By the time I recognized that I had been tying myself up in knots, I was already in a pretty tight tangle. Too happy that the narrative structure of my new story was all sorted out, I was unprepared to find that the plot structure wasn’t cooperating. The story was complete, already framed in my mind; and […]
As usual on Friday morning, I checked my Twitter feed to read interesting news and to see my blog post tweet roll through. It didn’t. What the heck? Didn’t I schedule the tweets? Nope, I surely didn’t. Even worse as you can see, I didn’t post. The post was ready, but I exhausted myself trying […]
Just as with Sparks, my second novel is in the driver’s seat and I’m just along for the ride. For months, when I’ve had spare brain cycles, I tried to figure out whether or not a portion of it should be shown in flashback. Now that finishing it is one of my main activities, I began […]
For the first ten months of the almost three years it took to write Sparks, I had only one objective – to finish writing it. Then I added blogging. I liked managing both – each cleansed my writing palette for the other. Now though, I find myself with a longer list of activities and no […]
Embarrassing but true – I’m suffering through an identity crisis. Not in the sense of real name versus pen name, though that debate rages in some corners of the writing community. As much as I love to read, I don’t recall ever questioning the name on a book jacket. However, I have made sure to […]
After almost a year of disciplined, structured writing time, I find myself finished with Sparks and at a loss for what to do next. There are several more character sketches I can write. My author platform needs work. There are even a couple of short stories I can finish. I’ve two novels in the pipe […]
I’d like to thank my cable/internet company for causing me to miss my scheduled blogging window last night, and giving me a vacation. Although I could post today, I’ll be imposing on a different part of my schedule. So I’m taking the week off and will post this week’s post next week. For my vacation, […]
Someone asked me – earnestly, sincerely – for my thoughts on writing a book. My first reaction was – who me? I’ve not yet commercially published my first novel. What thoughts am I qualified to share? If someone were to ask for my thoughts on software development, I could expound at length. How to immerse […]
It appears there’s a reason that this sinus, cold, virus thing knocked me out of action. I think fate decided to take control of things since I was obviously letting things get – or taking them – out of control. The bug made my eyes hurt; I couldn’t use them for reading or writing. The […]
I’m sure that many of you will agree that inspiration comes from everywhere. Truly – it does. For example, the original thought for the scene that has become the short story, ‘Second Best’, came from watching a cat stalk a bird in our back yard. The cat wasn’t much more than a kitten and I […]
