Laurie J. Marks

The Light Fantastic

On Reading and Writing Fantasy

  • Let It Be: Solving One Damned Problem After Another

    Let It Be: Solving One Damned Problem After Another

    I’ll hand off the problem to the dark part of my brain, and try not to think about it at all.  (I can’t really describe this process–it’s an act of will, of letting go of the task and letting it be another person’s problem; except the other person is the other me, a hard-working and…

  • Writing Sickness

    Writing Sickness

    We caught a virus, which, although quite mild, turned me into a zombie for a few days, with a bonus bout of mild depression.  I wanted to write, didn’t feel like writing, suspected I’d be unable to write, and wondered if I’d ever write again.

  • Fleet Time

    Fleet Time

    Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws! A meditation on time’s fleeting nature.

  • Characterization: On being nobody, seeking faces, tragic flaws, and a giant phallus

    Characterization: On being nobody, seeking faces, tragic flaws, and a giant phallus

    In the play-within-the-play an actor wore a giant, stylized, highly-decorated phallus, and I felt like I was going to die of stupefaction right there in the audience. 

  • The machinery of writing: First drafts, technology, and doing what works

    The machinery of writing: First drafts, technology, and doing what works

    When I set out to write my first novel, I wrote it with pen on notebook paper in a three-ring binder, which I had on hand because I needed them for sixth grade.  My family didn’t own a typewriter and home computers hadn’t been invented, but I took a typing class in junior high school—the…

  • Researching the Fantastic: On knowing enough to pretend

    Researching the Fantastic: On knowing enough to pretend

    I know a little about a lot, but I don’t know a lot about a little. I’m a generalist. I research when I need to—but as little as possible because I’d rather be writing.  Fantasy writers whose setting is an actual time and place might do a lot of research, as I have done for…

  • The development of plot development

    The development of plot development

    Index cards and bulletin boards. That’s it. I considered several technological options to support plot development, but decided against them.  The bulletin boards are leaning against the furniture near the music stand, because my writing space has five doorways, two windows, a fireplace, and no walls. Which brings to mind this limerick by Gelett Burgess…

  • The Watcher’s Mask

    I’ve electronically published my novel The Watcher’s Mask.  As with Dancing Jack, it’s available in multiple formats on Smashwords (https://bit.ly/WatchersMask) and on Kindle (bit.ly/43qrtjp) The Watcher’s Mask was my fourth published novel, and I felt confident enough to give it an unreliable and often unlikeable narrator who doesn’t know the real story, both about her…

  • Dancing Jack

    The DANCING JACK e-book is now available on Amazon Kindle as well as on Smashwords! (Which is amazing because I’ve been working on this project for a VERY LONG TIME.) Amazon: amzn.to/3mkQf36 Smashwords: bit.ly/3IxxlO8 Smashwords distributes my books to all ebook sellers, and therefore you can purchase this book wherever you like, in your preferred…