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How to write a thrilling fantasy novel (book writing tips for authors)

I’m my own worst enemy.

As a cover designer and book editor, I used to tell authors to get a simple blog and keep it updated, but this blog broke and I ignored it for two years. Even though I’ve published 25+ in the last 5 years (and sold nearly 100K copies), I’ve neglected this blog almost entirely.

I prefer to be writing, and this might resonate with you. Writing is instantly gratifying. It feels feel and easy to be creative. I’m a big fan of nanowrimo and getting out a messy rough draft, but I also spent 10 years getting a PhD in literature and another ten putting out writing tips and publishing content, that’s gotten millions of views.

And yet…

My actual fiction writing blog barely gets 50 visitors a day, something I hope to correct as I finally finish some series and see a big boost in income. Most of my sales will come from social media marketing and advertising, but invariably some authors will start checking out my website to see why I’m selling so well and come away scratching their heads.

The secret is, this isn’t my only blog.

I have several – too many to maintain – so many of them are crap. But the only I occasionally use, where I talk most about book writing, is creativindie. I put together a massive resource recently on how to write a book so you can start there. I even have a free summer camp writing program where you can get advanced writing tips that will make the process much easier.

How do you actually start writing a book?

I see this question all over, all the time, and it’s impossible to answer outside of a flippant meme. Most people will tell you, just start writing, do whatever is fun, don’t do it if it isn’t easy. But writing is only fun for awhile – so then the question is, how or why should I keep writing when it isn’t fun and easy any more, and that’s a much harder question to answer. I wrote a whole book about the magic of writing, but most people say it’s boring and prefer my very simple novel structure plotting template cheatsheets.

I’m a big fan of plotting.

So you know what happens next and don’t get stuck. But it’s something you have to learn. It’s a bit like training wheels, so you can practice safely and end up with a real, whole story, instead of a bunch of great scenes and characters that you have no idea what to do with.

Not everybody loves plotting, and that’s fine. But you’ll get stuck at some point, and knowing about story structure is the only way to get unstuck; apart from a “deus ex machina” – something ridiculous and unbelievable – with a neat but unsatisfying resolution.

You need to know what you’re writing and who you’re writing it for.

Many/most authors write for themselves; their enjoyment. They think it’s a selling feature that their book isn’t like any other, and they did no market research… it isn’t. That doesn’t mean it won’t sell. But readers get to decide what’s good or not, and nobody else. If you don’t know what they like or respond to, you can’t hope to hit it.

This is basic stuff, but a good story is about a series of events that forces a character to change. The 8point plot dot or 24-chapter structure outlines help construct a strong support for that eventual shift; it’s important to keep up the momentum.

But plotting isn’t everything; you can plot well and still write poorly. But intrigue, suspense, thrills… are also not about the words you choose or your writing capability. They are about the absence of information. Writing a good novel that readers keep reading is all about creating open story loops, by increasing unresolved weirdness, they keep reading to find out what is happening.

If you info-dump them to death in the first few pages, or nothing new/weird/unexplained is happening, they’ll probably get bored. Information management is a critical writing skill that almost nobody else talks about, and I’ve spent years trying to figure it out. Don’t worry, you can learn it in a one hour video, but it’d be easier to sign up for my writing course – which will save you thousands of dollars in developmental editing.

My writing process

Another author’s writing process isn’t always useful, but here’s mine: I look at pretty book covers until I see something I love enough to tell a story for it. I figure out the genre and audience and tropes, and read some bestsellers to get a feel. I use my plotting templates to kind of figure out the basic story.

Then I research the locations, ancient myths, and fill in the blanks with a lot of my personal experiences.

I’m very good at procrastinating, so I can’t really work unless I absolutely force myself – that means, I do nothing else until I write, or I write before I do anything else. There’s two parts of writing: drafting and revision.

  • I like to draft books on a bluetooth keyboard on my iphone, at a nice coffeeshop or on the couch. I do 20 minute sprints and can sometimes get around 3000 words in a few hours. That’s a pretty good day, but those are rare.
  • When I have those words, I past it into my Word doc on my desktop until it’s mostly fleshed out. I’ll always find new scenes I didn’t plan that need to be written.
  • Then I take that big, messy file and start editing.
  • I go through, 4 to 7 rounds.

I have a whole video about this process, but I start with the structure and story, then move on to character motivations to make their actions believable, then scene description and only then, proofreading. You can’t do everything all at once.

What no one tells you about writing

Writing a book is mostly revision, at least for me, but not for everyone.

When you first finish a rough draft, you probably aren’t really finished at all. You shouldn’t be asking for feedback. It’s like seeing a diamond in the mountain and asking people how to get it out. They might point to a thousand different reasons why your book sucks, but no one thing will solve all your problems.

Everything is a structure problem, not a “writing” problem.

You can write poorly and still write great books. The only thing that matters is if it holds their attention.

Creating a whole book is lonely, exhausting and draining. I feel tired all the time, but braindead after working on my book for awhile. But it’s also very rewarding, after you can finally see what you’ve built.

And you can learn it. But not from scanning a few online blog posts or writing tips. You need to learn it for real, which means a lot of study and a lot of practice. Or don’t, maybe you’re a gifted savant… if so, thanks for visiting my site and please leave some of your magic.

PS. I apologize for not actually answering the question in the title… but I’ve answered it in thousands of ways already over the past decade and it’s easier to point to some of my resources than always start over from scratch. It’s a very big topic. I’ll try to do better next time.

38+ best vampire books (paired with brooding vampire dark fantasy portrait illustrations)

I’m putting the final touches on my vampire series and have been making pretty amazing vampire portraits for the 100 vamps in my fantasy kingdom. But I thought it would be a good time also to share an (updated) list of the best vampire books I’ve ever read, and those I’d like to read soon. (Scroll down past the images to see my book recommendations).

Best vampire books (YA and Adult fantasy)

This is a rough list right now, confirmed from favorites on Reddit, but I’ll come back and add links and details soon! This are mostly gothic fantasy but some are modern or vampire adjacent.

  1. Crave, tracy wolff,
  2. Interview with a Vampire – anne rice
  3. vampire academy richelle mead
  4. house of vampires – samantha snow
  5. empire of vampire – jay kristoff
  6. vampire wish – michelle madow
  7. shadow in the ember – jennifer armentrout
  8. duel with vampire lord – married to magic.
  9. Vampire diaries – L.J. Smith
  10. Vampire gift – E.M. Knight
  11. Twilight, midnight sun, stephanie meyer
  12. Royals, vampire court, Megan Montero (Author)
  13. It Lucas – children of the gods.
  14. Natural witch – KF breene
  15. House of Night
  16. The Night World – L.J. Smith
  17. The Silver Kiss – Annette Curtis Klause
  18. The Last Vampire – Christopher Pike
  19. Vgames
  20. Vampish
  21. Elisa – Vampire King
  22. Michelle Madow –
  23. First Kill
  24. Coldest Girl in Coldtown
  25. The Beautiful – Renee Ahdieh
  26. Youngbloods, Coldest Touch, Lost Girls
  27. Anita Blake – Laurell K. Hamilton
  28. Hollows series by Kim Harrison
  29. Sunshine by Robin McKinley
  30.  The Immortal Rules 
  31. The Sookie Stackhouse series
  32. marked
  33. evermore
  34. the chronicles of Vladimir tod
  35.  certain dark things by Silvia moreno Garcia
  36. a dowry of blood by ST gibson
  37. Afterlife of party

I’ll add more soon, as well as more details, covers and book links.

Taste of Vampire (completed fantasy series)

It took 3 years to finish but I’m pretty happy with the final book in the series and can’t wait to share it. I’m still playing around with new cover art and some bonus chapters, but you can start reading the first book right away, or listen to the audiobooks! The first book has nearly 300 reviews but I’ll focus on the boxset when it’s ready, make sure to sign up for the free books and get access to my VIP/beta readers group.

And make sure to check out this other list of best vampire books from theYAshelf.

What to blog about as an author

I started this website years ago for my fiction, and had a couple broken blogs on it before trying to the Divi theme. Then I half-set up a bunch of pages and let it rot. It’s hard to blog when you aren’t getting traffic and don’t have books to sell, and it’s not the most direct form of marketing anyway.

However I’ve just finally solved a broken blog issue (after several years of ignoring it) and am feeling a slight amount of motivation to put this blog to use. The problem for most authors, fiction especially, is what do I write about?

Firstly, this is a site for readers, so I want talk about YA fantasy and scifi, review books in my genre, share what I’m reading and what I’m working on, and also touch on any genre specific things like new movie adaptations. That’s a lot of work, but I may try to power through it all in a week or so, maybe using some AI writing tools to crank out content.

But it’s also a place where I can just be an author and talk about writing.

On my main blog, creativindie, I’ve been talking about writing and publishing for nearly a decade. So it feels draining to keep writing about the same topics. And while I don’t really want this to become a personal blog where I whine about stuff, I’m actually feeling the urge to do exactly that: for this to be my “personal struggles” as I document the details of making a living as a novelist.

It isn’t that hard to bust out a 500 to 1000 word article in under an hour, and it’s a little bit like a ritual writing practice/practicing in public, which are both good things. I’ll focus mostly on adding value, sharing secrets, building support tools, and giving my audience and community useful help and tips; and also probably some longer roundup posts that will drive more traffic.

I’m happy that the blog works and looks OK, and once I rebuild all my main pages I think I’ll have a pretty decent author site to being launching my completed series. The best blog posts are informative and personal. I hope to share a little bit about myself so readers can get to know and understand me. But the blog is meant to introduce the right readers to my books and get them hooked on a new series. It might get a bit messy, but once I boost traffic it might help make a difference in terms of partnerships or income.

I think I’ve turned comments off for now, mostly because they’re a pain in the ass, but I hope you’ll stick around and check out my posts and resources if you’re an author trying to up their publishing game.

Fantasy background Art for Scene Inspiration (free stock photos)

Most of my books are actually urban fantasy, based on ancient mythology, but more than a few have classical “fantasy” scenes and settings; I’ve been using Midjourney to create fantasy art to help my writing process. I’m sharing them here so you can enjoy them. Feel free to use them as inspiration, or pin them to your moodboards. You can even use them as blog headings if you want but please link back to this page

Diverse character art for fantasy novels (character description cheatsheet)

Recently I’ve started playing with midjourney to make character art, so I thought I’d share them. These are what some of my characters look in, in fantasy series ranging from fae, vampires, fallen angels and greek mythology.

AI art doesn’t quite get the faces, hands or weapons right – if I wanted to use these for real, I’d need to photoshop several together, which is why I have so many nearly duplicates of different characters, so I can blend layers and pieces together in one composite.

These images are made from descriptions of my fantasy characters; you can’t use them commercially for your own work (please don’t steal) but you can look at them for inspiration; to help describing your own characters. I also hope you’ll share them on Pinterest or wherever, especially because I’d like there to be more dark skinned, ethnic or black/POC fantasy character art out there as a reference point (one of the great thing about AI image generators may be that more diverse fantasy concept art gets made, for example like these black mermaid illustrations).

If you like these characters and want to get to know them better, I hope you’ll check out my books!