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Accidental Creativity: The Undead Muse

April 10, 2023

First things first: The Undead Muse is the title of my most recent music album that, like the rest of the music that I make, is an exploration of postrock and postmetal music. As the title of the album reveals, there are Gothic elements in there – Gothic fiction, that is; not Gothic metal! We’ll talk about all that too, but there is another focus in this post: what I term accidental creativity.

Many writers will likely relate to the concept of accidental creativity, and will immediately understand what I’m getting at. Still, here’s a quick definition: I use the term accidental creativity to refer to artistically creating something that isn’t what you intended.

We’ll need to further revise this – and include some philosophical speculation; for instance, is there anything but accidental creativity? And allow me this little indulgence of combining this with a presentation of this newest album, which I really enjoyed making and really enjoy listening to.

accidental creativity
Album art of The Undead Muse
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How to Introduce Characters: Examples, Problems, and Genre

March 20, 2023

Whether you write short stories or novels, fantasy fiction or literary fiction, you have to deal with characters. Even experimental fiction needs some sort of characters. Is there an optimal way of introducing your characters to your audience?

This might feel like a deceptively simple thing. Surely, one might think, introducing characters can’t be that hard? Well, writing is as hard as you make it, in a way, but that’s beyond the point. Rather, our point in this post is to discover whether there is an optimal way of presenting your characters to your readers.

Obviously, the statement is rhetorical.

Of course there are more than one ways of introducing your characters to your audience, which automatically makes some of those ways “better” – and we’ll soon have to define that – and some “not so great”. Which means, as a writer you have a strong incentive to reflect on how you introduce your characters in your fiction.

That’s what I’m here for!

In this post I’ll show you – with examples – the different ways we can use to introduce the characters of our story. I’ll explain why some ways are “better” than others (and what that really means), though we’ll also take a look at some problem points; gray areas, if you like. Sneak preview: These have to do with the ever-lasting struggle to balance between genre and literary expression, between marketing and art.

how to introduce characters
The “right” way to introduce the characters of your story depends on artistic priorities, narrative balance, and affective intent. In plain terms, it depends on you, the author
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Why I Decided to Offer All my Books for Free

February 20, 2023

I’ve offered my books for free “always”. All you had to do was email me and ask for a free, no-strings-attached copy. Perhaps you remember one earlier post, on whether art should be free. There I said how I preferred this way over permanently listing my work online for free because I wanted my readers to make the effort and be proactive in showing they want my work.

Quite a few people have done this over the years – and we’ve had some pretty great discussions in the process. However, after deciding to offer all my apps for free some time ago – for reasons you can read about here – I began wondering whether I should do the same with my books.

The answer was obviously, yes – you might have noticed the blog menu has a new entry, “Free Books”. And this post explains the reasons.

Books for free
I want to reiterate something I wrote in my “No Ads, no Corporate Masters” post: I’m not perfect, but whatever I make is mine.
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