Audely Bensen Writes

I'm not ready to read about pandemics. That's what I learned, in accidentally reading two books about pandemics. Seems like something I would have known earlier, right?  I picked up The Beginning At The End (2020)  by Mike Chen after listening to a Manuscript Academy podcast episode featuring the author and his agent. In the podcast they talked about how Chen has had a difficult time selling some of his books, because they're slightly too literary to be classified as fantasy, but slightly too fantastical to be called literary. I received very similar feedback on The Wedding Crown, so I thought I should really read some of Chen's work to learn about what a commercial-literary-fantasy book could look like.  What stood out to me about this book were the characters. This book follows their feelings and relationships in a way that almost mirrored the conventions of a romance novel's structure. I liked it. I liked the characters, and I liked the way their stories twined t...

I haven't published a book review in months, although I've definitely been reading a lot. There's three big reasons for that: 1) I've been reading a lot more science fiction than fantasy, and it feels strange to call it a fantasy review; 2) I've been feeling a lot more apprehension about critiquing other author's work outside of a critique group format. I still believe there's a ton to be learned from published works, and from reading within your genre as possible, but I'm nervous about where the line is between learning (for myself) and sharing opinions that aren't needed (and... I read a few books in January that I just didn't like); and 3) since I've been using the library a lot more, books that I've finished reading aren't sitting on my shelf for nearly as long, waiting for me to write up what I thought about them!  Nevertheless, in the effort of keeping a record of what I've read and what lesson's I've learned, I'...

The past three months have been both incredibly busy in the day job, and also relatively slow. After the hectic holidays, it has been so lovely to stay at home.  In January I finished the first draft of The Seaming, and revised the opening to The Wedding Crown. I spent the second half of January re-outlining The Seaming, and then from February through March I worked on the second draft of The Seaming. As much as I wanted to focus on cleaning up the story, writing felt like it was either a feast, or a famine. Either I wrote nothing all week, or eked out a meager 200 words a day (for most of February), or I wrote 5,000 words a day, unable to stop thinking about the story (the last week of March). At the beginning of March, I attended the Futurescapes fantasy writers conference with most of my writing group. While the conference wasn't the most organized event I've ever attended, I made a lot of really great new friends and got a lot of good feedback on The Seaming, so I found the...