A couple of weeks ago (in other words, centuries in the past, in Internet time), someone (let’s call her Naive Non-Fiction Author) published an article on one of the big aggregator sites, saying that all self-published books were terrible, and that all self-published authors were deluded fools who write drivel in hopes of parting honest readers ( Read more... )

::blowing dust off the blog::

The Old Retreat Model

Once upon a time, I wrote an article about writers’ retreats, summarizing different types of retreats for different types of writers. The full article is now available for free on my website. I summarized my ideal retreat at the end:

My ideal retreat is an intimate gathering of no more than six ( Read more... )

Every so often, I add to the content of my website, posting articles of interest to writers.


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Way too many years ago, I graduated from Princeton University with a degree in English.  That means I spent a lot of time discussing fine literature, and I wrote a thesis on - I’m not kidding - non-teleological thought in the novels of John Steinbeck.

And now, I write romance novels.

I don’t expect those worlds to meet up very often. I mean, there’ ( Read more... )

I’ve never participated in NaNoWriMo. (Insert long list of reasons why, starting with my early indignant exclamations that drafting 50K words is not writing a novel, and ending with my later understanding that most people who do NaNo seriously understand that fact, but I still have always kept my own writing schedule…)

But this year, I sorta, kinda ( Read more... )

My mother (who is an avid reader, but not a writer) is consistently amazed by the way writers help other writers, especially with regard to self-publishing.  I tell her about the conversations I enjoy at writers conferences or about the way New York Times bestselling authors take time out of their production schedules to beta read my work or about ( Read more... )

Over the weekend, I read an article in my college alumni magazine about campus efforts to battle “effortless perfection.”  For those unfamiliar with this relatively new buzzword, “effortless perfection” is the impression that someone is handling a challenge perfectly, without any visible effort.  It’s the old ‘don’t let them see you sweat’ work ( Read more... )

As you know, Bob and Bobbette, I write full time. I set my schedule each day, determining how to accomplish the writing that must be done, balancing that with the administrative work generated by a career that consists mostly of self-publishing. I don’t have to report to a day-job; I don’t have an external boss.  (Okay, there’s a pretty forceful ( Read more... )

There’s nothing like coming back from vacation to make a person all think-y and reflective and introspective.  Or, um, maybe it’s the calendar change-over doing all that…

I started off 2014 with major plans for my career.  I planned on publishing nine books (the Diamond Brides Series) during the year - I had 3.5 of them written on January 1, so I ( Read more... )

Last week, I drove two hours north to the Pennsylvania woods, where I rented a cabin with Maria V. Snyder for a week-long writing retreat.


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