My first novel was Stasis. All of the action in that book–and much of the action in the rest of the trilogy–takes place in the city-state of Praesidium. I love maps in books and couldn’t resist including maps in the trilogy. Now, if you examine this map closely, you might notice that even though Praesidium …
Better Than Good by Lane Hayes My new book (and yes… first ever) Better Than Good was released July 8th. It is of course a love story because truthfully, that’s my favorite kind. I will read almost any type of genre, but the ones I end up enjoying the most have at the very least …
Today I’m going to talk about an event that inspired me, even though I’ve never actually attended. In my short story “Tyler Wang Has a Ball” poor urban Tyler gets roped into attending a testicle festival. I am delighted to say such events actually exist. I was inspired by the one that takes place every …
Inspiration. Kim has been doing her weekly piece on inspiration and in keeping with her theme so I decided to take a crack at what inspired/inspires my writing. Since this isn’t going to be a weekly guest piece, I decided to focus on the things that prompted me to write one book – Purpose since …
I’ve posted already about some of the places that inspired pieces of the Bones books. Today I’d like to share a few more. This is Papa Haydn, a cafe in Northwest Portland. When Matty and Dylan go out to lunch in Buried Bones, they go someplace like this. The desserts are amazing. But Dylan is …
“Steampunk is what happens when goths discover brown.” by K. Z. Snow That was the first succinct definition I came upon for a category of speculative fiction that began to intrigue me some years ago. I didn’t know much about steampunk then, despite the fact it was spawned (I’ve since learned) in the 1980s, but …
In my novel Brute, Brute moves to the capital city of Tellomer and ends up with a job in the palace. His quarters are in the Brown Tower and his task is to guard the mysterious man imprisoned there. The palace–which is really more of a castle–and the Brown Tower were inspired largely by a …
I have fairly vivid dreams. The other night, for instance, I dreamed I was searching for something to wear to an Indian wedding. The colors in that dream were especially bright. Sometimes in my dreams my husband does something to make me angry and when I wake up I’m mad at the poor guy. My …