Brett O'Reilly's Blog

, One of the best pieces of advice for writers that I’ve heard (and I’ve heard many) is simply, read. Stephen King especially promotes this—the idea that in order to be a good writer, you have to read. Lots.
 
Part of this is understanding our craft through example. How to create drama. How to create suspense. How to create a charcter people will love—or a character people will hate. Sometimes, the wrong character. A well-written book can teach you lot about writing. So can a poorly written one. A...

​Happy New Year! Xīn nián kuài lè!
 
Today is New Year’s Day, according to the Chinese lunar calendar. Today, we begin the Year of the Tiger. Last time I posted here, it was early in the Year of the Ox. Clearly, I’ve been very absent in the blogging department. Then again, 2021 was a rough year.

In the early part, various events led me to taking a stress-based leave of absence from my place of work; the next several months were a difficult period of mental health recovery. Then upon my return to wo...

So...instead of a blog post this week, I have a poll going; I'm rebranding my horror novelette, Lord of Playgrounds, and I'm getting opinions on book covers. I'm sure there's some way to do the poll here on the site, but I have no idea how...so I'm going to direct everyone to the poll on Facebook instead, at https://www.facebook.com/TheBrettOReilly.

I'd love to hear from you as to which is preferred of the two covers I'm looking at, so please head on over and lend me your voice! Poll is up until ...

“You can’t have a light without a dark to stick it in.”
-Arlo Guthrie
 
Stories are more than just ideas. They are certainly not bound by such mortal constraints as moleskin notebooks, Star Wars pencils, and word processing/editing programs. Stories, even those duly recorded in paperbook, hardcover, ePub, or even audio, are not static creations, locked into a rigid narrative by the virtues of grammar and syntax. Stories are dynamic. Stories are alive. Stories are everchanging. And yet, stories are...

In my last echo, I discussed the tools I use for writing my stories- moleskin notebooks and Star Wars pencils. Of course, that’s not the only tools I use in my overall process; after all, I write more than one draft, with only the first being handwritten.
 
Which brings forward the question- what do I use for those subsequent drafts? What tools of the trade take that rough work and turn it into a polished gem (or at least what I hope is a polished gem)?
 
I did a Google search today on “writing prog...

Times have changed considerably since humankind first recorded stories on paper.

I sometimes wonder what would happen if great writers of the past- Chaucer, Milton, Mary Shelley, to name a few- were offered the ability to create their works in a fraction of the time. To record The Canterbury Tales, Paradise Lost, or Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus in months, not in years, but in months, or even days. Would they set down quill and paper to do so?
 
You would think the answer would be an autom...

I'm doing it. Again.

The NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge 2021 started at midnight, January 23rd, NYC time, and I'm participating for the second year in a row.

For anyone not familiar with it, the challenge consists of four rounds. In the first round, competitors have eight days to to compose a 2,500 word maximum short story with the following criteria: Genre, Subject, and Character Assignment. The second round is three days and 2,000 words, the third round is is two day and 1,500 words, the fou...

…a writer had an idea. Because that’s where it really starts. With an idea.

I don’t know how many writers- at least those who write speculative fiction- are asked where they get their ideas. I haven’t been. I understand Stephen King hears it all the time. People are both fascinated and horrified by his stories, and they want to know where he comes up with such horrifying (and fascinating) ideas.

I remember him saying once where he got his idea for the short story The Raft. He was on the shore of- ...

​So I’m guessing by now you’ve figured out I’m not very good at the whole blogging thing. ‘Inconsistent’, would be a term that leaps to mind. ‘Sporadic’, too, perhaps.

The truth is, I don’t really like posting unless I have something big to announce, something significant. I don’t want to bore people with the mundane trivia of my life. We all have better things to do than read about my breakfast (or lack of), or that I spend more time thinking about my novel than writing it (almost done Chapter 5...

So, it's now mid-November, and things haven't quite gone as hoped for.

On the one hand, Lucky Star is in the now-published Madame Gray's Creep Show anthology! Available on amazon.com, with a direct link on my Publications page! So that's exciting!

On the other hand, my suspense story, Bitter Confection, didn't make the cut for the second round of the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Challenge 2020. Nor did my vampire tale, Aftertaste, make the short list for the Master's Review 2020 Summer Short Story A...