Trifecta Introduction

What is your name (real or otherwise)?
Snellopy. It comes from a starship pilot from an alien race in a computer game called Star Control 2, that I loved in high school.

Describe your writing style in three words. 
Aliens! Dragons! Humour!

How long have you been writing online? 
Flash fiction since 2011. A few one-off pieces before that, but they were on forums that have since been shuttered. And long ago, DMing in Never Winter Nights. That sort of counts, right?

Which, if any, other writing challenges do you participate in? 
I'm erratic, flitting around between various challenges, based on the prompts and what time I can scrounge to write in. More often than not, I only get to outline in my head what I'd write for it. Most of them have fairly low word counts, so that I am more likely to complete them as I have a short attention span. Here's a partial list:

The 100 Word Challenge

Tobias Mastrgrave posts plenty of prompts


Lillie McFerrin's Five Sentence Fiction

The Parking lot Confessional

Jeffrey Hollar's Monday Mixer

Mid-Week Blues-Buster

Business Card Fiction (though it seems to be dead)

Chuck Wendig has a prompt every Friday on Terrible Minds, and it was his site that got me back into writing.

Describe one way in which you could improve your writing. 
A lot less commas.

What is the best writing advice you’ve ever been given? 
I love Chuck Wendig's Terrible Minds blog. All his advice is awesome. One excellent bit of advice he has is: Finish your Shit. I've a bunch of unfinished pieces that I'm slowly completing. When they're all done, I'll feel a lot better about how infrequently I write.

Who is your favorite author?  
Terry Pratchett, hands down. I loved him as a kid, and when I've revisited him, I've still enjoyed his books immensely (that hasn't always been the case when I've revisited some authors I was nostalgic about).

How do you make time to write?
Spare moments and downtime at work. Weekends and evenings is family time. My wife has said that I can have typing time if I want it at home, but I use that sparingly at the moment - maybe when I'm writing my third omnibus for my fifth series I'll take her up on that more frequently.

Give us one word we should consider using as a prompt. Remember--it must have a third definition.
Pendulous

Direct us to one blog post of yours that we shouldn't miss reading.
I had a lot of fun writing this one: Progress report on Research Subject C1-MMA