Madeline Turnipseed - Author

Oh, hey.  Is it June? Howdy friends.  Today I'm fawning over a new favorite world, the world of the Craft Sequence created by Max Gladstone . maxgladstone.com No I'm not asking you to read 5 books.  There are two more stories within the world that you can explore as interactive novels , plus Gladstone is contracted to release a sixth novel with Tor.com, then future novellas within the world until his contract is up .  I'm asking you to read so much more! So with that stellar pitch out of the way, what are these stories about? Imagine a world where power is money is influence is law is utilities is faith is forces of nature is magic.  Welcome to the world of the Craft Sequence. Humans learned how to use magic, called Craft, and used that to kill off most of the gods in the God Wars.  Now craftspeople are the CEOs and lawyers and stock brokers in a world they blasphemed for. *again with the crap pitches* Okay, we'll try it this way. ...

Hey, two moth hiatus, no biggie... TV Tropes Things I learned while I was out: 1.  Working on sad/intense stories is fine, as long as you are getting good/fun/happy things back into your life somewhere else.  You can't pour yourself out in more than one or two areas without going dry. 2.  Being an ML ( municipal liason ) is tons of fun.  If you love NaNoWriMo and love helping other writers, it's highly recommended.  3.  Save all your writing all the time.  Every day you work on it, back it up in three places, at least one of them cloud based.  Jesus saves, but apparently Madeline needs practice. 4.  I want to keep working on my novels in progress, but I think in the future I am going to try to focus more on interactive storytelling.  The more I play in that genre, the more I like it. Updates: 1.  I finished NaNoWriMo 2016 with 23,712 words :D and a lot more story to go.  Not winning, but considering...

As part of my research for Head Games, I've been reading into what my psychologist/psychiatrist team would be doing for our heroes. The Writer's Guide to Psychology by Dr. Carolyn Kaufman has been really helpful in this aspect.  Sadly, she passed away a few years ago , but her work remains an excellent resource.  She explains things in ways people with no training would understand, but doesn't dumb it down so much that you're bored if you have some knowledge of psychology. Even if you're not a writer, but just a fan of mental health issues and disorders in pop culture, you might enjoy this book.  Kaufman includes examples, both good and bad, from popular media (up to publication in 2010), always with explanations of what it would look like in real life. There are extensive explanations of the most common mental health disorders, broken down into related sections.  This helps keep similar disorders separate  (like schizophrenia vs. schizo-affective)...

I am ecstatic to announce my next project, Head Games!  The origin story on this one is a bit mussed.  I've been sitting on this idea since before I started writing Spitfire, so, a few years. The Fighters Generation I was contemplating the Hulk one afternoon, as one does.  It makes sense that he gets giant and violent when he's angry (unless you buy that he's always angry), but I never got why he turned green.  I started thinking about what emotions would look like as superpowers.  I imagined a little girl literally glowing with joy, reading a book by her own light under the covers long after her bedtime.  And it kept going from there.  But most powers were painful in their first showing.  For example, a flash of light from a burst of joy would blind anyone close enough. So I have a group of people with emotional superpowers.  But they're also super messed up because of what happened when their powers first showed.  And anyone w...

Hello Friends! Even though I haven't been blogging, I have been writing!  I have been using Twine to work on a short story idea I've had in the hopes of putting it up on the Episode platform once I get it finished.  It will be a lot of work even beyond the writing, since programming is not my thing and this is a period piece which will take some rigging of the normal Episode set pieces and character clothes.  But I believe in me.  And I believe Episode can stand to stretch its boundaries beyond the stories that are most common. I've also been working with our local BCS Writing group, which is essentially our off-season NaNo group.  We've had some neat presentations and workshops by our writers this year, which has helped me keep up the drive to write. Which brings me to why you're really here! NaNoWriMo National Novel Writing Month is almost here!  This year I'm a Municipal Liaison for the Bryan/College Station region, along with two wonderful...

     What follows will sound like a backhanded compliment, and I want to clarify that it is not intended that way.  Rather, it is stated in this way to highlight the skill of Jeff VanderMeer .      The Southern Reach Trilogy is the best work I have read where basically nothing happens.      Now, those of you that have read the series might be objecting quite loudly at this point.  A lot happens in the story.  There's an expedition to gather information about an unknown environmental occurrence.  There's shadowy government agencies.  There's mind-bending multi-dimensional/monster/alien/God-knows-what things happening.  There's verbal sparring.  There's guns.  Sometimes they even get fired.      But you know what happens most of all?      Navel gazing.      Deep, deep, POV for these books.  First person for the first book, Third person for the se...