On antagonists who operate from a coherent internal logic and whether historical fiction can afford a pure villain. There is a kind of antagonist who appears in lesser historical fiction with reassuring frequency: the man who enjoys being cruel, who oppresses because oppression pleases him, whose motives require no further excavation, as the author has […]
The Problem of the Villain Who Does Not Know He Is One Read More »
This is Essay 1 of 22 in the series Why Choose 100% Human Authors, which examines the specific deficiencies of AI-generated fiction and the corresponding strengths of fiction written by human authors. The series is addressed to readers who buy novels, who give them their time, and who deserve to know what they are holding
Why Choose 100% Human Authors: Alphabet Soup Read More »
Laughter does not interrupt a story. It belongs inside it, the way a breath belongs inside a sentence. I learned this not in a craft manual but in the pages of men who lived with the stench of open sewers and the fear of plague and somehow wrote the funniest prose in the Western canon.
What Boccaccio and Chaucer Taught Me About Comic Relief Read More »
