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Welcome to my blog

As a writer, my first area of interest is obviously my books, but for my blog I will try to address different writing issues or provide my own tips when it comes to writing or self-publishing.

My blog also includes shout-outs to and recommendations for other blogs or websites, book reviews or recommendation, and a few posts sparked by nothing but an area of interest at the moment or occasionally a complaint or five. 

-J.R. McGinnity
P.s. This blog contains affiliate links, usually to Amazon.

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I almost wrote a bad review

4/21/2014

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Last week, I wrote a blog post on The Wandering Engineer series by Chris Hechtl and saved it in my drafts to be posted today. I like the series, starting with New Dawn and going from there, but the review I was going to post was as close to scathing as I am likely to ever get. 


Now the series has a great premise, starting with a unique main character, and that is what drew me in, because who has ever heard of an engineering fleet admiral? The MC, Admiral John Irons, is an engineer and after waking up from stasis some 700 years later, he finds that the war he was fighting is over, but that civilization across all worlds has backslid dramatically.


Maybe that part is a little far-fetched, but I liked it anyway. And I continued to like the series for a few books.


But after reading Plague Planet, I was ready to throw in the towel and write a review on here that, while not intended to keep people from reading the series, probably WOULD have kept people from reading the series.


But I waited, and I'm glad I did. Plague Planet might be a plague on the series, but Pirate's Bane (the next book in the series) is fantastic. Finally, after 6 books, Hechtl is delivering on the promises he made in New Dawn.


Even better, Pirate's Bane has been edited--not to a high degree, but better than New Dawn, which is a lesson in patience when it comes to typos, grammar, and commonly confused words. It has action and great characters, and I'm very glad that I gave Hechtl's series one last chance.


For anyone else reading The Wandering Engineer or wondering whether to continue on when it seems that the series is spiraling down...stick with it. If I could, I would unread Plague Planet and deal with the few things in Pirate's Bane that wouldn't make sense without reading the previous book rather than slogging through page after digital page of poor writing, poor plot execution, and characters ripped straight from comic books and popular movies with no attempt at changing names or behaviors (Lewis and Clark report for the Daily Planet...).


But finally, in Pirate's Bane, Irons grows a pair, takes charge, fights back, and basically does everything we wanted him to do since halfway through New Dawn. So if Irons being such a baby is weighing you down, and the lack of forward movement is giving you the urge to write the series yourself, I suggest that you skip Plague Planet and jump right to Pirate's Bane. You'll thank me.


This whole near-miss on the review thing has also taught me a good lesson--don't blog until you are sure your opinion won't change. I'd much rather be writing THIS post now than eating crow in the near future.




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Writing in the cold

4/14/2014

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The cold is back. My lawn might be snow-free, but there was ice on my windshield this morning. This is great news for people who tap maple trees to make syrup, but bad news for me. As I expressed last week, I love sun and warmth and am more productive on a nice warm day than on a cold one, even if my productive activities are indoor ones.


But I'm not going to give in and go back into hibernation mode. I am going to push through and keep working, because I live in the Midwest, and if I let every weather fluctuation stop me from working, I would literally get nothing done.


So last night I worked on fleshing the characters in my paranormal story out. I don't do a full-blown summary or plot map or anything when I am writing, I'm more of a pantser, but I do keep a writer's bible, so now I have down hair color, height, age, salient background details, etc. on the main players in my new WIP. They are in no way complete bios, and are subject to change at a moment's notice, but it is a start.


And I did it in the cold, so I see it as a real accomplishment.
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Thank you, Sunshine

4/11/2014

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It's finally spring, and that means sunshine. Sunshine means that I can stop hiding in my apartment and start going outside, breathing in the fresh air, moving farther than the distance from my couch to my TV, and generally just living the life I want to live.

And while holing up and hibernating for 5 months a year is an...interesting experience, it isn't one that I like to maintain. I would much rather be outside doing something.

And along with the sunshine, fresh air, vitamin D, and movement that spring and summer allow, they have an added benefit for me--I get more writing done.

The time I spend outside seems to make this "more writing" claim sound far-fetched, I know, but true. Something about expending energy in the sunshine gives me more energy to write. And not just that, nice air allows me to run, and running gets the brain flowing. So I'll get home, go for a run, clean my apartment, and then sit down and write, write, write.

I'd be happy for good weather anyway, but what it does to my creative process...thank you, Sunshine!
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What makes a novel YA?

4/9/2014

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Lately, I've been wondering what makes a YA book YA.


I'm not sure why I've been wondering this...I avoid writing YA, and since I'm not a young adult and don't have any young adult children, the genre of the books I read doesn't really matter.


But maybe it's the fact that I'm a high school teacher, or the fact that I just like to know things, but I'm really curious...what makes a novel YA?


It's a tricky genre. One could say that it is nearly impossible to nail down. There can be YA romance, YA fantasy, YA general fiction, sci-fi, even horror (Goosebumps, anyone?), but what I want to know is where the line is actually drawn.


Or maybe just where you think the line is drawn, because I have a feeling that people will agree on this matter about as easily as they will agree on who is the best political candidate for the next election.


I've participated in discussion boards (some of which turned into virtual fights) about this very topic. Most participants seem to feel that YA is best determined by the protagonist's age. If the protagonist is 13-17 (or maybe 18), it is YA. Basically, if the protagonist is a young adult, the story is a young adult novel.


End of story.


On one hand, I get it. It makes sense. If the protagonist is a teen, it's a teen book, right?


That's what most of the people on those boards seemed to think. But then I suggested that content should play a part in that discussion, and I got a couple of lukewarm "maybes" but mostly a bunch of "absolutely nots!" and then a descent into fights about censorship and fascism (I wasn't a participant in that part of the argument, although I found it amusing, enlightening, and alarming in turns).


So for a couple dozen posts it looked like either you categorized a book as being YA by the age of the protagonist or you were a fascist trying to censor today's youth by limiting them to books with "appropriate" content.


Not the turn I had expected the conversation to take.


So I thought I would bring the conversation to a different setting--a blog. What do you think makes a novel YA? Is it the age of the protagonist, or does content play a part?


And remember, YA is not synonymous with books teens enjoy, it is a category written (or at least marketed), with the idea that teens will be the primary audience.

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    My name is J.R. McGinnity, I am a former English teacher with a passion for writing fantasy novels with strong female leads.

    My time is spent immersed in books (reading or writing), hiking when the Midwest weather allows, and watching seasons of old TV shows.

    Follow her on Twitter @JRMcGinnity

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