About

About the Site:
Unusual Things is the website of science-fiction and fantasy author Max Florschutz, home to information about his published works, an archive of his weekly writing series Being a Better Writer, and current-updates on the progress of his upcoming books, among other things. You can follow him on Facebook, twitter by following @VikingZX, and well as find his works on Goodreads and Amazon.com.

About the Author:

Max published his first book in 2013, an Urban Fantasy Mystery novella titled One Drink. It was followed a year later by Dead Silver, a longer and even more successful sequel. Since then, Max has continued to write and expand his lexicon to the reading world at large, delivering thrill after thrill to his readers.

About Being a Better Writer:
Being a Better Writer is a writing help blog that initially started out on a fanfiction website in response to questions that readers would send. Stuff like “How can I write fights?” or “How do I develop living characters?”

I started writing out responses and posting them publicly, first short ones, and then as the blog became more and more popular on the site, longer, more developed entries explaining different nuances or touching on more difficult concepts. Over time, Being a Better Writer began to see almost as much attention as my published works, with readers writing in to inquire after published hard-copies of the collected posts or with additional questions that I could answer.

At its core, it’s a fairly straightforward series. If you’ve ever heard of Writing Excuses, it’s pretty much the same thing, except rather than three amusing geniuses of discussing writing in silky-smooth podcast form, you just have me writing. Which admittedly undersells what I do, but Being a Better Writer has remained an enjoyable pursuit as well as a great help to many as I do my best to distill over nearly decade’s worth of writing education and dedicated, hands-on experience into something that new and old authors alike can read, enjoy, and learn from.

All Being a Better Writer posts are tagged with such, and can be easily pulled up by selecting the category named—what else?—Being a Better Writer from the drop menu on the right-hand side of the main page. You can also check out the handy search bar for specific topics.

About the Site Title:
In the universe of One Drink and Dead Silver, an Unusual is the title given to any individual who possesses or otherwise makes use of an ability that would colloquially or historically be referred to as “magic.” As a whole, any story I’ve written for that universe (even all the unreleased ones) I have affectionately nicknamed “An Unusual Story” for my own purposes. So of course, naturally I needed to pay homage to this when I kicked off my official site. A little bit more playing about gave me “Unusual Things,” and I really liked the implicit message behind it.

About Face:
Really? Well okay, if you insist …

It’s been several years, and I’m still not sorry for this gag. I think it’s hilarious.

Contact Information:
For all inquiries, leave a comment. That’ll give me your e-mail (visible only to me) and I can reply.

Legal Disclaimer:
This site’s contents and materials (text, photos, materials, etc) posted by the author, Max Florschutz, unless otherwise noted, are owned by Max Florschutz. All rights reserved.

AI scraping of this site is not permitted.

11 thoughts on “About”

  1. Hello Max,
    Your mother sent me the link to your web site. We met through our Icelandic horse connection of course. I very much enjoyed reading your postings. As your wrote about character development, I so identified with his comment ““But wait … As the author, aren’t you the one who decides and writes everything anyway? You make it sound like these characters are real!” ”
    I read the last section of my non-fiction book in development “Rough Riding in the White House: The Advenrtures of the Pony Algonquin and the Roosevelt Children” at a salon last week. I teared up about a pony that died almost 100 years ago. Our characters have to be real for us to write about them.

    If you have an interest, we seem to be blogging about similar topics. Here’s a link to my web site.
    http://musingsonmywritings.blogspot.com/

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  5. Hi Max. My name is Gene Johnson — I’m a reporter with the Associated Press. I’m so sorry about your dad being missing in the landslide, and I’m sorry to reach out at a difficult time. If there is anything you’d like to say or that you’d like people to know about Ottie, feel free to get in touch with me. If not, best wishes to you and your family.

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  6. Max,

    I would have sent a personal e-mail but don’t have your address, so I hope it’s OK to use this more public route. I’ve recently read both of your Axtara books and very much enjoyed them! I’m one of those people who reads the acknowledgments and that led me to find out what happened in Wrangell. I’m so sorry to learn about what happened to your Dad! I lost my own father to cancer not long after returning from my mission. That was a LONG time ago (nearly 45 years). The sting is long gone (and from my current perspective I can see many blessings that came to us from that experience, but I still would NOT care to repeat it even so) but I still think about him probably every day.

    Anyway, I’ve read most of your books and have enjoyed them. It is wonderful to see a little of what you have done since leaving BYU. Keep up the good work!

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  7. Max:

    It was nice seeing you again at LTUE! Just wanted to let you know that I picked up the second Axtara book on Amazon. I enjoyed the first one (as well as the short story “A Game of Stakes”), and I’m looking forward to digging into this one too.

    Hope to see you again at future LTUEs.

    Sincerely,

    Aaron Canton

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    • Hey Aaron! Thanks for reading! And don’t forget the Ryax story (A Trial for a Dragon) here on the site (check that “Free Fiction” tab to find it). I will definitely be at later LTUEs, so keep coming and I’ll certainly see you again there!

      Max

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  8. Max,

    I am new to reading your articles but I greatly enjoyed it today, especially the one on the dragon rider tropes. I agree with them, especially the one where all the dragons have somehow been killed except for a few eggs and a young person unexpectedly has one hatch for him/her and has to save the world. Which is why I decided to try my hand at writing. I was wondering on your thoughts on a society where the dragons allowed human bonding as a way to keep an eye on the humans? In this book they and the main character are also trying to accomplish something, of course, but the key is that the dragons have as much to do with is as the ones they are bonded with?

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    • The truth is any idea can work if you’re willing to put in the effort. A dragon-riding book can work (Temeraire, for example) so there isn’t really (as you’ll see in some of the Being a Better Writer posts, a truly bad idea. Just bad executions.

      Nevertheless, you are going to have to work through the steps of hos such a situation came to be, and how it stays stable, and why.

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