Blog
Back Again!
Yay, I am back online! As some of you may have noticed, my website was hacked some time ago, and my provider's technical support, who had apparently been switched to a team in India, made things worse until I was only left with a 404. Annalisa, my writing coach,...
Writing Sci-Fi When You’re Not a Scientist
Shuttlers is an interreality space opera, built around a Multiverse, alternate realities, and an organisation dedicated to policing inter-dimensional travel. I am not a physicist. I am not, by training, any kind of scientist at all. I studied chemistry briefly at...
Why I Say My Genres Are ‘to Name But a Few’
Anyone who’s read my bio or listened to me talk will have noticed the phrase. Science fiction, space opera, urban fantasy, horror, fairy tales, noir, detective fiction, dark humour, to name but a few. I’m often asked about that last bit. Surely that’s enough genres...
Worldbuilding for Shuttlers
Building the Multiverse for Shuttlers was, in hindsight, a much bigger undertaking than I realised I was signing up for when I sat down to write about a young man smuggling forbidden books between realities. Here’s how it actually came together, which is to say,...
Things I Wish I’d Known Before My First Published Book
Hindsight is a wonderful, slightly painful thing. Looking back at the version of me who had just had his first book published, there’s plenty I’d quietly tell him, if I could get a message through. Since I can’t, I’ll put it here instead, for anyone else approaching...
The Inspiration Behind 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘭 𝘊𝘪𝘵𝘺
I’ve mentioned the origins of Paranormal City in passing a few times, but I don’t think I’ve ever sat down to walk through how an entire dark urban fantasy anthology collection grew out of a single abandoned attempt at an epic novel. So here it is, in full. The Novel...
The YA Science Fiction Tetralogy Nobody’s Heard of, Either
After mentioning the Shuttlers sequel, the Paranormal City series and its eighteen spin-offs, and Opener of the Ways in my last post, there’s a fourth project that I haven’t talked about publicly, either. It’s a YA science fiction tetralogy titled Tachys, and it’s yet...
The Epic Fantasy Nobody’s Heard of Yet
Amid the Shuttlers sequel, the Paranormal City series and its eighteen spin-offs, there’s a third project quietly taking shape that I haven’t talked about much publicly. It’s an epic fantasy with the working title Opener of the Ways, and it’s been a different kind of...
Five Things I’d Tell Someone Starting Their First Novel
People starting their first novel sometimes ask me for advice, and I’ve noticed I tend to give the same five answers over and over. So here they are, properly written down, for anyone who hasn’t caught me at a talk to ask in person. 1. Don’t Force a Plan If That’s Not...
Guest Post on “Date With the Muse”
Three years ago, I was asked to write a guest post for Date With the Muse, the website of my writing coach Annalisa Summea. It was part of my work marketing my books to the greater public. If you don’t know what one is, a guest post is when you get someone else to...
The Difference Between a Short Story and a Novel, At Least for Me
Just a few quick thoughts for today. People sometimes assume a novel is just a short story that kept going, the way a marathon is just a sprint that didn’t stop. In my experience, that’s not quite right. The two feel like genuinely different creatures to write, even...
Meet the Monsters of 𝘗𝘢𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘳𝘮𝘢𝘭 𝘊𝘪𝘵𝘺
Paranormal City has given me the rare and slightly alarming pleasure of populating an entire dark urban fantasy world with creatures the Muse seemed determined to invent without any of my prior approval. I thought it was about time I introduced a few of them properly;...
Plotter vs Pantser vs Plantser?
I talk about Pantsing often enough on this site that I thought it was worth properly laying out the whole spectrum — Plotter, Pantser, and the increasingly popular middle ground people call a Plantser — and being honest about where I actually sit, even if it’s not...
37 Books, One Brain
Somewhere along the way, the number of books I’m ‘working on’ crept past thirty and kept climbing. Thirty-seven, give or take, depending on how you count the ones still a little more than a few thousand words and a strong feeling. People ask, not unreasonably, how on...
What I’d Say to People Who Look Down on Self-Published Authors
I’ve heard the sneer before, even if it’s rarely said quite so plainly: self-published isn’t ‘real’ publishing. It’s the consolation prize for people who couldn’t get a traditional deal. I understand where the attitude comes from — there’s a lot of variable quality...
Five Things About Me Most Readers Don’t Know
Readers tend to know the headline facts — the word count, the Pantser confession, my Muse, the Writers Forum award, and the cold-dead-fingers sign-off I trot out at the end of nearly every talk I give. So I thought it might be fun to dig a bit deeper and share some...
Things People Ask Me at Book Talks
I’ve now done enough talks — the WI, the U3A, Rotary, radio, and various podcasts along the way — that certain questions have become old friends. I thought it was about time I collected the regulars in one place, with the answers I actually gave, rather than the...
Writing Fairy Tales for Grown-Ups
I’ve written about how, among other genres, my fairy tales sometimes wander into darker, stranger territory than the traditional versions (https://stephenoliver-author.com/genre-mashup-confessions/). I wanted to dig a bit deeper into why I think fairy stories belong...
I May Be a Pantser, But My Muse Is Definitely a Plotter
This is a contradiction that’s taken me years to properly notice, let alone admit to in public. I’ve built an entire identity around being a committed Pantser: no outline, no plan, finding out what I’m writing as I write. And yet, the longer I do this, the more...
The Edit That Wouldn’t Die
Every writer has one. A story that should have been finished months ago, that you’ve read, revised, edited, washed, rinsed, repeated more times than seems reasonable, and that still… still… it isn’t quite done. I have several candidates for the title, if I’m honest,...
Another Wordsmiths Thursday
I am writing this today simply because I wanted to write it on the day of the meeting. It’s that time again. Wordsmiths Thursday rolled around once more today, the first Thursday of the month. It means a lunchtime spent in the company of the Whittlesey Wordsmiths...