Dave Smeds

DNA: What a Tangle

Dave Smeds

31 Mar 202429 Mar 2024

People have been talking about DNA for quite some time now. I’m approaching seventy years old, and yet the accepted model of the structure of the molecule — the double helix — is older than I am. Anyone of my generation, and […]

Book Cover Art

Building a Book Cover: The Wizard’s Nemesis by Dave Smeds

Dave Smeds

16 Mar 202415 Mar 2024

Until now, whenever I have blogged about creating a book cover, the subject has been work I did for one or another of my author colleagues. The experience can be quite different when I do a cover for one of my own […]

Writing Inspiration

The Heroine with a Thousand Faces

Dave Smeds

04 Mar 202427 Feb 2024

In one of the classes I took as sophomore in college, the assigned reading material included The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell. It was March, 1976 when the class turned its focus to that particular work. Note the date. […]

Book Cover Art

Building a Book Cover: A Star Shall Fall by Marie Brennan

Dave Smeds

18 Feb 202419 Feb 2024

For the Book View Café reissue of A Star Shall Fall, third of the four volumes of the Onyx Court sequence, Marie Brennan hoped for a cover that conveyed three essential elements. The first and most basic bit was branding. The book […]

Uncategorized

Influences: L. Frank Baum

Dave Smeds

15 Feb 202415 Feb 2024

There are a couple of questions writers get that seem to be unavoidable. I hate both of them. The first is, “Where do you get your ideas?” I’ve blogged about that elsewhere. The second is, “What authors do you try to imitate?” […]

Writing Inspiration

Spear Carriers: How I Accidentally Wrote My First Novel

Dave Smeds

07 Jan 202403 Jan 2024

In just a couple of days, Book View Café will release the ebook version of my novel The Sorcery Within. Back in 1985, it was the first novel of mine to be published. Getting to this new edition has been a long […]

Uncategorized

The Battlefield as Heroin

Dave Smeds

27 Nov 202322 Nov 2023

When you think of all the things people might get addicted to, war isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. But as one of my Vietnam War vet classmates back in the mid-1970s put it: There it is. Consider the reality […]

Book Cover Art

Building a Book Cover: Between Silk and Sand by Marissa Doyle

Dave Smeds

12 Nov 202306 Nov 2023

When planning for the 2018 release of her novel Between Silk and Sand, Marissa Doyle knew she wanted certain things on the cover. Moreover, she knew when she wanted to have the cover available. She wanted a long lead time so that […]

Genealogy

On the Illinois Frontier 1817-1818

Dave Smeds

29 Oct 202318 Oct 2023

When my great great great grandparents Rachel Starr and Jacob Strader reached Vermilion County, Illinois in the autumn of 1822, they had multiple households of family members there to help them found their farm. By then, Vermilion County as a whole was […]

Genealogy

Palimpsests of Pioneer History

Dave Smeds

16 Oct 202316 Oct 2023

Once I had delved into genealogy thoroughly enough, I began enjoying one of the rewards I would have missed if I had invested myself in the process in a more casual fashion. Not only was I gaining insight into forebears and relatives […]

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