Having just sent the final round of edits off to the formatter I can confidently say that my new book, Rune’s Folly, the first in the Tower of Shells fantasy adventure series, will be making its way into the world in January! This story has been a long time coming. It’s been, at different times…
I’m always super grateful when people ask me how my writing is going. And that’s not just a hollow platitude. I seriously do appreciate it. Here’s why: It’s nice to know people care, that they remember I’m a writer. It gives me motivation to actually have something to tell people when they ask But for…
So I’ve been wanting to write a poem for a while now. It’s one form of the written word that I haven’t attempted since probably junior high English. Today, I decided, was going to be the day I sat down and tried my hand at a few stanzas. Just as an experiment, if nothing else….
This is it. Number 52 of 52 in my year-long quest to write a post every week for Scriven by Garen. I did it, and to my mind at least, I did it well. I’m proud of what I’ve written. Proud that I persevered through the late stages of pregnancy, the early stages of a…
There’s a yellow notebook upstairs sitting on my nightstand. It has a bunch of scribbles in it, the beginnings of an outline for the follow-up to On the Verge. For the most part, I like those scribbles. It seems to me they have potential, but there’s just one problem. The notes end several pages in…
These are the first words I’ve written in days. There is something called NaNoWriMo happening right now. I think I’m supposed to be writing a novel or outlining one at least. I have a list of publications to check out and query for my freelance business. I haven’t looked into a single one. I was…
As promised, this week’s blog post is brief. The end of week one of NaNoWriMo is drawing near and I am behind schedule. I had hoped to write at least a little every day, but that hasn’t happened for a number of reasons. The primary one is that after putting the first 800 or so…
Each year a growing number of writerly weirdos decides to attempt 50,000 words in 30 days. That’s about 1,666 words a day. In 2013, the last time I did NaNoWriMo, I completed just under half that amount (24,014 words) and felt pretty darn good about it. Little did I know at the time that the vast…
It’s been exactly one month since On the Verge went live on Amazon. Sales started off well (thanks, friends and family!), and then steadily tapered off, at which point I was cruising along at 1-2 sales per day. But I have recently hit a long dry spell. No sales for more than a week. Ouch….
It’s been a long road. Almost two years have passed since I began On the Verge, and yesterday it became available on Amazon for the first time. And just like my two human babies, the book came early. I expected to release it on the 22nd, but the amazing team over at Polgarus Studios that…
I am so in love with On the Verge’s cover. Every time I look at it I’m filled with warm fuzzies. The credit goes to my absolutely amazing designer Daniel Cullen. Daniel has been designing covers for 20 years and it shows. He’s been running his current studio, Page & Jacket, since 2003, and has…
I’m in the midst of a last mad dash to clean up and polish everything I possibly can before I call it a day on this story. The book is *this close* to being ready for the digital producers to have their way with it and make it all pretty for your eReaders. In anticipation of…
It’s been over two months since I last posted an update about the novel. Exciting things are happening, and I feel the need to share. First off, no, I never heard from that I agent I was all hopeful about (you can read more about that here). I’m still bummed about it. It feels a…
I’m serious. Where’s my coffee? This week’s post marks the halfway point of the year commitment I made to Scriven by Garen. I have been writing weekly blog posts for 26 straight weeks. I’ve learned a lot so far: 1. Writing short, polished pieces each week helps keep me on point. Writing done well is…
I’ve been feeling a bit low these past couple of days. It’s a funk I get into every now and then when things aren’t going how I thought they would. Expectations can be deadly. For starters a flash fiction piece I entered in a writing competition didn’t make it into the top ten and so…
I almost didn’t write a post this week. My manuscript needs my attention now, and it’s hard to find time to write. When I do scrounge together a few minutes my scrappy little novel calls my name. I significantly revised the first fifty pages and resubmitted them to the potential agent (for a recap of…
This is going to be a short post. The reason: I have a lot of work to do. Why do I have a lot of work to do? Let me explain. I read this amazing article on Medium yesterday and it inspired me. It’s called Submit Like a Man: How Women Writers Can Become More…
Perhaps the most surprising thing I’ve learned about this writing a novel thing is that the actual creative act of stringing nearly 90,000 words together into a coherent story was the easy part. It was fun. Even the stuff that at the time didn’t seem so great, like when I had to rewrite the first…
Some days on this writing journey of mine (okay, most days) I feel like a bit of a faker. There are certain professions when the transition from amateur to professional is fairly clear. Usually the shift is marked by some kind of degree, a test, or a swearing-in ceremony. If you pass these hurdles you…
“I’ve discovered that rejections are not altogether a bad thing. They teach a writer to rely on his judgment and to say in heart of hearts, ‘To hell with you.’” – Saul Bellow Bright and early this morning I got the first rejection note from my second round of agent queries. So far I have…
