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EXCLUSIVE "Write As We Go" Coaching Program If you have a work-in-progress you might prefer to send me a few chapters at a time. That way you can consider my suggestions as you write the following chapters. We can work together as the story grows, and you can pick your own pace and pay as you go. Click here to find out more on this program. Or click here for editing fees info and details.

Problems:
Create formidable obstacles and setbacks along your character's path. Include both inner conflicts that plague the main characters and outer conflicts that keep them on their toes.

Friends and Enemies:
Fantasy novels, more than other genres, involve important and pivotal relationships with other characters, human or otherwise.

Sense of Reality:
Make your setting and details totally believable. Make them such a natural and real part of your character's life that we sense this make-believe world is real too.

Emotions:
Action alone will not hold a reader's attention. Human emotions, whether they involve gothic, medieval, space-age, or outer-space environments, or whether they are expressed by dragons or robots, are the backbone of what makes a fantasy story ring true to readers.

2. Revise, revise, revise.
Create your alternate world realities using vivid and detailed specifics that will ring true for readers.

3. Get professional editing.
Yes, this is a plug for my services, but it is true: Professional editing services can help you grow as a writer in ways that studying books could never do. I take your own plot, characters, and ideas and review them with an eye to marketability. Then I address your own strengths and help you bolster your weaker spots to create the strong story that you want. Interested? Click here to see more about my services.

Rod's long list of credits are a testament to consistently writing and persistently marketing. His list includes:

Key to the Portal (sci fi) in Static Movement Magazine (US); The Man Who Came from Nowhere (sci fi) Bewildering Stories Magazine (US); Does Mirror Matter Exist? non-fiction science article in the international magazine Nexus; Sabium Seriferbia (general fiction) in WeirdYear Magazine (US).

Add to this inclusion of his stories in books, like Hanging by Threads (US) and Nemonymous Nine (UK); and publication in numerous other magazines: This Mutual Life (Australia); Beyond the Rainbow literary magazine (Australia); Bewildering Stories Magazine (US); Twisted Tongue Magazine (UK); Golden Visions Magazine (US); Cat's Meow Magazine (US); and Abandoned Towers Magazine (US). 

EDITOR'S NOTE: It has been a pleasure working with Rod on several of his stories. His list continues to grow!

Tara was inspired to write a fantasy novel that incorporates the true historical adventures of Juan Ponce de Leon for the elusive fountain of youth with man's continual struggles with time and with love. In her fantasy, the fountain is found--but found to harbor secrets that disrupt the natural balance of life and interfere with God's plan. The characters must then struggle to reach Florida and eventually the underwater world of Arcadia in order to set right the furor of unnatural demons they unwittingly unleased. Amid it all, the hope and promise of love lingers just beyond reach ...

Tara is now working on a book of short stories.

Donald writes, “While I was writing my story, I read in the newspaper of a thirteen-year-old boy who had taken his own life after suffering for years in school with the same sort of problems my young character does. Thus, my story is dedicated to the memory of that child, and to all who presently endure much the same--for whatever specific reasons--and are too ashamed and proud to ask for help, instead of desperately trying to hide it from their families and friends.

“Thank you again, Ms. Haven. The most important and valuable aspect of writing that I learned from you is how to recognize and eliminate excess verbiage and redundancies in expression. I remain most appreciative. Thank you very much." --- Donald Schneider, from Philadelphia, PA

Editor's Note: Thanks, Eli, for the nice mention on your Acknowledgments page! It was a pleasure working with you.