Backing my way into consistency
So it’s been a month since I last blogged! I knew this, and yet, the month passed in one of those hazy modes that felt like there might have been a week or two buffer thrown in there. It was […]
Writing Process
Revisiting some old (fictional) friends
In April I blogged about going with the flow of some time-worn astrological advice to revise some fiction that had been rejected. With Mercury again in retrograde this month, while I got back to work on another dystopia that I’d […]
The story behind the story: Liliya and the Lost Relics of Bygone Futures
I am so pleased and proud to announce that one of my favorite short stories has found a home! “Liliya and the Lost Relics of Bygone Futures,” a new take on an old folk tale series, is live over on […]
The Raccoon Rescue sequel: Baby raccoon dystopia
Last weekend I completed my first draft of Raccoon Retreat, the sequel to Raccoon Rescue. It came as something of a surprise: writing the book has been a slog, and I thought it might take at least until the end […]
Rejection and revision: A retrograde story
I’m not much of a superstitious person. I take most everything mystical with a heavy dose of science-based skepticism. (For that matter, I take other things that way, too. I’m not, for example, likely to believe that medication cures all.) […]
Wake up! Could you be taking your writing skills for granted?
I don’t normally blog about my day job, not least because I already mix genres enough as it is; why add business-to-business content marketing to the jumble? In fact, I’ve thought for a long time that marketing and fiction, for […]
Q&A with College Writing Students
A couple of weeks ago a longtime friend asked me to join her class of 19- and 20-year-old college students to talk about writing as a career. I joined virtually, via Skype, and had a good (if somewhat short) conversation. […]
Sensitivity readers sensitize… they don’t censor
The last year has seen a rather contentious debate over whether sensitivity reading — the practice of having stories critiqued or edited by people who represent the marginalized communities from which characters might come — constitutes censorship. This actually isn’t […]
Planner, Pantser, Plantser
I first came across those terms in 2016, when I got involved in my first (and, it turned out, last) NaNoWriMo. “Planners”: self-explanatory. They outline their plots, they work out detailed character descriptions, they worldbuild intricate settings. The idea is […]
Creative ebb, practical flow
When I first started to write again a couple of years ago, it was amazing. It felt like the tap would never turn off. The ideas flowed free and plentiful, and it was bliss. That lasted throughout last year’s layoff, […]