Interesting and Useful Links

Karla writes romance with a touch of the supernatural, and is a member of the same critique group as me. She does a great job of finding my plot holes and continuity errors.

A useful checklist for those writing fantasy. I can answer "no" to most of the questions.

A large collection of rants (the author's own term) about everything to do with fantasy fiction. Often opinionated, sometimes very blunt, but containing much good advice for the beginning fantasy writer - and the experienced one too.

Terry writes "romance with a twist of mystery," and is a member of the same critique group as me. She finds all the weak characterisation and the places where I'm using more words than necessary.

A free and open-source office suite. It has all the features of Microsoft Office that a novelist needs, and can read and write Microsoft Office files. I've used it for all my fiction writing since 2002.

If you're stuck for a name for a character or place, this page will generate as many as you need. It has various options for the type of name (short, long, vowel-heavy, consonant-heavy, unpronounceable and so on) and generates about fifty at a time. If you don't see one you like, just reload the page to get some more. Names of several minor characters in The Barefoot Healer came from it.

A social networking site for book lovers. List the books you've read or plan to read, talk about them with other readers, and discover new books. My profile on Shelfari.

A weekly podcast about the craft and business of writing novels, presented by Brandon Sanderson, Dan Wells, Howard Tayler and Mary Robinette Kowal. Often funny, always worth listening to.

Ask questions about (almost) anything and get answers from humans, not computers. Some of the humans even know what they're talking about! I spend far more time here than is good for me, mostly in the Books & Authors section. My profile is here.