MATTHEW LOWES

If you’ve ever tried to write anything with a complex plot, you can probably relate to the struggle of figuring out how to make everything fit together like magic. If you haven’t, I assure you it can be quite perplexing and laborious. It can also be wonderful, like when you finally figure out that troubling [...]

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Matthew Lowes is concerned that the internet is becoming ever more interconnected. I can update my Facebook page with my Twitter account, which also can post widgets to my WordPress Blog, which can post Notes to my Facebook page, which can also stream my Youtube clips and my Flickr photos. Luckily, each of these will [...]

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The SFTE believes strongly that the default settings on all electronic devices and software should be free text, with no auto-inserted graphics. Automatically inserted graphics inherently diminish the free and creative use of text. Unfortunately, this is less and less the case as companies and programmers attempt to wow us with flashy, unnecessary, and often [...]

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A terrible thing is happening to the emoticons of the world. They are slowly being replaced by auto-inserted graphics. This tragic loss of free text emoticons has come on so slowly that many have not noticed. Some even applaud this travesty, dazzled by flashy colors that seem to magically appear, and inserting these impostors willy [...]

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Genre is a sticky subject, and suffice it to say that the way we categorize fiction is somewhat arbitrary and somewhat inevitable. If you think about it though, fantasy is the root of all fiction. Long before people began to write books, they huddled around the light of fires, under starry skies, in deep forests, [...]

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I don’t usually write book reviews, but a title review is another matter, and A Darkness Forged in Fire is perhaps one of the best titles ever. I haven’t read this debut book by Chris Evans yet, but I’ve spent days walking around with this title in my head. I say it over and over [...]

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There are a number of really great things about movies that make them particularly useful and fun to study. For one thing, you can experience an entire film in about two hours, beginning to end. In four hours, you can watch it twice. Because of this films are great for studying basic narrative structure, and [...]

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The Russians have a saying: if you stranded at sea in a rowboat of course you should pray to God, but don’t stop rowing. There are a lot of misconceptions about this wonderful muse who gives inspiration to creative people and sends them running to their desks to joyfully turn blank pages into beautiful prose. [...]

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What are some of your favorite books? The question always seems to come up when I tell people I am a writer. Usually I mumble something or other and try to steer the conversation elsewhere. It’s very hard to think of these things on the spot, mainly because there are too many for a concise [...]

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Yesterday while running errands, I remembered a story that I forgot I had written. A while back I read about a short story contest somewhere with the topic of “alien witchcraft.” Well that was right up my alley so I set to work on it. Eventually I had a good idea and I even wrote [...]

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