This year has been incredible for Houston authors, with new releases in fiction and poetry that are inspired, diverse, and heartfelt. I spoke with booksellers are three of Houston’s best indie bookstores, Kindred Stories, Basket Books, and Brazos Bookstore to compile this list of new book releases from Houston authors.

Anchoring readers in an unfamiliar world can be a tricky prospect. Too much exposition and you bog the story down, too little and your readers won’t have enough information to understand what’s going on. So how can you ensure your worldbuilding is effective and properly balanced with your plot?

Presumably, you want your manuscript to be published, either traditionally or in the self-publishing marketplace. And you do that because you want it to be read and enjoyed by others. So, it makes perfect sense why you would want to align yourself with one of the genre greats. However, because Stephen King is so legendary in the horror genre, and because his career has spanned fifty years, he’s uniquely unsuitable as a model for your career path.

Critiques aren’t always what we hope they will be. As an author, you can do everything right: vet your critique partners, provide them with a list of questions to help guide their feedback, even tell them specifically what parts of your story you want them to focus on. Hopefully, doing all of this will lead to actionable feedback and thoughtful critique. Sometimes, though, you just don’t get the type of feedback you need. So, what do you do when that happens?

Fight scenes are sometimes thought of as a spice to throw on a story, something to dash on top like salt and pepper to make sure your dish has enough flavor. But in this thoroughly overcooked metaphor, this humble chef suggests that this is the wrong way to approach fight scenes in your stories. Your fight scenes shouldn’t be treated like the final little garnish—they should support the dish, be baked into it as a well thought out part of the structure!

A writer’s job is to place one word after another, telling a story, evoking emotions, painting a picture in the minds of readers. How to do that is an elusive skill. It comes down to the very building block of writing: the word. The right word, expertly placed, is worth a paragraph of exposition. So how do you choose the right word?

Happy new year! Or should I say, “Happy Public Domain Day!” because when the ball dropped at midnight, a seasonal miracle happened: thousands of copyrighted works from 1928 entered the public domain.

So here are a few of the Tomeworks editor picks!

For all the hype and promise of Artificial Intelligence, the road ahead for robot-written fiction will be a long and winding path. Silicon Valley has a stronger tradition of producing vaporware than paradigm-shifting tech and as the vaunted AI revolution takes hold, will it be a new internet or a new NFT? And why so much panic in the creative industries?

All the genre conventions in the world don’t matter if your readers don’t enjoy following the people you, the author, have chosen to follow. Your well thought out magic system or steamy romantic affair are like the toppings on a pizza – without the base, the dough, the characters to support those trappings, it doesn’t mean much!

But how do you craft a compelling character?

How much sex should be in a romance novel? The short answer is that it depends. Readers and authors all have their own preferences. From longing glances and chaste hand holding to the most explicit, bed-breaking scenes and everything in between, how do you readers know what they’re getting into? And how do authors make sure that they don’t mislead their audience and shock readers with something spicier than what they wanted?

Our Tomeworks editors love their moms, friggin love them. Having a kid and trying to write, ooh boy, is that a struggle. Your favorite writer mom needs some validation and support. Just trust me. Even if she's tough as nails and doing it all without complaint, let her know you see her and appreciate what a badass she is.

As a writer, you’ve likely heard about beta readers and how they’re an important tool for writers to determine how future readers might react to their work. But what exactly is a beta reader’s purpose? Are some beta readers better than others? And what can you, as the author, do to maximize the utility of beta readers for your own writing?