Recent content by Charles Ott

All of the poetry I can quote, consists of snippets of stuff I read when I was a kid. It doesn't amount to very many lines. It always sort of bothers me when characters in a story can reel this stuff out. It's corny, but I like it better when the character goes to his bookshelf and pulls down a...

I hadn't thought about doing an audiobook, but you're right, I bet that would really teach me something about my prose.

I just sent my entry in! Since it's science fiction, my category had to be "paranormal romance," which means my near-future, full-of-techno-details, non-explicit love story will be competing against sexy vampires, sexy werewolves and sexy fairies. Oh my!

You need this. Every writer needs this. Zen Pencils by Gavin Aung Than for May 14, 2018 | GoComics.com

I'd turn it around. "Pathetic" is a description, but "wet" is the punchline. Drowning is a pathetic way to die. Not to say, wet. or: Drowning is a pathetic way to die. Wet, too.

The "publishing rationale" for a book of fiction is to give the reader a couple of hours of amusement. Granted that the book has to have some "meat" in it to be entertaining for that long, it's still true that entertainment has to be the main objective. Nothing in a book works without that.

Art requires discipline, effort and thought. If you're working hard at something, re-working and thinking and trying to make it the best it can be, it might -- or might not -- be art. If it just "flows out," it ain't art.

One of the Monty Python books had a statement on the back cover by A.J. Liebling, the famous journalist at the New Yorker. He said "Bottom!" (at age 4).

I just happened to pick up a favorite old humor book -- "Humans at Work" by Mike Dowdall and Pat Welch (Simon & Shuster, 1986), and now I have to share the statement by the fellow whose job is "Poet": "I don't like to talk about my work. I don't like to talk about anything. I hate words. Words...

Amber -- I'd never heard of Jutoh but it sure looks good, and I'll give it a shakedown. Thanks! -- Chuck

Some news: Tor Books is going to open a two-week window for science fiction and fantasy novellas (20K-40K words) starting on May 1. There will be another window during the summer, so don't panic if you're still writing. More details: Tor.com Publishing Opening to Novella Submissions on May 1 My...

I rarely read any fiction these days except SF and fantasy, but in non-fiction I'm all over the map -- I will read books on almost any subject. Do you know, though, all my life drugstores have had racks of "best-sellers" and I have tried to read them but can't recall more than about two I liked...

As long as we're talking about inspiring books, the fantasy I'm writing was inspired by Eugenia Cheng's "How to Bake Pi." It's a popular-level book on a branch of mathematics called "category theory" with lots of homely little kitchen illustrations. I've read it twice and can't recommend it...

I personalize every query, but with agents taking eight weeks to never to reply, it's not at all reasonable to ask for exclusivity. If I ever found an agent who promised to reply within a week, then sure, I'd give that one an exclusive shot. But I've got a fairly long s--tlist of agents who...

I write (and mostly read) SF and fantasy, but I'm pretty sure that detective and ghost stories are similar: you can stay inside the genre and still write in a very wide variety of styles, plots, atmospheres and themes. I'm currently working on a fantasy where the hero is a mathematician. This is...