Whoa, it’s June. How the frell did that happen so fast?

I’ve spent all month working on Sweetheartcatalyst. I now have an agglomeration of wordage that I’m calling “Chapter 1″. It’s been very slow going, like wading through molasses. I realized that part of the reason for this is… um… apparently, I’m actually writing a crime novel. Something I have ( Read more... )

The good:
I finished “The Collapsing Hills” (a 5K-ish short story) and passed it on to my crit group and have gotten some very useful feedback. Maybe a new light bulb is starting to glow in the murky depths of my writing brain, because I do feel like this is the most “done” first draft of a story I’ve ever managed to produce. Honestly I feel like ( Read more... )

Well, this post is long overdue, but better late than nevah! Back in March, I attended a three day workshop in Madison, WI (“The Fire in Fiction”) with superagent Donald Maass and bestselling author Nalo Hopkinson.

I first heard Mr. Maass speak at the Surrey Writers Convention in 2007. It was an hour-long workshop entitled “Three Types of Tension ( Read more... )

So in the past week or so, I’ve managed to freak myself the *hell* out, twice, with my own writing, specifically with some situations I’ve chosen to put in my current WIP.

First of all, I had a scene where my main character and an important secondary character have to visit a mother and tell her that her daughter has died. And not just died-she was ( Read more... )

So it was back in August that I decided I needed to start over on SHC. But almost immediately, there were a bunch of interruptions, in the form of short stories, novellas, and giant home improvement projects, so for all intents and purposes, SHC was on the back burner. Now I’ve switched to the front burner and am trying to burn off all the brain ( Read more... )

January - I submitted “Algae” to an anthology of novella-length science fiction. I also decided that for my next project, I would condense a pre-existing, old sucky trilogy into a single volume, titled The Free City.

February - I worked on detrilogization.

March - I received word that “Algae” had been accepted! Continued work on detrilogization, ( Read more... )

Ack, somebody stop me from compiling … an alphabetical list of quirks, traits and/or other aspects of personality (positive or negative) that best describe your character. Try to avoid words that are synonyms of each other. For the tough letters (X and Z) you can use words that contain the letters versus starting with them.

Too late, I made yet ( Read more... )

I did another characterization list (..compile an alphabetical list of quirks, traits and/or other aspects of personality (positive or negative) that best describe your character. Try to avoid words that are synonyms of each other. For the tough letters (X and Z) you can use words that contain the letters versus starting with them.)

This one is for ( Read more... )

I made some new “masthead” art for this blog. Hopefully it looks somewhat SF-ish. The two featured characters are from a story that’s on the back burner right now.


( Read more... )