D. Thomas Minton
writes speculative fiction from his home in the mountains of British Columbia.
Category Archives: Writing
Reader’s Comments
I like to keep an eye on comments posted to my stories. Call it part vanity and part market research. I know I can’t please everyone, but it’s always nice to get an enthusiastic response. Suzanne Conboy-Hill’s response to Nil Desperandum’s podcast … Continue reading
Tell You What I Think: The Value of Critiquing
I think there are two ways to learn how to do something. The first is obvious: do it. No matter how much you read about something, there’s no substitute for actually doing it. In writing, you can read all of … Continue reading
An Unexpected Find
I have a bunch of Google Alerts set up to notify me when people post about my stories. Today while I was checking those Alerts, I corrected one that I noticed had an error in it. I immediately located a … Continue reading
“Thief of Futures” Now Available
The September issue of Lightspeed Magazine contains my story “Thief of Futures”. An electronic version is available for purchase now, or you can wait until September 20th to read my story free online. I’m excited to share the September issue with some … Continue reading
Posted in Science Fiction, Writing
Tagged Lightspeed Magazine, Short Story, Thief of Futures, World Fantasy Award
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Finally! It’s Out the Door
Whew! I finally got a story I’ve been working on for the last month-and-a-half out the door. For some reason, this story was particularly challenging to write. I’m not sure why. It was a “darkish” fantasy story, which is something I don’t normally write, … Continue reading
Killing Your Darlings
As part of my “training” to break into professional fiction writing, I routinely critique stories by other writers. (I do this both when asked and when I read, but that’s fodder for another post.) I recently critiqued a story in … Continue reading
Elusiveness of Memory
Yesterday morning my daughter asked me what I remembered about elementary school. I hadn’t actually given it much thought before, but I was surprised how little I actually could remember. I recall a few things that I can place in specific grades, like … Continue reading
Posted in Inspiration, Writing
Tagged Memories of Childhood, Philip K. Dick, Ten Weeks With a Circus
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Ten Down and It’s Only August
Recently I hit the first of my annual writing targets when I made my fortieth story submission. Over the weekend I hit a second of my goals by completing and submitting my tenth short story of the year, a piece called … Continue reading
Three Cheers for Hitting Forty
I wanted to get serious about my writing this year, so I set writing goals back in January (I’m a goal-oriented person). I developed four goals and what I thought were realistic targets for each: Write and/or edit at least 500 … Continue reading
Inspiration: “Memories of Childhood”
The podcast of “Memories of Childhood” recently went live at Nil Desperandum, but I wrote this story many years ago. After it was published by OG’s Speculative Fiction in 2009, several people asked me how much of it was based … Continue reading
Posted in Inspiration, Science Fiction, Writing
Tagged Memories of Childhood, Nil Desperandum, OG's Speculative Fiction, Podcast
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D. Thomas Minton 