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  • Book recs and mini interviews; and Writing, then & now

    Book recommendations & mini interviews Last month, I reviewed R.W.W. Greene‘s The Light Years – highly recommended. I had asked Rob where he got the initial idea for the book. His response: The short version is the shower. I’d just gotten home from a sci-fi convention, and I had a lot of thoughts whirling in…

  • Best night of the week – writers group

    Thursdays are special. My writing friends take me to their worlds. We might spend time with a bounty hunter in Las Vegas or look over the shoulder of a small town Kansas cop. We are in the future – a bleak one – in the Pacific Northwest. We relive the turbulent ’60s in the South. Or…

  • rough draft of Battle Scars is done!

    “The first draft is nothing but your ingredients. Once you have them in front of you–a beginning, a middle, an end, and all your characters–then and only then can you write your novel.”–Tiffany Reisz. I call it my rough draft. Rough, first, whatever. I took a different approach to Battle Scars. I’d worked from an…

  • Is it still Thursday?

    This. In a Bah! Humbug! kinda way. I’m not talking about Christmas. I’m lamenting the frustrations of working with technology. Can that be my excuse for not posting my usual “Thursday Walks” yesterday? If the truth be told, my tardiness is due to two adventures that side-tracked me this week: 1) formatting my manuscript for…

  • the end is just the beginning…

    The last ~4,000 words of my novel were well received at writers group last week. Satisfying, passionate, touching, emotional. Tied up all the loose ends. YES! I don’t want you to think my writer friends just say glowing things because if all they did was squee then I wouldn’t grow as a writer. (Please, if…

  • tonight they hear THE END

    I attend an (almost) weekly gathering of writers here in town. Cathy, Mark, and Marie have eagerly offered their critiques on the writing I’ve subjected them to, everything from Star Wars to historical fiction, poetry to drabbles, and my current endeavor, Keeping the Family Peace. For almost three years, I’ve heard words of encouragement that…