A blog worth discovering

If you haven't checked out short story writer Jim Van Pelt's blog at A Place for Strangers and Beggars, I suggest you do so. Not only is Jim a writer, but sometimes he's also an editor of one anthology or another (most recently "Hardboiled Horror") and he is a teacher.

Over the past few months I've been checking out his blog, and he often has interesting topics, sometimes quite analytical of the short story writing process (a lot of which also applies to novels and other forms of creative writing).

Jim also brings some of his teaching to the blog, discussing elements of story crafting that he has discussed or is working on with his students. I feel like I've learned a good bit of late just studying what he says about his classes.

And Jim seems to be pretty down to earth. While he might talk about the artistic side of writing, he also keeps it real by sometimes talking about the academic or business angles.