September 2023

The soundtrack for this newsletter is Freur's atmospheric 80s synth-pop track, "Doot Doot". Listen to "Doot Doot" by Freur via YouTube Music.

Catching Up

Welcome to the first edition of Anaxagology, the potentially pretentious name of my monthly newsletter. (I may or may not keep the title. I fear my last name is confusing enough and people might actually think it's "Anaxagology.") I'm planning on a monthly thing here, but it might be more or less frequent depending on the amount of news and my ability to keep organized.

I hope you'll stick around, it'll be fun.

Publications

A fragile boy's flight from his faerie-boy first love forces him to embrace his true wild spirit.

My new fantasy short story, "The Boy Who Ran from His Faerie Heart," is now free to read on *Lightspeed Magazine's* website. Also in the same issue, you can check out my author interview about my writing process and the inspiration for the story.

If you read the story and enjoy, please share on social media. Short stories disappear quickly from our collective attention so it's never too late to share and I always appreciate it—it means so much.

In Case You Missed It

Earlier this year, my humorous cosmic-horror short story told in the form of DoorDash updates, "Your Dasher Has Accidentally Awakened the Crawling Chaos by Gazing into the Loathsome Geometry of the Taco Pup Mega-muncher Meal Box," was published in The Dread Machine and is free to read online.

Writing Tips

For me, so much of writing is about keeping momentum. A tool I decided to employ on my first novel was the word bank—a collection of vocabulary words and phrases you can reference as a writing resource.

You might usually hear about word banks in the context of teaching writing to young children, but they can be a useful creative writing tool for any writer.

Building a personalized word bank tailored to your project provides a reservoir of vocabulary to draw from when crafting descriptions, dialogue, and expressions. For example, when writing about reptilian humanoid antagonists, I found myself constantly running out of words to describe how they move and act. My word bank gave me fresh options.

You can source words from anywhere - brainstorm lists, use a thesaurus, borrow words from fiction/poetry you admire. Don't worry about extensive organization—this is a personal tool.

I used Scrivener for my novel, so I made a folder in the sidebar for my word bank lists to keep them accessible. The goal is maintaining flow—quickly grab a few words as needed and keep going.

As a bonus, researching words can spark ideas and fire your imagination.

Coming Next Month

Keeping it short this month, but next month I’ll talk about my work in progress, have another writing tip, and share some of my favorite reads. This is as much your newsletter as mine, so feel free to let me know what you’d like to see and hear about. Until then—oh, wait, one more thing…

Newsletter Premium

Congratulations! You made it to the bottom of the newsletter. As a reward, here's a special download link to the shooting script for the pilot episode of Gortimer Gibbon's Life on Normal Street.

Please do not share or distribute the link, password, or the file.

Link: Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street – Pilot Script

Password: ultimatedoom

About this Newsletter

Anaxagology is a free monthly(ish) newsletter from TV writer, SFF author and novelist David Anaxagoras. Subscribe now!

You can find more about Dave at his website, or follow him on Mastodon or Bluesky.