Joanna Bourne

A wonderful reader wrote, asking "What sorts of resources do you use to make your cities--London and Paris, in particular--so convin...

I was thinking about how we do fight scenes.  I'm kinda writing one.  Though not quite. It's more an ambush scene. So, anyhow,  ...

Someone was asking whether they should pour out the whole description of a a character all at once -- which might be dull -- or chop it up s...

One of several unprofitable debates in writing circles is whether it's better to 'Outline and Plan' or better to be a 'Pants...

Martha, in the comment trail, asked about scenes that don't make it into the final book. As a generality, there are Good Reasons why s...

Kind reader, Eva, writes with some questions about My Lord and Spymaster . I thought I'd bring 'em out and talk about them here. (Sh...

Here's an outtake from My Lord and Spymaster. I refer to it in a later post. Here it is, in full, for anyone who wants to see it. In ...

In My Lord and Spymaster , I had a dozen nuggets of backstory to pass along to the reader. So I wrote a Talking Heads scene. Adrian and Seba...

I've been backtracking in Chapters five and six to fine-tune reactions and tighten prose. Sebastian's persona seems a bit squidgy. S...

Put in three hours this morning, hoeing and weeding at this first rough draft of Chapter Eight ... One or two tiny awkward spots remain ... ...