This first blog post is a re-introduction. I kept a blog going for a few years, but gave it up. I got busy. My website crashed. I changed hosts. Started a challenging writing project. In other words, something had to be kicked to the curb and it was the blog.

Besides…what I was blogging about–the craft of story design–I was consolidating into my first guidebook, “The Plot Machine.” So a lot of those early blogs have been cleaned up and organized. I even wrote a sequel, “The Plot Machine: Crime,” that applies an organized process to the design of crime stories.

But I think there is value in having an active website again. Readers of my guides are contributing some great questions and sparking interesting ideas that flesh out this topic. Let the blogging begin.