D L Richardson

This is Part 2 of the "When Authors Go Bad" feature article.

If you'd like to read Part One:
Click Baiting - When Authors Go Bad: Part 1 I decided to write these posts because they are topical and as a fiction author  I often take what is topical and speculate on what might happen if that practice continues unchecked. It's the basis of many of my novels. What happens if there is a global one child per couple policy? What happens if people continue to spend too much time in virtual worlds?  

In an earlier post, I spoke about click baiting as a lure to engage people on social media sites. Some authors, desperate to increase exposure and ergo sales, are falling into the trap of posting innocuous or contentious posts on Twitter and Facebook with the sole purpose of  inciting an argument, while declaring that they are merely stating their opinion. The risk for authors who are click baiting is that they allowing their integrity to slide for the sake of exposure. In today'…

When it came to choosing the main characters for my novel, "Welcome to the Apocalypse", I don't know why but I always had a brother and sister and a best friend in mind. Three characters fighting for survival in a world of never ending apocalypses, three characters looking out for each other as best they can.

Writers are often asked how we choose our characters, but the answer is often the characters choose the story. It's weird, right, but that's how it is for me. One of the character types I see quite often in fiction (and one that I don't always like) is the lone wolf character. No family. No siblings. No friends. This situation is sometimes important because a novel is very insular, and if you have too many external factors you can pull a character away from their mission.

Which brings me to the top reason why siblings as main characters work in speculative fiction.

Siblings who detract each other from the mission can be where the conflict lies."Superna…

The coffee chats have been very successful but the time has come to put the Closed sign up for the coffee chats and the Open sign up for new ideas. I hope to run the campaign again later this year. which means this is the final coffee chat for a little while, and joining me in my virtual cafe is Australian author Kathryn Gossow. Kathryn is interested in myths and fairy tales, and how and why we retell them over and over. She has been patiently awaiting the release of her book  young adult novel "Cassandra". Cassandra can tell the future – just like Cassandra of Troy – except she lives in 1980’s Queensland where she takes too many drugs and falls in love with the wrong boy. 
DL: Firstly, since this is a coffee chat, how do you take your coffee, and what is your favourite time of the day to partake?
KATHRYN: The first thing I do when I get up in the morning in make a coffee. It is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning.  I have a white pod coffee, no sugar.  At 10…

Today's post is on a seemingly innocent internet occurrence: the click bait headline. But when an author posts a negative announcement to the world, are they using freedom of speech or inciting a verbal riot for engagement. Over the next few weeks I will explore this topic. I'd love to hear your opinions.

Click Baiting - When Authors Go Bad: Part 1

The day George Michael died should have been a day of mourning for the loss of a singer, a secret philanthropist, someone's son, someone's brother, someone's lover. But a self-published author (I shall refer to her as Tammie) posted a comment on Facebook stating she was not sorry about George Michael's death together with an image from George's Twitter account stating how happy he was to be gay.


When the comments for Tammie's post flooded in, she quoted passages from the Bible and cited Christianity as the reason for her comments. Within a few threads, the comments back and forth were nasty attacks - those com…

It seems you can't even glance at Facebook these days without being confronted with conflicting images - one of a heinous act of cruelly followed closely by cuteness overload. Many people are now switching off the negative posts, not wanting to acknowledge them. And it isn't because they don't care. It's because they care so much that it hurts to see these images. It generates a profound sense of sadness and disappointment in them. Sadness and disappointment at their fellow human beings.

If this lead up sounds strange, it is. I'm trying to explain why I created a character in my sci-fi series "Welcome to the Apocalypse" who is anti-humanity, who hates mankind, who is a misanthropist.

Writers are meant to create protagonists (the good guys) who butt heads with antagonists (the bad guys). So if a character in a story has a profound dislike of mankind, does that make them a protagonist or antagonist?


Kelly Lawrence is a twenty-six year old paralegal from San D…