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That Time the Ladies of the House of Worth Meme I Made Broke the Internet
Bonus: my 13 year old is super impressed with me right now.
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The Big House on King Street: Memories of a Haunted Home
I once lived in a haunted house, and I can't wait to do it again.
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These Marvelous Beasts is Here!
Well, more or less. By January 30, you'll have it all...
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Do You Want to be my Alpha Reader?
If you follow me on social media, or anywhere really, you’ll note that I’m currently writing a magical realism novel called Glassmere. The elevator pitch is that it’s Downton Abbey meets Narnia. It’s set in the spring and summer 1914, and is the story of two generations of sisters (Eleanor and Julia who are in their late teens, and Alice and Lucy who are in their late seventies) and their connection to a place called the Other Country. If you want an aesthetic feel, my Pinterest board on the subject is quite comprehensive. Typically when I’m writing it’s behind very closed doors. Once the whole thing is written, taken apart, put…
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How Pinterest and Process Saved My Novel (And Can Save Yours, Too)
Writing a book, as the old adage goes, isn’t the hard part. I mean, yeah, it’s hard. It’s a butt-ton of work. For me, writing books isn’t the hard part. It’s something I do, more or less, whether or not I want to. But while the writing part isn’t exactly a mystery to me, there have been some real challenges over the past few years that have challenged everything I thought about writing. First thing? In 2008/2009, I was learning to write novels. Like, write them and finish them. I wrote a lot between 08-10, until my hands gave out. Yup, literally my hands stopped allowing me to write, and…
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Homesick for fiction.
Having finished the draft of Indigo & Ink, which has occupied the last seven months of my life, I’m now feeling a bit down in the dumps. You know, I really miss writing the book. After that last edit, I had a sense of finality, and while it was very thrilling, in some ways it also left me feeling a bit empty. This probably explains why when my friend Karen mentioned she’d read some of the first chapter, I about fell out of my chair in excitement. Yes, writers are weird. If you hadn’t figured that out yet, you just haven’t met enough of us. Anyway, I haven’t stopped writing,…
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Draft One, Deeper Into the Murk
So, no longer Draft Zero, eh, Indigo & Ink? This is where things get interesting. I’m not one of those people who can let a book draft sit for terribly long. Okay, wait, no. That’s a lie. I can let it sit plenty after I’ve edited the crap out of it, but otherwise it pokes at my consciousness for days until I fix what needs fixing. We can’t always be as disciplined as Stephen King, and if we all wrote the same the world would be boring (or… something?). When I finished Indigo & Ink, I was in the zone, so I decided to keep going. The draft, at one…
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Enter title here…
I’ve been going back and forth with the title thing on this book for the last week, really and truly frustrated that I couldn’t get something that felt right. So today during dinner (no, we were not eating calamari – it was gazpacho and sausages!) the name struck. Indigo and Ink. Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner. Finally something that speaks to two of the main themes of the book and, in my mind, has a rather neat ring to it. And, at least with a cursory search on Google, no other books of the same name. Dark and squiddy. I like it that way. I feel better now.
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Titles, Tentacles, and Trust
Explosition: in a narrative, the presence of excessive exposition. i.e. expository barf Well, 80K has been surpassed. This is good. This is very good. And as I plunge into the last few chapters, I’m realizing I do have more to say in this space. So I’m thinking the draft will be around 95K now… give or take. I have a tentative new title: Mother’s Ink. Or Inkwell. It’s become the center of the story, really (ink that is), and has even lent itself to my own version of the undead. (This is momentous! I’ve never had the undead in a novel before. I feel like I might have leveled as…
