Authors

This post is a chapter from my book, The Write Attitude, which is now in a second edition. I’m posting it here to entice you to head over to Storybundle to pick up a copy, along with ebooks by Robert T. Jeschonek, Andrea Pearson, J. Daniel Sawyer, Dean Wesley Smith, and ten more great writers. Everyone’s book is an exclusive. That’s right. Everything in the bundle is exclusive to the bundle, including my book.

The book is exclusive to the Storybundle—meaning that at the moment, you can’t get it anywhere else. So if you want to read it now, pick it up from Storybundle. If you don’t want a deal on the ebook or if you only read print, then you can always preorder the book on various retailer sites in a few weeks. The new edition will release on July 14.

The second edition of The Write Attitude is quite different from the first edition, which originally appeared in 2016. I kept some parts of the original book, but much of the material is newer. The new material comes from my Patreon page. Not every post from my Patreon page shows up here, although several do. If you want to see everything, though, head to Patreon and sign up. 

This post, which first appeared on this site in slightly different form, is from January of 2015, and is one of the early chapters in the book.

Toward the end of a pretty good Entertainment Weekly article about the romance side of the publishing industry, this sentence appears:

[Bella Andre]’s a naturally fast writer—on average she churns out four to six books a year—and she released the first one in June 2011.

Before we get to the reason I’m telling you about that sentence, let me say one thing that might or might not be related: There’s a slight snobby tone to EW’s romance article. What’s that all about? The magazine’s called Entertainment Weekly. It’s not The New York Times Book Review. EW sings the praises of The Walking Dead and video games, and everything in between, for heaven’s sake, but somehow romance fiction doesn’t meet the high standards of entertainment?

Sorry. I had to get that off my chest.

As I said, the article, “A Billion-Dollar Affair,” by Karen Valby, appeared in the October 24, 2014 issue, and did cover the romance industry (of the time) pretty well. (And is still available online.)

So why am I objecting to that single sentence?

I’m not, really. It’s a common sentence from any media that covers books. And I’m not even objecting to the entire sentence. Bella Andre does write fast by most writers’ standards, and she does so comfortably.

What I’m objecting to is the phrase “churned out.”

It’s become a cliché. Any writer who writes fast “churns out” material. Or she “cranks out” or “pounds out” whatever it is that she writes. Because clearly, no writer who writes fast can think about what she writes.

There are other implications in that phrase. The material “churned out” isn’t very good. Anything “churned out” is an exact copy of what has come before. It has no real value, primarily because of the speed with which the writer “churns out” the material.

In the olden days of traditional publishing, those of us who “churned out” a lot of books did so under a lot of pen names. Here’s how it worked in my case: Kristine Kathryn Rusch might, at best, put out two books per year; Kris Nelscott one every two years; and Kristine Grayson one every six months.

Most reviewers never noticed all the short stories or blog posts or nonfiction. Only a handful of people (including my agents back when I was stupid enough to hire them) knew that I wrote under other pen names as well.

While reading a midlist thriller novel in bed one night several years ago, I laughed so hard that I woke Dean up. What made me laugh? The author’s bio, which stated that the byline of the novel I was reading was a pen name for a “well-known #1 New York Times bestselling author.” Ballsy and hysterical. That writer wrote so many books that his publisher refused to publish them all under the author’s bestselling name.

Or maybe the publisher never got a chance. Because I later discovered who the author in question was (and that’s why I’m not naming the book here), and discovered that the author had nearly a dozen pen names, and kept them all quiet—except for that coy little bio for at least one of them.

In the opening to Bag of Bones (first published in 1998), Stephen King writes that his main character, a bestselling novelist, kept one novel in the drawer for every novel he published, since his publisher was demanding that he publish no more than one book per year.

Think about this, people: How many other industries that have mega-selling products demand that the producer of popular, high-quality material slow down? What happened to providing the consumers with what they wanted?

When Nora Roberts started out, she was fortunate to begin with Harlequin, which could publish as many books as she produced. She stayed with Harlequin even after she moved to a bigger publisher (Bantam) for a once-per-year hardcover, which then became a once-per-year hardcover and twice-a-year mass market paper, and then became twice-a-year hardcovers and three-times-a-year mass market paper, and finally, she had a big fight with Harlequin, and started up the J.D. Robb pen name (twice per year) and her publisher (by then, Putnam) threw in the towel. The publisher finally agreed that Nora could put out a lot of books. But the publisher’s other writers couldn’t.

Nora Roberts’ speed didn’t matter to that publisher because the publisher had no expectation of quality based on the genre. As we all know, and Entertainment Weekly’s snobby tone confirms, romance is trash anyway. No one expects quality fiction from writers who crank out cookie-cutter books for women.

You think I’m kidding, right? I’m not. I’m old enough to have read the trade journals as romance got its start as a genre, as the Romance Writers of America (founded in 1980) fought for recognition from publishers, as romance readers slowly realized that they were marketing force that had a lot of clout.

Romance has a lot of respect now compared to the 1980s—and still writers see phrases like “churned out” and that slightly school-boyish tone that every Literary Critic uses when discussing romance.

It’s about love and mushy stuff. It can’t be good. It might include kissing and touching and actual irony-free emotion. Anyone can churn out that crap if they put their minds to it. But most people are sensible enough to want respectability instead of…whatever it is that these romance people have.

Oh, yeah. Money.

And readers.

Who actually like the books.

I have taken exception to that snobbish attitude for my entire career. I’ve written essay after essay about it in all kinds of journals and magazines. I’ve written some business blogs on it too.

Back when I was writing those essays, the attitude was merely annoying. Savvy writers could get past it with the judicious use of pen names, and make not just a living, but a substantial living. As in earning mid-six figures or more, simply by hiding the fact that the fast writers wrote more than one book per year.

That snobbish attitude has always been harmful to writers who wanted to make a living. But in my mind, that snobbery always went hand-in-hand with a desire to be recognized over a desire to have a full-time writing career. The writers who wanted to make a living figured out how to handle the respectability argument while “churning out” a lot of books. The writers who wanted respectability and labored over each word never left their day jobs.

Now, however, that snobbish attitude has become actively harmful to writers. Most of the ways that books sell to readers have broken down. The traditional publishing systems have lost their impact. The old-fashioned way that publishers advertised books—that one-size-fits-all method—no longer works. Bookstores don’t window titles much anymore, if a reader can find a brick-and-mortar bookstore that sells new titles within driving distance of home.

Because books are available all the time rather than for only a few months, readers pay less attention to release dates than ever before. Readers have always read a book when they felt like it, and not a moment sooner. But in the past, readers had to buy the book when they saw it, because they might never find a copy again.

So, even if readers didn’t read the book for a year or more, readers still had to buy it in that limited time window.

Not any longer. Readers can make a note of the title, realize it’s been published, and buy it days or hours or minutes before reading it. That really changes the way that the publishing industry markets books—or it should.

It hasn’t yet, entirely, anyway. But the industry is starting to get a clue.

Event books, the ones that publishers convinced the media to promote, are no longer events. The numbers to become a bestseller are much, much lower than they were in 2007.

Lists matter, but less and less as readers discover their books in other ways.

And one of the major ways that readers discover a book? E-mail alerts or notifications that scroll across the reader’s favorite online retailing site—alerts and notifications tailored to that reader.

No longer do we all get notification of the top five books on The New York Times bestseller list. Now, we get science fiction (if that’s what we read) or romance or mystery. We get notifications about our favorite author’s latest book, not the latest release from some author whose work we would never, ever, ever read.

The notifications come from bots designed by the retailers. What provokes those bots to let a reader know about an author? Publication of her latest work. The bots always send readers a note that an author they have bought before (through that retailer) has released a new book.

The reader might not buy that book immediately, but the book might go on a wish list. It might be put in reserve until the reader has the cash to order or the time to read.

Another change in the way people buy books also has to do with unlimited availability. All readers indulged in binge reading of a new-to-them author, but in the past, that binge reading was combined with treasure hunting.

Whenever I discovered a new writer whose work I liked, I’d read what was easily available, then I’d go to the library to see what it had. Libraries never had the complete oeuvre because, like bookstores, they have limited shelf space. So I’d dig through every used bookstore in every town I visited until I got each and every book by that author.

Or as close to each and every book as I could get.

Other readers did the same.

Now, readers can order every book that a favorite author has written, whether that author has written five books or hundreds. That fear writers have, the fear that readers won’t respect the work if it doesn’t take years to complete, is silly when looked at from a reader’s perspective.

Readers want to escape from their lives for a few hours. They might want to read a beautiful well-written slow-moving literary novel or they might want to read a fast-paced hard-to-believe thriller. But readers want the book when they’re ready to relax. If they liked that book, they want another by the same author. The author becomes a known quantity, and the reader wants more.

Binge-reading has become an all-consuming activity, just like binge-watching. And the best way to get noticed as a writer is to publish enough to enable your readers to binge for a weekend.

But the idea of writing a lot is the opposite of the way that most writers are trained. Writers are told to slow down, think about every word, consider every sentence. Writers are taught to forget story because story is something that hack writers do.

Hack writers can “churn” out words because words are unimportant to them.

Real writers write so slowly that they might only compose a paragraph per day.

Real writers who have day jobs and who still believe myths spouted in the 19th century.

Real 19th-century writers who are still read today, like Charles Dickens or Louisa May Alcott, got paid by the word, so they wrote a lot of words, for a lot of publications. These writers wrote fast long hand, and they “churned out” a lot of stories we no longer read.

But they also “churned out” stories that all of us still read.

That little phrase, “churned out,” holds so much disrespect. Deadly disrespect, because writers who hear that phrase—and use it themselves—won’t be able to survive in this new world.

The 21st century is not leisurely, although we have more leisure time than ever. Can you remember the name of the “important” literary novel of five years ago? Ten? Without looking it up? I didn’t think so.

Yet, I can still name the important literary novels of forty years ago, because they got all the press, and I do mean allthe press.

It’s impossible to get all of the press now. The best way to get attention is to give your readers what they want. If they like your work, they want more of it.

If they want more of it, the only person who can give them more is you.

And the only way to do that is to write a lot, whatever that means for you.

One sure way to teach yourself to write at a comfortable pace is to clean up your language. Watch every word. Make sure you’re using the right phrase—when you’re talking about writing.

Clean “churned out” from your vocabulary. Don’t say you “cranked out” a novel. Don’t apologize for writing fast. Don’t tell anyone how long it took to finish a novel.

Write and release.

The only people who judge fiction writers for how fast they write are people for whom reading isn’t something they do for enjoyment but for prestige. They want to impress others with their literary acumen.

I don’t know about you, but I want readers who get lost in the story, not readers who have already determined that I’m a hack because I don’t write at the proper speed or in the proper genre or with the proper attention to language.

Enjoy your writing. Take as much—or as little—time as you like to compose your stories.

Because how you created the story doesn’t matter. How much readers enjoy the story does. Readers don’t care if it took you one week to write that story or fifteen years. All readers want is escape.

And it’s your job to provide it.

“Churning It Out” from The Write Attitude

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This ebook, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

….. ah. After rereading the question I should have been more clearer, I meant to ask what is next after the Sigl Fashion articles. I apologize for the confusion what I wrote wasn’t what I meant to say!

In reply to Valentin.

I would think mending helps with bruising as that is a result of damaged blood vessels. May not remove the leaked blood that causes the discoloring but would mend the blood vessels?

In reply to Kevin.

Kevin, the answer to your question is literally spelled out in the exact post you’re replying to.

In reply to Edmund Wong.

The edits I make are going to be limited by what I’ve already written in book 5 – which sometimes means I won’t make changes which I might have done had I had the suggestions earlier. That’s just how it goes; time’s a limited resource, and I have to pick and choose how I spend it.

In reply to Celia.

It better not otherwise his forced to write a second draft

Great news! It’s great when you are on schedule with the tasks you need to do!

Out of curiosity what do you intend for the next topic in the Beginners Guide to Drucraft? I myself am interested in Primal and Dimension since we haven’t seen them a lot and I love the associations, and planets they are associated with it’s been a real treat!

But regardless any worldbuilding article is very informative, hopefully one day you can do one on the Cults major and minor, it would be interesting to see what eras where the Order of the Dragon and Warband were on top.

Will Stephen use a bicycle in this book? I thought it would be a cool combination of his Lightfoot and strength sigl.

Great audio news to usher us into the weekend:

Graphic Audio’s dramatized full-cast adaptation of Sapphire Flames is now available for preorder, with release scheduled for August 12. Arabella’s POV short story A Misunderstanding will also be included.

This is the first novel in Catalina’s Hidden Legacy trilogy, picking up three years after Diamond Fire. Catalina has been very busy learning what it means to be a Prime, Alessandro is about to do a great deal of Italian exclaiming, and fan-favourite Runa returns in the middle of family tragedy.

Speaking of Diamond Fire, reminder that the dramatized adaptation came out on April 6, so if you are following the Hidden Legacy audio releases in order, you have time to enjoy Nevada’s wedding novella before Catalina fully takes the wheel in August.

And that’s not all that GA has in store for us!

Nora Achrati is back in the Kate Daniels world, and has started directing and recording for the Wilmington Years series – with Magic Tides to be expected in late July.

The script is wonderful, the covers are being designed as we speak, and Nora, of course, brings all of her experience from the main series with her. I’ve also told her everything about the Horde’s reactions to Wilmington, so she knows about the Consort (ever merciful), the magic clams, the Keelan love and just how much we were missing Kate and didn’t want to give her peace in her HEA hehe.

After the Wilmington Years, Nora will move on to Blood Heir. That one is further down the line, and I do not have an official date for you yet.

A lot of you have also asked about a dramatized adaptation of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me. Thank you for all the casting and directorial suggestions, soundtrack concepts, and the enthusiasm, but a gentle reminder: House Andrews is not hiring or commissioning Graphic Audio to produce these adaptations, nor controlling their business and creative decisions.

GA are an entirely independent business, who approaches authors for adaptation rights of the works they are interested in, and entirely designs and produces the full-cast “movies in your mind”. As soon as we have official news on the Maggie the Undying dramatized front, we will announce it.

Until then: preorders are open, recordings have started, and our summer is looking very good indeed.

The post Audio news: Consorts and Primes first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

I’m glad you finally got the edits back! Hopefully none of the proposed changes affect things you’ve already written for book 5?

Another occasion to see House Andrews live!

Ilona and Gordon will appear as Featured Authors at the 2026 Columbus Book Festival on July 11 and 12, 2026.

Hosted by the Columbus Metropolitan Library Foundation, the festival events will be held at Main Library, 96 S. Grant Ave, and in the adjacent Topiary Park at the corner of Town and Washington Streets.

If you would like to see House Andrews in person, here is where to find them:

• Saturday, July 11 at 1:00 PM Spirits, Spells & Swoons: Romantasy | Stage 2

House Andrews will be talking romantasy, magic, danger, and all the delicious complications that come with throwing feelings into a fantasy kingdom that’s trying to kill you. Joining them on the panel are BFF Jeaniene Frost (A Curse of Beasts and Magic) and Shalini Abeysekara (This Blade of Ours).

• Sunday, July 12 at 10:30 AM Speed Matching | Room 2A

In Speed Matching, readers meet authors in small groups for quick five-minute rounds, getting a personal introduction to each book before the authors rotate to the next table.

• Sunday, July 12 at 3:00 PM God Complex: World-Building | Stage 2

Later that afternoon, Ilona Andrews will return to Stage 2 for a conversation about world-building alongside John Chu (The Subtle Art of Folding Space) and K.X. Song (The Dragon Wakes with Thunder). If your favorite part of fantasy is seeing how an author builds a world that feels layered, lived-in, and slightly alarming to inhabit, this is likely your panel.

Tickets?

All of these sessions are free and open to the public, with no tickets required. Seating for panel discussions is first come, first served however, so if there is a session you particularly want to attend, arriving early is your friend.

Signed books?

Yes! After each scheduled appearance (so both panels as well as the Speed Matching), Ilona and Gordon will head to their assigned table in the 2nd Floor Reading Room for a one-hour signing session, where readers will be able to meet them and have books signed.

The festival bookstore will also be set up there, with new releases as well as back-titles from all the featured festival authors available for purchase. By buying books at the Official Festival Bookstore you are supporting your local independent book stores! It is a partnership between Cover to Cover, The Book Loft, Gramercy Books, and Prologue Bookshop.

The festival organizers will also be announcing the full author lineup, exhibitors, and updated festival information through the official festival website which is here.

One more quick note while I have your attention.

If you previously sent a request for a personalised book club letter from House Andrews and did not receive a response, please resend it with the subject line: Book Club Letter Request.

Both Ilona and myself have been truly buried under a truly ridiculous amount of fake “book club” spam lately, the ChatGPT-written kind that promises followers, Hollywood connections, immortal Texan ferrets in space, the works.

Some of the legitimate requests may have been accidentally sacrificed during the cleanup. Using that exact subject line will help real requests stand out from the nonsense.

Happy BDHing!

The post House Andrews at the 2026 Columbus Book Festival first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Pressida grimaced and unhooked a small barrel secured to her saddle. Her Andican mare gave the barrel a derisive snort. Pressida had tied her on the other side of the log, well out of Keraengle’s kicking range.

“That is what I love about knighthood.” Pressida pulled a knife out, pried the lid off the barrel, and dumped two gallons of ripe fish entrails onto the beach. “The sheer glamor of the job.”

The post Snippet Wednesday: the Glamor first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Meanwhile, back at the Scholomance:

“You told us your final project would be about solving crimes using magic. But this”—Catarina tapped the stack of paper in front of her—“seems to be about the alternate dimension Thule. It includes a section on how one might possibly get there—” 

“That part is theoretical,” said Ty. 

“All right,” Catarina said. “But …

the final project is supposed to cover the kind of work you want to do when you leave the Scholomance. You’re an adult Shadowhunter. Solving crimes using magic seems like something you could do. Attempting interdimensional travel to a hell world does not. I know your brother Julian visited that other world, but there were extenuating circumstances involved that will never be replicated.” 

“I said it was theoretical—” 

“If you opened a door to hell in your dorm room and a beast came through and ate you, that wouldn’t be theoretical.” 

“No, I would call that empirical evidence. But I’m not doing that.” 

Catarina templed her hands beneath her chin. “I believe you,” she said. “And I don’t think you actually want to go to Thule, even if a version of Livvy is alive there. I think you turned in a final project you knew couldn’t possibly pass on purpose.” 

Ty froze. 

The Unbroken anthology – featuring an all new fantasy novella from me – is now live on Kickstarter. 

Unbroken features original, never before published stories from 36 of the most prominent SFF authors working today (and me). Here’s the full line-up:

My novella is entitled The Black Reivers and will appeal to those who like their military fantasy with a whiff of gunpowder.

To support this project head on over to the Kickstarter page:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unbroken/unbroken-new-tales-by-masters-of-fantasy

In other news, updated where-to-buy links for Upon the Forge of Battle, the third and final book in the Age of Wrath trilogy, are here covering all formats. The book will be released on August 25th. Buy here:

UK Hardcover: Amazon.co.uk – Waterstones – Blackwells

US Paperback: Amazon.com – Barnes & Noble – Bookshop.org

Ebook: Amazon.com – Barnes & Noble – Kobo – Bookshop.org – Google Play

Audiobook: Audible.com – Audible.co.uk – Barnes & Noble – Google Play – Kobo

Book description:

As the Age of Wrath reaches its bloody conclusion, the world will be reforged in steel and fire . . .

Thera Blackspear was once champion to the Sister Queens. Now she’s a queen herself, with Elvine as her spear maiden, wielding a weapon forged by the gods. But while the traitorous Sister Lore plots in the shadows, Ascarlia will never be safe.

Felnir has won a crown of his own and forged a kingdom at the tip of his divine blade. Yet his dreams are troubled by visions of the brother he thought long dead. A brother who needs his help, and whom Felnir would give anything to save – even his hard-won kingship.

Ruhlin’s many victories have made him a hero to the Morvek, who believe he is the prophesied saviour who will overthrow their Nihlvarian enemies. But now he finds himself a prisoner of the Vortigurn, the King of Nihlvar, who has secrets and schemes of his own.

Secrets that could unmake the world.

Upon the Forge of Battle is the epic conclusion to Anthony Ryan’s Age of Wrath trilogy, a gripping fantasy saga of bloody retribution, deadly intrigue, and soaring heroism.

Albert’s mother championed Earth Day and its environmental causes. The cause became her first priority, almost an obsession. And Albert’s obsession? His mother. In her honor, he will Save The Earth…maybe not in the way she expected.

“Earth Day” is free on this site for one week only. If you just want a copy of this story, download it on any e-book site or by clicking here. Enjoy!

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

…personal documents identify him as Albert Suttles, but in his statement, he repeatedly referred to himself as Raymond Bilojek…

My mom had an obsession with Senator Gaylord Nelson. Nobody remembers him any more, except in dusty old history books, not that there are dusty old history books any more. Everything’s online now. Even our confessionals.

Here’s mine.

Let me start again.

Mom had an obsession with Senator Gaylord Nelson. Not a stalkerish obsession, but one of those I-think-this-man-is-the-greatest obsessions. She used him as an example all the time, particularly in the dysfunctional early decades of this century.

There are no more men like Senator Gaylord Nelson, she said to me on her deathbed—not that I was with her at her deathbed. I was a full professor by then, supervising more research than I truly had time for, living in Berkeley, and enjoying it. Especially the weather. California weather, for a good Wisconsin boy, is like an early glimpse of heaven.

Not to mention that I spent my formal education in cold places. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yale, MIT. If it weren’t for my second post-doc at Cal-Tech, I would’ve thought that you had to nurture scientists in the cold in order for them to flower.

But I promised myself no jokes in this manifesto. Not that people get my jokes anyway. I’m too quiet. I think of the joke, turn it over in my mind, then inject it too late into the conversation. People have looked at me funny my entire life.

I long ago gave up trying to impress the unwashed with my conversational skills, even though I admire folks who have them. Earliest influences for me include comedians, especially the really brainy ones—George Carlin, Dennis Miller, Lewis Black—the ones who can quip their way out of anything. Or I thought they could, until I saw Carlin in his dotage, just out of rehab, working off a paper script, telling the audience honestly that he was testing material for an HBO special.

You remember HBO, right? That’s where I first saw the “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television” speech. I must’ve been ten, maybe, one of those years when we could afford premium cable. 1977? Something like that. We were pretty itinerant, and I didn’t see much television at all, especially premium television as it was called then. So I remembered seeing Carlin on HBO.

But his other routines? I didn’t see those until later. And his influential “bad case of fleas” routine? I didn’t see that one until maybe mid-2007, on the Internet. Ironic, right?

Anyway, Mom. Senator Gaylord Nelson. She met him, you know. One of those Earth Day rallies back in the day. Said I met him too, back when Earth Day was a movement, and she was part of it. Not that she ever left the movement.

The movement defined our lives. She’d say, we moved for the environment.

Not for the weather, like normal people. But for the environment. Someone needed a volunteer to coordinate rallies? Mom was there. Someone needed a volunteer to post flyers? Mom was there. We lived off the kindness of strangers, she’d say, and it took me years to understand that she was quoting a Tennessee Williams play.

The kindness of strangers got me into a science-only high school. We need scientists, too, the man who fronted everything said. He was one of those truly rich bastards, the kind who gave his money to all sorts of causes. But his favorite was Mom’s favorite: the environment.

Everything from the Sierra Club to some wacky fringe organization (Save The Cockroaches!), this guy gave it money. And he funded Mom for years, which is something I don’t want to think about even now. Because I don’t know why Mom in particular, even though I have a hunch.

It does go back to Mom, you know. I’m smart enough to know that. The therapist I hired at my first tenured position told me I was “unhealthily obsessed” with her, and we had to break the obsession. That therapist couldn’t divorce me from Mom entirely. I recognize that too. Because without Mom, I wouldn’t be a tenured professor with a large research staff and grants for fifteen different projects, including the private one you’re seeing today.

Or will see today.

But I digress.

My digressions are why I’m not doing this as a video. Or a holographic video. Some kind of statement broadcast on every single remaining broadcast channel.

The Internet.

No one’ll see this until after.

But then, no one will see it after either.

Heh. Just realized.

This is all for me.

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

…his research assistants, graduate students, and post-doctoral candidates weren’t hard to find. All wore Earth Day T-shirts, modeled on the first Earth Day poster from 1970. Separate interviews attached. Each mentions Suttles/Bilojek’s insistence on the Earth Day experiment, which most participated in for a grade or because they were terrified of losing their research posting…

My influences:

1. Comedians (see above).
2. Space photos, particularly that one from the late 1960s—you know, the beautiful blue-and-green globe? That was Mom’s favorite too. But for different reasons. Me, I like the vivid colors, the rocks against the blackness, the vibrant life that we don’t recognize as life—you know, the sun big and deep like an ocean, with storms and spots and—I could go on forever. But we don’t have forever. ?
3. Great scientists from the past. The unassuming guys, at least in the beginning. Archimedes in the bathtub. Galileo dropping balls from the Tower of Pisa. Einstein contemplating the universe from the silence of the patent office.

They didn’t have grants and grad students, publish-or-perish mandates, the necessity of finding the smallest niche in the large world of science just to get someone to fund a project. They didn’t have to write grandiose papers before their discoveries. Sometimes they didn’t even write grandiose papers after their discoveries.

So of course, in this modern era, I decided not to write a grandiose paper either. I got dozens and dozens of smaller grants, on smaller topics, and isn’t it ironic that if you Google (Google. Heh. Created outside the system.) my professional name, you’ll see article after article, interview after interview, with me, whom they call the Scientist of Small Things.

Apparently I did find notice. Someone—maybe a scientifically minded clerk, handling grant applications for the U.S. government—noticed my name originating most of them.

No one put together all the topics, though.

No one except me.

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

…appended to this file a report from several different departments in Homeland Security, as well as reports from similar bureaus in Germany, Russia, China, South Africa…

Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day and, some say, the founder of the modern environmental movement, was a saint. George Carlin, comedian, the enemy.

At least according to Mom. On her deathbed. Or what I call her deathbed—that dreadful nursing home bed she didn’t leave for the last few years of her life. I saw her a year before she died—2007—and after that I discovered why Carlin was the enemy.

In that wonderful, eye-opening routine, he said he hated Earth Day. He said, and I quote: “Environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat.”

Ah, it rang true. It rang so true.

That’s when I realized all my degrees, all those little environmental things I was doing weren’t for the planet. They were for the environmentalists. Like Mom.

And then, in that same routine, Carlin said, he said, the planet will be here after we’re long gone. And he added the inspiration: “The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.”

That was my Eureka moment.

I know how to get rid of fleas.

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

…when the FBI received a notice from the Patent Office, delineating several patents that returned to the same man, known as the Scientist of Small Things. The small things, when combined in the proper order, could be seen as a potential terrorist threat. The patent office employee [name redacted] did not contact the FBI immediately. After some thought, however, she determined she could not remain silent….

It took very little tweaking to move from “Save The Earth For Environmentalists” to “Save The Earth.”

Because to save the earth for environmentalists, you have to know what will kill the little buggers. Instead of getting rid of those factors, you add to them. You tweak them.

You make them stronger.

I figured out the balance. Tweak this and touch that and you make the planet shake off the fleas a little faster. It is a multidisciplinary approach. To understand how water reaches entire populations, one must know the engineering of water treatment plants as well as urban planning. One must also learn the details of water processing in each community.

Tiny things, small things, all reported back to the one man who can understand it all.

Amassing small bits of data into one large experiment. Only large minds can understand this.

And there are very few large minds around any more.

Almost none.

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

… the case built slowly. The initial investigator retired, and Agent William Franks took over. Franks had received a Masters in Biology from Harvard before joining the Bureau. He did not like the coincidences either, and talked off the record to two of Suttles/Bilojek’s graduate students. That raised enough suspicions to bring in additional field agents….

My pet graduate students run all of my projects. I have developed a multidisciplinary department, highly regarded, since most of my students go on to so-called great things in the so-called real world.

My current graduate students and post-docs are doing a one-day experiment for me, or so they think. They are not large minds. They are useful small minds. In the years I have planned this, it has always helped to have useful small minds.

It has also helped that in 2007 my mission changed from Save The World For Environmentalists to Save The World. Because of Mom, because of my initial environmentalist approach, I know how to talk to small minds, to make them believe I am on their side.

And I am. Truly I am. I do want to save the world.

In fact, my pet scientists and I are doing exactly that today.

My pet scientists have tweaked the ground water, and the air filtration systems. They’ve added toxins to all the poisons we already touch, from oil to Styrofoam. They’re adding viruses to enclosed spaces, like airplanes and ships. They’re even coating restaurant surfaces.

I don’t care how we get the fleas off the planet. I just care that we do.

And now we will.

As the first Earth Day T-shirt says, “We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us.”

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Homeland Security, FBI Division

Arresting Officer William Franks

Excerpt from Franks’ verbal message, attached to the huge packets of reports submitted to the U.S. Justice Department:

…gotta say, Dave, it’s a good thing guys like this are rocket scientists. If they understood people, they wouldn’t confess before the crime. Whenever I feel down about humanity, I gotta remember that good citizens saw this manifesto and reported it. Dunno if we got everyone, but I hope we did. If nothing else, the outbreaks will be isolated now. This guy had a good plan. He almost killed millions.

Creepy bastard. When I locked him up, he smiled at me like we were old friends. Then his grin widened to crazy. You know. You’ve seen it on the face of so many of these bastards.

Usually you can dismiss them. But I’m having trouble shaking this one. Because of what he said to me I started to walk away.

He said, “So, flea, how does it feel to save the world?”

Earth Day

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © by WMG Publishing

Cover design by WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Matthew Trommer/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Happy Monday, BDH!

A couple of quick updates to start the week.

First, for everyone asking about purchasing the commissioned This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me artwork:

If you are looking for prints of the character art, Helena Elias’ store is open and she has a special Ilona Andrews page.

Luisa Preissler announced that her store will soon be carrying character art cards, and she showed the proofs on Instagram yesterday.

If you’d like to know when they go on sale, please sign up for Luisa’s newsletter here.

Candice Slater is also currently working through options for the Kair Toren art, which you can admire here.

If you want prints and cards and probably calendars, please buy them from the artists directly. The Ilona Andrews merch store will focus instead on book tie-in items, such as vellum inserts meant to go into the hardcover, bookmarks, and similar goodies.

And speaking of goodies, here is the Zoom recording from Saturday, where Ilona and Gordon answered your questions about This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me.

If you would like to use the transcript function on YouTube, click on the video description or the three-dot menu, and select Show transcript.

Thank you all for the incredible enthusiasm, the thoughtful questions, and the general release-week chaos. The BDH has been in magnificent form.

The post Art & Zoomies first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Is that…MY TAIL?! AAAAAAAAAH!

…the everloving hell?

She does that. Don’t worry about it.

I kinda am.

Who’s the new guy?

I have queeestions.

It is great to hear everything is working out smoothly.Lets hope the edits you need to do just superficial. Like you said your half way through book 5 lets get cracking on the rest of the book(1st draft). Keep up the fantastic work

This is all good news!

This post is a chapter from my book, The Write Attitude, which is now in a second edition. I’m posting it here to entice you to head over to Storybundle to pick up a copy, along with ebooks by T. Thorn Coyle, Ron Collins, Darcy Pattison, Anthea Sharp, and ten more great writers. Everyone’s book is an exclusive. That’s right. Everything in the bundle is exclusive to the bundle, including my book.

So if you want to read it now, pick it up from Storybundle. If you don’t want a deal on the ebook or if you only read print, then you can always preorder the book on various retailer sites starting at the end of May. The new edition will release on July 14.

The second edition of The Write Attitude is quite different from the first edition, which originally appeared in 2016. I kept some parts of the original book, but much of the material is newer. The new material comes from my Patreon page. Not every post from my Patreon page shows up here, although several do. If you want to see everything, though, head to Patreon and sign up. 

This post appeared on my Patreon page in October of 2025, and is one of the early chapters in the book.

From 2025

This past week, I finished the largest Fey book I’ve written to date. It is the fifth book in my side series on the Qavnerian Protectorate…and it ended up at 240,000 words long. I trimmed about 50,000 words out of it, and wrote the scenes that I missed. (Mostly the validation, because I always skip the validation in my first pass.) I figured the book was long because of how I wrote it. I dabbled at it during the two years of crisis that we endured at the business. For a while, I gave the book up entirely because I simply couldn’t concentrate on a story that big. That was when I wrote some of the novellas that came out this year, as well as a novel that will appear in late 2026.

My mind was trending long, I think, because I didn’t want to keep coming up with new things. I didn’t have the brain space for that.

I also found that I couldn’t make any decisions while still in the thrall of that huge, gigantic, super-sized novel. I wasn’t in the position to decide what I would do next. I’m going to figure that out in the next few days.

But some of the small things I meant to do included typing in about 6,000 words that Mick Herron wrote in the middle of his Slow Horses novel Bad Actors. He wrote a scene filled with mayhem that stretched over a couple of square miles of London and had at least four main viewpoint characters. (If you want to know what scene, it’s the one that more or less culminates with the iron and the bus, as well as a brick to the head.)

When I first read the thing, two years ago now, I became aware at the very end of the section that I not only had a feeling of mayhem, but that I had understood each part of the action. When a writer uses a technique that isn’t in my writing toolbox, I figure out how that technique works. Sometimes I can eyeball it, but occasionally, I type it into my own computer using my word program and my set-up, so I can see how it all works on the page.

It took two days’ writing sessions to do the typing, partly because I stopped to give my wrists a break and also because I would look up any words I didn’t know. As a reader, I skipped over the British slang that I was unfamiliar with, choosing to get it out through context, but as a writer, I wanted to know what he was doing.

So louring, cack-handed, and a whole bunch of other words entered my consciousness and, in the case of louring, changed my perspective on a moment in the scene that I was typing in.

Usually, when I type in another writer’s work, it’s a serious struggle. I want to add commas or punctuation or paragraphs or different words. Aside from the British slang, I did not feel the need to add or change words, but I did realize that he uses punctuation very differently than I do. There are a lot more colons in his work than there are in mine, and not as many commas. The only quibble I had, in fact, was that he wouldn’t use a comma in something like “For a moment he was thinking of his wife…” I would add a comma after “moment.” And he wouldn’t use an ellipsis plus a period for the end of a sentence. I don’t know if that was deliberate, a British punctuation thing, or personal preference. It caught me every time.

But the one thing I did note was this: I have been deep in the words in my own writing. Because life has thrown me a lot of lemons in the past year, I would catch them and consider them before making the lemonade. In other words, my critical voice was and is on very high right now.

Sometimes as I worked on the biggest Fey novel to ever come out of my computer, I would stop and stare at the words and think them very plain. That’s not a normal thought for me—or it wasn’t before this past year or two.

As I typed in Herron’s section, I noted that I reached the “words are plain” stage somewhere around 3,000 words in. His words were plain and sometimes repetitive. There were copy editing issues as well, one or two misspellings (not British spellings, but actual misspellings) and a few missing hyphens that my eye caught while I was working out his technique.

I had to pause and consider that moment, though. By putting his words into my format, I hit the same “these words are plain” place I hit in my own writing. Which meant that critical voice was not doing its job and looking at the technique. It was critiquing the words used instead of the effect those words had on the reader.

Copy editors make this error a lot. I train copy editors and have done so for decades now. The traditional publisher for my Grayson books in the 1990s used my books to test copy editors. If I got a heavy hand, the copy editor didn’t get hired. My Grayson books, like Herron’s Slough House series, are voice heavy. If the copy editor missed that, and put the book into proper English with traditional punctuation, they had no right to be called a copy editor at all.

The copy editor’s job is to find actual mistakes (misspellings, inadvertently repeated details, misnaming characters) rather than “clean up” some established writer’s punctuation. And copy editors who are harsher on new writers will often strip those writers of the very things that make their voice strong.

I can’t imagine the discussion Soho Crime had early on with Herron’s copy editors. He breaks every single rule of grammar and punctuation on purpose and does it to make a point in the story.

For example, I noted in his latest book, Clown Town, that in another mayhem scene, one character’s point-of-view section was usually one paragraph long and just a single sentence. I slowly realized that single sentence extended over many sections and many pages. Every time we were in that character’s point of view, there was a lot of punctuation, and not a bit of it was an actual period.

The period arrived at the end of the character’s point-of-view section in that mayhem scene…and I realized (because of how I read) that the character was dead. Herron played with that idea (are they really dead?) for the next twenty pages, and most readers would have missed the period at the end of the character’s section. But I didn’t. (I had the same problem in the book Silence of the Lambs when Thomas Harris has Hannibal Lector escape a well-guarded facility. Harris used an odd phrase, a strange verb, and a long sentence in the middle of a gigantic paragraph. The odd phrase from such a careful writer caught me up short. So I went backwards, looking to see if I’d missed anything else.

And yep, I had. I knew exactly how Lector escaped pages before Harris wanted me to. Most readers didn’t catch it until Harris did a big reveal. And then they would go back and see the odd phrase. I saw it going in.

Those things that excellent writers do out of their subconscious as they’re in the moment are things that a copy editor would “fix.” I can imagine that a novice (to Herron’s work) copy editor adding periods throughout those character sections—and ruining them.

The best copy editors read the book they’re editing for enjoyment first, so that they will see the author’s intent long before they start “fixing mistakes.” Most modern copy editors don’t do that at all, which is why you’ll hear Dean tell you that you don’t need a copy editor. He’s right: better to let some mistakes through than muck up the voice.

I hire and fire a lot of copy editors even now because I have a tendency in my fiction writing to repeat myself. Some of that comes because I write out of order. So I might actually introduce a character for the first time when I write chapter 45, but chapter 45 might have been the very first chapter I ever wrote. Then, later, I might write chapter 7, where the character appears for the reader for the first time and I’ll write the same description (often in the same language without checking back) again. And maybe I’ll worry that I hadn’t described the character when I get to chapter 15, and I’ll write the same description again.

I need someone to find that stuff. What’s amazing to me is that the words-only, rules-only copy editors never find the repeated information. Or the silly stuff, like a character putting on a hat in chapter 27 and then putting on a different hat six pages later without taking off the first hat.

That’s what’s valuable about copy editors. Not fixing the grammar, but fixing the goofy stuff. On the latest book which will appear in 2026, the other book I wrote during the crisis, I changed the name of one of the main characters but never did a search and replace. So occasionally, his name goes back and forth with one letter different. The very good copy editor that I have caught that. None of my first readers did—and neither did I.

In storytelling, the words are tools. Punctuation is also a tool. Paragraphing is a tool.

The rules are there for beginners. Storytellers need to have a huge toolbox, and they need to learn how to use those tools. Most writers get by with a hammer, some nails and a few screwdrivers. The best writers have finesse tools (to extend the metaphor) like a cape chisel, saw set pliers, and an egg beater drill just in case the story needs them.

And I can guarantee you that if the story does need them, the copy editor will probably not understand why they’re there—unless the copy editor is someone who actually reads and understands the story before looking at the words.

As for the rest of us—we storytellers—we need to stay out of the words and not worry about them. So what if they’re “plain”? So what if you’ve written a passive sentence? So what if they seem to lie flat on the page?

If you’re thinking those things, you’re not in the story at all. You’re in copyedit or critic mode.

Stop it.

Remember that you’re a storyteller. Not a writer. And don’t worry about the little fiddly bits. If you misspell them and the story’s compelling, your reader won’t even notice.

Just like reader me didn’t notice all the words I didn’t know in Herron’s work. I was so caught up in that mayhem scene that I went right over those unfamiliar words, and ended up thinking that the sequence was brilliant.

Because it is.

“Getting Lost in The Words” from The Write Attitude

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This ebook, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.