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Check out the latest Silk & Steel promo video! Dare to enter the kingdoms of Erdhe! Enjoy!

Gain tips and insights for writing genre fiction!

A new video takes readers inside the epic fantasy realms of Silk & Steel! Enjoy!

Holiday SALE on The Steel Queen, the first book of the epic fantasy Silk & Steel Saga is on SALE on Amazon for 99 cents! The holidays are the perfect time to start this epic adventure! Enjoy!

Drum roll please! Greg Bridges, my cover artist for The Silk & Steel Saga, is nominated as the Fantasy Artist of the Year for 2017!!!! The award winner will be announced at the next Fantasy Worldcon in San Antonio this Nov! Wow! Congrats to Greg! His art deserves to be on billboards, starting with his awesome covers for The Silk & Steel Saga!!!

Our Epic Worlds presents my latest author interview for epic fantasy The Silk & Steel Saga.

I just discovered this awesome review of The Silk & Steel Saga! Wow! Wishing all my Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends, fans, and readers a very Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and a wonderful New Year! All the best!

Trumpets blare! Announcing my latest book, Power Writing: Make Your Genre Fiction Soar! This book is for writers who want to lift their stories to the next level and for fans of The Silk & Steel Saga who want to peek behind the curtain, to revisit the kingdoms of Erdhe with the author as your tour guide! I hope you enjoy this latest book! Thanks for being fans of The Silk & Steel Saga! The e-book is available now on Amazon and the print book will be available within a few days! Enjoy!

Here's my latest post on Fantasy World Building, the element of clothing! This is an example of the tips and insights I'll be giving in my Wonders of World Building workshop I'm teaching at the Willamette Writers Conference in Portland Oregon on Aug 12. Enjoy the post! Hope to see you at the conference!

Cultures are the spice of life, one of the prime reasons we travel. Cultures are the kaleidoscopic lens that lets us see the world from different perspectives. Some cultures are exotic, some are strange and colorful, while others appear familiar till we brush against subtle differences like walking through cobwebs. Cultures also clash, providing a prime source of tension in the real world and in storytelling. Tolkien was a master at creating unique and different cultures. Elves, dwarves, and men all had their unique cultures, their own histories, legends and lore. To make Erdhe a rich and vibrant land, one of the things I wanted to do as an author was to have pockets of forgotten peoples with unique cultures in The Silk & Steel Saga. Overlooked and often persecuted, these forgotten people develop unique counter cultures that seem strange and mysterious at first contact. An example of this can be found on the Isle of Souls, where the council of mystics uses a shocking test to confirm their fortunetellers. Those who succeed gain ‘spirit hands� for the lintels of their shops…while those who fail pay in flesh and blood. Borrowed from the mystics of India, this trial is the type of cultural detail that gives the Isle of Souls a sense of depth and realism. As a writer, I not only need to develop these alternate cultures but I need to "show them", not just "tell them". "Showing" a culture is usually done in the details (think of Spock in Star Trek with his unique 'Live long and prosper' greeting). To increase tension, these subtle details should confuse, or shock, or surprise the point of view character as well as the reader. These detailed differences are the key to making alternate cultures rich and believable. When Kath first meets the painted warriors in The Skeleton King, she has a conversation with a healer. On the surface it seems like a simple conversations but then Kath realizes that her words are land-mined with subtle misunderstandings. "Kath felt as if she teetered on the edge of a chasm, a division of history and customs, a great divide sundering potential allies." Somehow Kath has to understand the culture of the painted warriors and find a way to bridge the gap. In the Silk & Steel Saga, readers will discover many forgotten peoples with their own unique cultures.