Emily Casey's Blog

I always thought that writer's block wasn't a real thing. That you could just sit down and start writing, and eventually you would figure out what should happen next. I wrote for over seven years and hadn't ever experienced a block that I couldn't work free of in an hour. Free writing, brain maps, and character interviews are all useful for that sort of thing. I've even written ridiculously impossible scenes before and then edited them into coherency.

Then my life blew up.

It's not that I didn'...

If you haven't heard, The Fairy Tale Trap is part of a name-your-price ebook bundle on storybundle.com. Ten ebooks, all of them Young Adult Fantasy stories about crossing worlds.

The covers alone for this bundle make me want to do a happy dance. Aren't they gorgeous?


And, if that's not enough, the authors of these books have come together to offer a contest. By helping to spread the word about this bundle, you increase your chances of winning.
What's the prize?
You get to choose. $100 Amazon gift...

Okay. I did it. I finished a time travel story. It's short, but it's time travel and it's mine.

My first published short story is out!

Time Killer
by Emily Casey

Detective Dominic is trying to solve a dozen murders--all with the same MO. The catch is, the murders have happened so close together, it would be impossible for one person to commit them all. 
At least, that's what she thought. But everything changes when Dominic finds a time machine in the desk of one of the victims. 
Now, Dete...

So, I had a premise. I had a character. I had an opening. Now it was just time to sit down and write the darn thing. Right?

My first time travel novel. It was supposed to be great. I was going to write the best dad-gum YA time travel book ever written. I'd done the research. I'd thought long and hard. I had everything. This was it.

I sat down to write. And I typed. The words came slowly at first, then faster. I build a few new settings, I had new characters walk onto the page. My character lear...

Chapter 1
My braids flopped against my back, collecting the snow that fell thick around me. The icy air moved in gusts, chilling my cheeks and the inside of my nose as I breathed. Montana winters were brutal, and I missed Florida.
I thought about turning around and calling for a ride home, but I was pretty sure I was already past the halfway point. The long dirt road stretched ahead of me, lost in the blanket of white. The grassy fields to my right had already been swallowed by the storm. I co...

As many of you know, I still have a book or two left in the Ivy Thorn series. One of them is close to being done! (The Ten Lost Princesses is in draft.)

Unfortunately, I've hit a road block with the plot (my ending sucks) and Life has kept me away from my writing.

A quick side note: I have the time to write. There are enough hours in the day to squeeze in some writing, so that's not an excuse. But when I have a bunch of new stuff heaped on me at once, and the ending of my book sucks, and I don'...

The research and study is going well. I've already learned a lot and I've noticed that my style is changing. I'm still taking classes online when I get the chance, but in the meantime...

It's time to start.

Yeah. The first scene. The big one.

Okay, so it's not quite so dramatic because I can (and probably will) change it a thousand times and then delete it before the final draft. It's part of the job description. I must kill my darlings.

But the first draft is a big step. It's intimidating. I'm s...

Before I dive into another series of books, I want to work on my writing craft. I'm a writer, and there's an endless amount of craft to be learned. I spent years working on craft before I wrote The Fairy Tale Trap, and have dabbled since. Now, I want to dig deep again.

So I listened to a lecture on Science Fiction and how to write it more effectively. I'm also taking an online workshop on writing more in depth. This will take up a big chunk of my writing time, but it'll be worth it. Quality ov...

"Mediocre writers borrow, great writers steal."

--T.S. Elliot

I think Pablo Picasso said something similar: "The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal."

I don't plan to plagiarize, here, just for the record. Writers steal all the time, and it's perfectly legal, if you know how to do it right. I'm not stealing other people's works or words and passing them off as my own.This is research of the market and of the genre. To be able to write a time travel novel, I need to understand a time tra...

I'm still researching time travel and part of that involves practice. I wanted to play around with time travel on the page. (It's kind of like, I can study basketball and the game and the rules and even physics all I want, but if I never touch a basketball, I'll never be any good at it.)

So I've decided to write a short story anthology. My goal in 5 short stories.

So far, I've got two stories written, with basic revisions done. I have a beta reading them now. Hopefully, I'll get some good feedb...