Thursday, October 29, 2015

Chuck Wendig

Over the last few years, I've been haunting a blog called 'Terrible Minds' owned by Canadian author Chuck Wendig - and with such a great and unusual name as that, you'd think he be a strange person; and you'd be right.

I stumbled upon his work through Google. I was looking for book blogs to put up on here during the Summer Fun Events in 2013 and found his blog by pure chance. I didn't say anything for a while in case he was a bit of a flash in the pan - but was pleasantly surprised to find he was everything but that. 

Chuck is a blunt and honest writer who blogs exactly what is on his mind - and I mean exactly what's running around in his head. He runs a great blog - it may look very plain, but it's a great place to jump in and read, have fun, get a great laugh and realise that us writers all think exactly like him... well, okay not exactly, but we do swear and curse in our heads and would love to do the same on our blogs, but we're too damned polite to.

But Chuck isn't... he's just himself; and that's his appeal. Everyone loves it that he's a warts and all kind man and doesn't beat around the bush when it comes to writing. 

However, he does defend himself to the hilt when the critics have a go at him about his books. If somebody out there has an ax to grind with him about an aspect or a set of characters in his books, and he doesn't see the point of this ax-grinding, he'll Tweet about it, and then he'll do a post about it... and he won't hold back on it either. Like I said, he says exactly what's on his mind.

And then all us fans jump in and we love him for doing what he's doing. 

I own two of his books - 'Black Birds' and 'Blue Blazes' - and have just bought a third one I found at Dymocks by pure chance - 'Star Wars Aftermath' - and have yet to sit down in my big comfy chair to read them all. However, what I do love about Chuck is his Flash Fiction Fridays... now that's a place where he gives us all a prompt, a word limit, a deadline and lets us have a go at writing - and there's an open theme too! So, we can make our audience laugh, cry, shiver in delight or keep them awake - our choice - so long we reach the word count. 
I've been doing the Flash Fiction Fridays for over three years now, and love it! It's well worth a try - even if you think you're not a good writer, it'll help you with your writing. His link is on the sidebar if you want to have a look at his blog. Until my next post, happy reading!

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