What is Love without Strings?
What is love without strings? I’ve phrased the question ambiguously. It could mean, “What is love, without strings?” Is there any love in existence that has no strings on it? We all put strings on our love. We all have conditions, whether or not or how much to love someone else, not for the sake […]
In Honor of Indie, Unknown, and Mid-list Authors
… or “You Won’t Find These in the Average Bookstore Looking at my “to-read” bookshelf for something to read after slogging through Nora Roberts’s Northern Lights… Would someone remind me: why exactly am I reading this? I’m nearing the end, but the end can’t come quickly enough. Right now, I’m rating it at about 2½ […]
One Day in December (a Holiday Update)
It’s the day after Christmas (or close enough, anyhow). And you know what that means: Everyone breathes a sigh of relief that Uncle Albert is on his way home for another year. No, seriously, it means we all return all the gifts that we didn’t actually want. Except that I didn’t get any of those, […]
Are You Having a Merry Christmas?
It’s the last day before Christmas. Each year, the kids at church perform at our Christmas Eve service. And this year, Sondra (of In the Deep) has put together a wonderful kids program, with lots of special music. And I’m happy to have been a part of it. I’ve been trying to spend more time […]
Ideas and Inspirations
Ray Bradbury wrote 65 episodes of a science-fiction anthology series called The Ray Bradbury Theater, from the mid-eighties and into the nineties. I managed to catch a bunch of the episodes when they reran on the Sci-Fi Channel, back when it was still spelled “Sci-Fi.†The Ray Bradbury Theater opened with a shot of Ray […]
Sneak Peek: The Kiss
This goes into the “I probably would never have even dated George, but then he kissed me” category. One of the finished scenes, one that I particularly like, in Chapter 3 of From the Ashes of Courage. BTW, I’ve been wondering whether I should post this novel to my “stories” blog. I usually only post […]
A Belated Holiday Gift: Limited Advance Edition of From the Ashes of Courage
Revision and layout are bolting forward on From the Ashes of Courage, as you can see from the front-cover image here. (Click to enlarge.) It would have been nice to have these for Christmas, but there’s simply no way to get a copy to you in time for the holidays, even if the manuscript were […]
Revising Your Novel
As a writer, I often get asked, how do you revise a novel? Actually, I don’t get asked that. Someone does often ask me what word he wanted to use, as though I as a writer should have a command of words. (I don’t. But that’s a different post.) Of course, if I knew what […]
Revising “From the Ashes of Courage”
Revising a novel can be an exciting and trying process. Exciting, because you get to see a story you’ve been working on for weeks (or longer) finally taking final form. Revision is also when you finalize the themes in your story, because the characters’ story arcs have reached their final form, and you get to […]
Word Counts and Words That Count
Between 11:59 PM tonight and 12:00 AM tomorrow morning, I write 1,182 words, simply by switching from the NaNoWriMo word-count tool to the one built into my word processor. I have 7 more scenes to write to complete From the Ashes of Courage, and most of those are epilogue. Today, I penned over 4,000 words, […]