Did you notice I was gone? (you did? Awwww….) Short story quicker: after numerous delays caused by neither the seller nor the buyer, last week I handed off the paperwork (and got a check) for my NYC apartment. Whew. But this required a sudden (expensive!airfare) trip to NYC, which turned into a “hang around with …
Another fabulous night at the SFWA Pacific Northwest Reading Series, with Fran Wilde, Susan Forrest, and Jason Gurley. It’s always fun to hear three very different styles/voices, in one setting – good for the ear, good for the brain. And it was good to have a distraction from watching portions of the US fail their …
On Monday I realized I’d written myself down the wrong path. Not far, maybe a thousands words or so, but I was coming off the high of an amazing scene, and I let the lizard brain jump to the next amazing thing and it wasn’t until several pages later that I thought – no. This …
SILVER ON THE ROAD is now, officially, the longest book I’ve ever written, and I still have another 75 pages to revise (exactly where Mine Editor sayeth “give us more detail!”) So. Yeah. (for those wondering, that means we’re past the 126,000 word mark. Certain Writers may call that a novella, but for me, …
“…three in the morning, when you’re stone cold sober and standing in a dingy Queens alley over a body that’s only a few hours dead…. Yeah, not the time to appreciate dick jokes.”
Midway through the fourth pass, and something that’s been in there since first draft caught me by surprise with “oh, that’s how this will be relevant later.” Book, c’mon, you’re KILLING me. I also yanked an entire scene out, and figure I can maybe use the character introduced there somewhere else, in a later book, maybe with …
The book I’m working on now is studded with small details – things that may or may not reflect back into the reader, and will probably be overlooked or ignored by most, but were, yes, placed there deliberately, the way a garden architect chooses what trellis to climb each rose on. I do this sort …
Over at Book View Cafe, I talk about travel and research, in “There and Back Again, or “Why are you here?”
To you, anyway. Â To me it’s marked in blood, coffee rings, and inky fingers. Gin & Tonic #4 is a Draft, as of Tuesday. It’s an ugly, messy draft, but it has a beginning, a middle, an ending, and a through-line, so there’s that, and I still have a few weeks to polish it to …
Before I start to whine, let me say that being able to write in two genres (mystery and fantasy) is like getting the perfect hot fudge sundae and being PAID to eat it: it’s really hard to complain. But some day, please the scheduling gods, I will have more than six weeks between book deadlines? …
this is the kind of problem I hate to whinge about, but…. Read More »