Hey, SE Readers, Joan here to start this post off. It’s the fifth Friday, and you know what that means. Time for another group post. We’ve been talking about doing this one for a while—a little humor we hope will brighten your day. Here’s how it all started:

Several years ago, Staci and I were part of a small online writers group. At that time, most of the members were either unpublished or in the beginning stages of publication. One day, a writer was proofreading her manuscript and came across the following:

“She became aware of the otters around her.” Another place she found something along the line of, “Left with her furnace.”

Obviously, these are typos. Otters should have been others, and furnace was supposed to be fiancé. Needless to say, we all got a good laugh. We began calling our little group, “The Otters.”

Funny typos happen, so…

Hello SErs. Harmony here. At the moment, I’m writing a trilogy, and I have a question about how you like for each book in a series to end. Cliffhanger or all tied off and settled? Or something in between?

By cliffhanger, I don’t mean that the main story arc and thread of the first book will be left unfinished. What I envision by a cliffhanger is that the main issue has been resolved (colonists have landed safely on a planet, say), but that another, new, issue then pops up at the last minute (the colonists discover they’re not actually alone on said planet, for example).

Do you, as both reader and writer, prefer to leave the new development for the start of the next book in the series, or do you think it’s okay to drop it into the final chapter of the previous book instead? I think it makes…

Happy Monday, SEers! You’re with Mae today as we wind down to the last week of November. If you live in the U.S., that means it’s almost Thanksgiving.  I wish you a happy Turkey Day in advance. May it be filled with fun, family, and good food!

Earlier this month, I shared a post about researching locales for settings. If you missed that post, you can find it HERE. Today, I want to talk about other time periods. And no—this isn’t simply a post for writers of historical fiction. Often, it’s necessary to reference something from another time period, whether an event, person, furnishings, or custom. As usual, the internet is a great tool with plenty of blogs devoted to historical information and various time periods. I use it frequently. Most every novel I’ve written draws on some aspect of history, with several having entire chapters set in the…