My check is here!  O my goodness, my check is here!

I am not even going to try to project the sang froid I imagine a  real writer would really have.  Because I'm not real writer. Well, except in as much as I am.  And they even pay me.  Gosh.

So I guess I had better get writing.  I heard from my editor last week promising his first ( Read more... )

A much better day today.  I am still shaky over the loss of my computer -- especially as it now appears that someone swept the car for everything electronic: the DVD player James's parents gave us for these long trips is missing too.  The car was sitting packed an open at the curb as we stood a few cars away bidding goodbye to Grandpa Michael.  The ( Read more... )

Good stuff today. Figured out the ending of that short story. It's only the second short story I've written since college, but it was fun, and something I might try again. I could use some feedback; does anyone want to read the thing? It's urban fantasy with ghosts in it, and about 9,000 words ( Read more... )

Today I tried to write down the story of GILBERT PEREZ in a page or two: a man, a woman, the city, the war, like a fairy tale. Didn't work.  I tried again but it didn't work.  There was no life in it.

Depressing.  Some days I think this book just isn't going to work.

Also, all of publishing may collapse any day now.

Someone send me good

Well, I'm still trying to write my Aztec novel, The Teleportation of Gilbert Perez.  Even after my crisis of imagination the other day, even knowing that it will be very hard to understand the way the Aztecs saw the world well enough to write a story that doesn't simply steal their feathers.

But their poetry.  Oh, the poetry!  The poetry is ( Read more... )

Research for Gilbert Perez  has me tearing my hair out.  I am about to toss in the towel and admit that I don't have a hope of understanding how the Aztecs saw the world, and that I'm about to commit massive cultural appropriation and race fail.  So I am taking a break and instead assembling a list of books that would be better with zombies in them ( Read more... )

Well, here it is, Monday (a holiday here: family day. it's new. whatever). and I've been a full-time writer for a week now. I've spent three mornings and one afternoon at the library, working on what will probably be my next novel, The TELEPORTATION OF GILBERT PEREZ.

In the afternoons and evenings, I got a start on the endless business of the ( Read more... )

So today was my first day working at the library. My first real day "at work" as a writer. At first I couldn't figure out what to do with myself. I fixed a broken link on my new website and wrote on someone's facebook wall (because, yes, I have gone over to the facebook darkside). But then I got rolling and the next two hours went so FAST. I ( Read more... )

Did some actual writing last night using one tool that's guaranteed to get me started: Dr. Wicked's Write or Die.  Thanks, Doctor!   Just a few hundred words in GILBERT PEREZ where I decided to dive into the chapter set in the Mexican prison even though, so far, I've been unable to find out much about what Mexican prisons were like in 1570.    ( Read more... )

Friendslist, save me! I am reading about the history of prisons (interesting!) but so far have not come up with the answer to the question I really want: where would a person be held awaiting trial in Mexico City in the late 1500s?

Anyone know? Or know who would know? Or have a book to recommend?

I already asked at little details, where someone ( Read more... )