The Pirate Who Just Won't Leave

By Suzanne Johnson

Every author has one in the closet: the throwaway character who just won't go away, the one-scene wonder who tries to hijack the story and refuses to be relegated to a walk-on role. When the stubborn minor character is a historical figure and one is writing fantasy set in the modern world, things can get interesting fast.

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Historical Language Can Be Electrifying

By Mary Robinette Kowal

The goal, with any novel, is to keep the reader engaged in the story. Beyond writing a story that is compelling in the first place, you also have to avoid doing anything that will throw them out of the story. For a novel like Glamour in Glass, which is set in 1815, one of the additional challenges is the use of language.

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Finding Religion

By Brian Francis Slattery

Considering how simple the main thread of the story of Lost Everything is�a man named Sunny Jim and his friend take a boat up the Susquehanna River to reunite with Sunny Jim's son�it's a little embarrassing that it took me so long to figure out how to tell it.

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The Advance Team Excerpt

Written by Will Pfeifer, art by Germ�n Torres

Hi, I'm Steven Padnick, the editor of The Advance Team. I am so proud of this book, where one of my favorite writers, Will Pfeifer, has teamed up with future comics superstar artist Germ�n Torres and legendary letterer Tom Orzechowski to create a weird, funny, scary, science fiction adventure about a young pizza-delivery guy who discovers that his heroes are much more, and much worse, than they seem to be.

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Immobility: The Fake Book That Became Real

By Brian Evenson

Books come from all sorts of different places�from a news story, a random idea, a bit of triggering language, or from other books, for instance. But very few books start out like Immobility, which saw the light of day first as an imaginary book, and only later became real.

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John Scalzi Sweepstakes

A chance to win a copy of all of John Scalzi's Tor titles, including the upcoming Redshirts!

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NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. You must be 18 or older and a legal resident of the 50 United States or D.C. to enter. Promotion begins April 1, 2012 at 12:00 a.m. ET. and ends May 4, 2012, 11:59 p.m. ET. Void in Puerto Rico and wherever prohibited by law. Please see full details and official rules go here. Sponsor: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.