Michael F. Stewart's Blog, page 9

Mr Zuckerman wasn't a man of many words on this, but what he did say was very clear. You need to develop your villain as well as you do your protagonist.

Villain must drive the problem. I'm sure we've all read the novel in which luck plays a very active role, perhaps a character herself. Don't do that.

Villain must have a motive. It must be clean, clear, good, and ideally unselfish.

Give the villain redeeming qualities. In Silence of the Lambs the antagonist is skinning his victims but god...

You can now buy 24 Bones on Fictionwise - the Amazon link has yet to build out

Soleil Noir has posted a great review and stay tuned for another this September.

Graphic novels out through Oxford University Press Canada are available either through Oxford or Chapters Indigo. The Plane of Atlantis, Jake The Shredder, and Master of the Hounds. Monster Jump is forthcoming, but take a look at the illustrator here.

This is a big August for MFS, and I've got more to announce soon…

<!--[endif:]-->I was one of two males in the audience of this lecture and to that I say 'hurrah!', less competition out there. Why? Because I'm a firm believer in a couple of things. One, women represent 70% of the reading market. Two, women like relationships in their books. Now why would that be? Because we're human. So a novel without a dash of romance is a world without humanity.

Joan has some other reasons too:

Relationships create stakes. If the love interest is in danger, then there is tension and...

Here's Jake the Shredder

You can see some of the interior art by illustrator: Shingo Shimizu He's a wonderful artist and I'm very glad he took the project on.

As it's for the educational market the distribution is a little different. But it's available here.