Every once in a while I get asked for writing advice, either in RL or in Second Life where I run around as a tiny clockwork dragon and hang out in steampunk sims. And I have the same answer for both lives - don’t ask me for writing advice!

Why?

Because I’m not one to ask. I’m a tough old broad who lucked out after a decade of writing fanfiction into ( Read more... )

It's been a while since I posted here and for that I should apologize - but, frankly, I'm one of those people that don't really feel that posting nothing every day is a Good Thing. While there's been things going on here and there I didn't think it was worth wasting the bandwidth for bits and pieces that could be better combined into a decent fat ( Read more... )

With the big push by self-publishers to try and claim their piece of the ever-shrinking readership pie there's been a lot of talk about dumping the "gatekeepers" - meaning the editors and the critics who review books, leaving the decision on what's "good" to the popular masses and the readers who will leave reviews of what they purchase and read. ( Read more... )

Book Review: When Blood Calls by J.K. Beck

When I won this ARC in a contest I was torn about whether to read this book or hand it off to my husband, another rabid Beck fan. Why? Because I felt that I had burned out on vampires, that I just couldn't handle yet another Great Vampire Novel with yet another author's take on the sexy monsters that we've ( Read more... )

As I wait to charge into the first round of edits for "Wild Cards and Iron Horses", let me share some thoughts and ramblings ( Read more... )

One of the hardest things to do is review a poetry book - unlike nonfiction and fiction you cannot simply dissect bad grammar or spelling or moan at the sentence fragments because sometimes good poetry has all of the above. Or none of the above. It is just that hard to decide what "works" and what does not; one of the reasons I don't usually review ( Read more... )