Editing, the holidays, and December’s Random Thoughts

December 20, 2011

I used to think I was a fast writer, now I know I’m a faster drafter. I can crank out a first draft in no time, but the editing process takes ages. Worse, the more editing I do the less I like my work. My vision for the characters gets muddy, the plot gets sloppy, [...]

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To Be Read Pile

December 5, 2011

I tend to be a little paranoid about losing my ‘voice’ as an author, so I don’t read a lot of fiction when I’m in the thick of writing.  I’m working on a new manuscript so my To Be Read (TBR) is about to take over the book shelf.  The books and a bit of [...]

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A moment for poetry…

November 28, 2011

This is not a time for poetry, she said. Stepping into a shaft of sunlight as she broke my heart. It’s a time for practicality. And I thought, could there be a time more desperate for poetry? This isn’t a hundred years ago. You aren’t a hero in some epic tale. The sunlight fell along [...]

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Storytelling

November 15, 2011

We are natural story tellers. We tell our tales around the kitchen table, with grand gestures that make people laugh or in halting, toneless stammers. Every person recounts something, little or big, how the grocery shopping went, how they lived their life. It’s all a story to be told. Children’s tales of adventure, adult tales [...]

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Saying Goodbye

November 7, 2011

I am the youngest in all the family circles I inhabit. Modern culture puts me a hair behind middle aged, but the elders in my life, the ones who stopped counting after 85 years because it just didn’t matter any more how old they were, say I’m still young. I like to sit and listen [...]

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Claiming Her Place

November 1, 2011

The girl could have been pretty. Her long hair swept back around high cheek bones, complimenting her thin angled face, along her jaw line creamy skin framed perfect strawberry lips. But there the pretty ended. Just over left lip a red-pink mark started, it bloomed over her cheek and stretched out to her ear. Her [...]

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Cover Art trumps everything

October 24, 2011

I intended to fill this space with a lengthy discussion on irresponsibility and if a writer needs to be irresponsible from time-to-time so they can have the adventures that make for good fiction. I would evoke Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds, talk about dangerous hobbies and drug use, finally bringing it all around to a very [...]

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The best of fall TV: BBC’s Bedlam

October 10, 2011

Fall is my favorite season for a lot of reasons: the weather, the leaves, and the excuse to decorate with skulls (current skull count: 9, current pumpkin count: 14, both seem to grow every day) and, of course, new fall tv shows. Hollywood embraced fantasy and horror this year, bringing shows that appeal to people [...]

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Clutter

September 30, 2011

I tend to move often, which is to say more than most military families but less than your average hobo. (Probably, trustworthy hobo movement statistics are hard to find these days.) For a while, every July found me knee deep in packing paper and boxes. One of the benefits of all that moving is a [...]

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Beta-Reading and Back Cover Blurbs

September 19, 2011

The cold came from no where. I avoid contact with sick people. I wash my hands several times a day, especially after I get off the train. (Nothing will ever convince me they aren’t Petri dishes.) I eat healthy most of the time, I work out, and I always carry and use hand sanitizer. Still [...]

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