Cover Art
On my Patreon page, I’ve been putting up free posts about the new and improved cover art that we’re doing at WMG. You can find a number of posts, but I thought I’d share this one with you here. (I’ll be sharing the occasional Patreon post throughout 2026 and maybe beyond.) You can sign up […]…
https://kriswrites.com/2026/03/08/business-musings-cover-art/
#BusinessMusings #freenonfiction #OnWriting #ScienceFiction #SpaceOpera
Get A Small Mountain of Science Fiction…
…in the brand-new Kickstarter that just launched. It features my bestselling novel, Alien Influences, which The New York Times calls “a well conceived, well executed novel,” my award-winning novella, Broken Windchimes, and a brand-new collection of my science fiction stories, called Strange People, Stranger Places. In addition, you can get all 28 Diving books in ebook format or more […]…
https://kriswrites.com/2026/03/03/get-a-small-mountain-of-science-fiction/
#DivingIntoTheWreck #NewReleases #OnWriting #ScienceFiction #SpaceOpera
On Writing with Laura Hilliger
Last week I did my first “On Writing” chat of 2026 with gym teacher/blogger Laura Hilliger. Laura and I have been circling each other on the web for a long while, and her fun Reclaim Open submission “My Website is a Junk Drawer” had a really wonderful conceit about how she imagines her online presence. I spent some time reading through Laura’s site, and you should too. She has an incisive and […]
https://bavatuesdays.com/on-writing-with-laura-hilliger/
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Before the winter break I wrote about 8 chapters for my next book, a sequel to Shadowed Memories. Getting back to it, I've decided to rewrite what I've already got, while trying to get a bit of a different style and tone down. Pray to Meraki (god of creativity/creation) it works out well. If it doesn't... I won't cry about scrapping the new words and leaning more into what I've already written while pressing forward. Either way, I'm writing, and making progress in becoming a better writer while trying to further refine my writing style. Don't forget to keep dreaming, and working towards your goals. ~E.L.F.
#WritersBlog #Author #IndieWriter #OnWriting #WritingUpdate #Writer #AmWriting #UrbanFantasy
Studying Craft With Me or Kickstarter With Dean
I wasn’t sure I was going to post about this, but Dean already did on his site, so I need to offer this to you folks here. I do a craft mentorship, limited to a handful of people. It’s one-on-one work for people who want to improve their writing. The mentorship is usually full, but […]…
https://kriswrites.com/2026/01/07/studying-craft-with-me-or-kickstarter-with-dean/
Two Reminders For Writers
If you want to start the new year right, we can help. First, everything—and I do mean everything—on WMG’s Teachable platform is half off until late on Monday. This includes the 2026 Challenges, to give you momentum or to keep you honest, I’m not sure which. I use challenges on my running to inspire me and […]…
https://kriswrites.com/2026/01/04/two-reminders-for-writers/
Recommended Reading List: December 2025
Hah! The first Recommended Reading List that’s been on time in months (years?). I finished it in December, and am putting it up as soon as I can. Feels good. All of this, except for this little part, was written in December as I finished my reading. Now onto finishing the last 2 from…
https://kriswrites.com/2026/01/02/recommended-reading-list-december-2025/
#AlternateHistory #freenonfiction #Holiday #Mysteries #OnWriting
Writers! Increase Your Productivity in 2026
Dean and I are offering a seminar in the new year that will help writers overcome fears and become more productive. Only a few spots are left! Here’s the info, taken from Dean’s blog: FEAR AND PRODUCTIVITY SEMINAR Preparation for the New Year January Seminar January 5th through January 30th It is about craft,…
https://kriswrites.com/2025/12/29/writers-increase-your-productivity-in-2026/
Recommended Reading List (Belated Edition): June 2025
For those of you who are coming late to this party, I got very far behind recording the books that I have loved over the past year. I usually do it when the month of reading ends. For almost eight months, I was unable to do that. I posted May’s edition in early…
https://kriswrites.com/2025/12/26/recommended-reading-list-belated-edition-june-2025/
#freenonfiction #Mysteries #OnWriting #Romances #AARPTheMagazine
Die Hard Is A Christmas Movie
And I can prove it. Or rather, Dean Wesley Smith and I have proven it. For years, we used to travel around the country teaching writing with something called The Kris & Dean Show. One of the features of the class was that Dean and I would go through Die Hard, sometimes line by line, talking about […]…
https://kriswrites.com/2025/12/14/die-hard-is-a-christmas-movie/
Recommended Reading List (Belated Edition): May 2025
Yep, I’m late. I was busy last year working on saving the business, so I got behind on things like the Recommended Reading List. I thought of bunching everything into one list, but I didn’t want to, and then I thought of pretending I hadn’t missed, and I didn’t want…
https://kriswrites.com/2025/12/13/recommended-reading-list-belated-edition-may-2025/
#freenonfiction #Mysteries #OnWriting #Romances #BillboardMagazine
Hollywood Squares Edtech Edition
There are probably a few good reasons I haven’t yet blogged about my makeshift “On Writing” panel for Reclaim Open in early November. One of them might be my last-minute decision to turn it into an episode of [[Hollywood Squares]]—specifically, the “EdTech Edition.” And to pull that off, I leaned hard on my trusty sidekick ChatGPT for a full-blown series of questions (four or five […]
I’ve been working on a short story for the Tough Guy Book Club competition this fall — and today I’m finally sharing it.
Here’s the behind-the-scenes story of how Hopeless came to be.
(And thank you, truly, for reading.)
Interview with Jonas Hassen Khemiri
"if something appears, there’s a great potential cost if you start to question it...All of those questions are incredibly effective if you want to kill a project"
#literature #bookstodon #interview #bookReview #onWriting #fiction
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/a-story-needs-to-shake-you-up/
Hand-Write. Think Better.
A method for people who feel overwhelmed to start writing more on paper—which makes everything else easier
I’ve written a guide which shows how to use notebooks for clearer thinking: one notebook, simple practices, no elaborate systems. Written to help you stop re-thinking the same things and close open loops.
https://craigconstantine.gumroad.com/l/hand-write-think-better
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#CommonplaceNotebooks #HandWriteThinkBetter #Journaling #KnowledgeSystems #Notebooks #OnWriting #Podcasting
I use the commenting feature while I'm drafting* to leave myself notes about things I need to look up, or maybe context about what one character knows that another doesn't. That kind of thing.
Or helpful little tips like above.
*This is part of how I keep writing until I reach my goal for that session: don't stop to do other things, make a note and keep going.
Two-fer from an introduction
I’m currently in the Introduction from Will Stone’s translation of, Montaigne by Stefan Zweig. Two things:
First, a nit about getting the right ideas into our minds when we read. Not a criticism of authors’ (such as Stone) word choices, but rather of our thinking correctly as readers.
Stone quotes Zweig as, “How to keep humanity intact in the throes of bestiality?” Stone’s translation is from 2015, and our current English usage carries sexual connotations. But I had a hunch that Zweig had something like “in the way of beasts” in mind since he was writing in German, in Brazil, in 1941, amidst the global throes of WWII.
It took me just a few moments to get an LLM to show me that Zweig almost certainly wrote «Bestialität»—which in Zweig’s German would have meant brute savagery or barbaric cruelty with no modern (circa 2025) sexual connotation. And in the larger context of the brutality of the war, that connotation makes perfect sense.
Second, further along Stone quotes a vivid metaphor from Zweig relating to suicidal ideation:
[…] always in moments of impotence it emerged, surging powerfully upwards like a dark rock whenever the tide of passions and hopes in his soul ebbed.
Relax; I’m not suicidal. I’m only remarking on the sublime perfection of that metaphor.
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I think M needed J to get the action going. She wasn't really in a state to do that, at the beginning of the scene. That may be part of why it was hard to pick it up with her to start with.
But now that I know what J was going to do to get things going (from writing it yesterday), it was easy enough to have M perceive J doing that, and then do her thing.
