demands a different format for their manuscripts, complicating the submissions and editing process for writers and editors alike. There is a Standard Manuscript Format, and most [...]

Read Full Post »

It was another great weekend at Liz Engstrom‘s Ghost Story Workshop. Once again, a band of 13 writers gathered in Blue River to write complete short stories in a 24 hour period (<3000 words). As usual, I stayed up until about 3am Friday working on my story. I even started a second one Saturday afternoon [...]

Read Full Post »

Writers have a vested interest in the tools they work with and the preservation of their work. Today, almost all writers use a computer at some stage of their work, but in the age of ubiquitous word processors, few have considered the benefits of plain text. When you use a word processor or save a [...]

Read Full Post »

Took a stroll through the local Borders liquidation sale today. There was a strange feel in there. The cafe was closed, many of the shelves were in disarray, and it felt a little like a sign of the times. Is it the end of books as we know them? Paper books will surely persist for [...]

Read Full Post »

I have always been a staunch supporter of the paper and pen, so when my latest short story went from rough draft to final draft without ever being printed on paper, I had to wonder if I had taken a bold new step into the future. To be fair, I had made a number of [...]

Read Full Post »

My writing methodology has evolved over time and by necessity varies from story to story. That being said, there is generally a definable process. At the beginning is always an idea: it could be a situation or a setting, a character, a feeling, a fragment of a dream, or any number of other things. But [...]

Read Full Post »

A gift certificate led to an interesting trip to the local Barnes & Noble today. I hadn’t been there in a while and was surprised to find very few books when I walked in the door. Half the front of the store was a display for their ebook reader and the other half seemed to [...]

Read Full Post »