Mike Stop Continues's Blog

The Warp Drives podcast is literally my favorite nerdy podcast. TJ and Dave dig into everything sci-fi and fantasy, and they’re hysterical. This week, they interviewed me about King Cage, having anosmia, the real New York City, and more. Check it out!

The very-awesome Story Works Round Table podcast had me on to talk about foreshadowing this week. It’s a great episode for anyone interested in taking their fiction to the next level. And if you like it, subscribe with your favorite podcast app. They are three smart cookies!

Gilly Jung is one of Underworld’s lead character and a major fan favorite. Of all Underworld’s cast, I most often get asked questions about her. I thought today I’d answer the most common: How did I come up with her?

If you haven’t read the book yet, don’t worry. This is spoiler-free…

When I was young, we lived in the deep forests of Pennsylvania. Our house was small and red, and it sat on top of a hill with natural stone steps cut into the side for when the snow p...

I’d love to say Romeo and Juliette, Humbert Humbert and Lolita, Ron and Hermione, Scott Pilgrim and Ramona Flowers, Harry Dresden and Karrin Murphy, Eddie and Susannah Dean, Troy and Abed, or any of the countless breathtaking relationships I’ve wished I could experience. I’d love to say they even came close to my true favorite. But there is one couple above all others I love the most…

He was the world’s greatest musician. She was his muse and greatest fan.

They swore the...

Is a hero someone who is always does good? Or someone who tries to do good? In working on my two current projects, I’ve been giving this question a lot of thought, and I wanted to run my current thinking by you.

Our biggest heroes are people who never make mistakes. They stand for what is right and just, and they never allow their personal desires to get in their way. Think about the three heroes above: Wonder Woman, Superman, and Batman. Think about James Bond and Sherlo...

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about why, as a white author, I chose to make the two main characters in my debut novel black. Its a question with a hundred answers, but I’d like to focus on two answers in particular.

I never consciously set out to write characters of uncommon skin color, sexual identity, or philosophical belief. My process always starts with a premise, and from there I ask myself which specific human beings would make for the most interesting plot. Fo...

Last year, some writer friends and I ran a Mastermind group with the idea of helping each other to reach our goals. It was a huge success. And though much of that success is due to meeting weekly to seek advice from our fellow creative entrepreneurs, most of our success was due to setting smart, actionable, measurable goals at the beginning of the year.

To prepare for that planning meeting this year, I read a bunch of studies and advice around goal-setting. I decided to share it here.

Why not...

Where, indeed.

I love traveling. I love to watch people in other cities for how their behaviors differ from the places I know best. You can learn a lot from just being somewhere else. How do they view themselves? How do they view other cultures? How to they negotiate the borders between the two? For the same reason, I make sure to try at least one high-end restaurant as well as as many holes-in-the-wall as I can. What do different cultures view as bare-bones? What do they view as exoti...

In so many parallel worlds, I’m a composer rather than a writer. There was a point in my mid-twenties where I could have gone either way, but I knew that neither of my arts could live while the other survived. So I looked at my possible futures and thought about how I could offer the world the most good. The wind blew from the east that day, and I chose writing.

That said, my passion for music hasn’t diminished. You can see it in characters like Taylor and Marty and Jude. I give them that par...

This answer was first posted on Goodreads. I updated it a bit.

You should read four books per week. Every week. I mean it when I say it. Four books per week. If you don’t have the sit down time, get into audiobooks, and listen while you drive, cook, clean, eat, shop, and shower.

Seriously. You should be reading four books per week, and they should break down as follows: