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No, no, NaNo!
So I’m not saying I’m not doing NaNoWriMo. And I’m not saying I am. I’m going to be mercurial and special about it, so there. Life is moving in about a thousand different directions as we speak (I haven’t written much this weekend but… I collected pine cones from the yard, and spray painted them and made a wreath and a tree sculpture thing and designed and painted the Steve head from Minecraft for my eldest kid, while he critiqued every brush stroke and also dealt with his total meltdown at AC Moore–all while still trying to process that he’s likely got Asperger’s and “something else” and there’s nothing that…
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Rock Revival: Draft Zero
I’m very happy at the moment. This weekend I finished the first (zero) draft of Rock Revival. Now, I know, I’ve written books before. I’ve figured out “the method” or whatever of “being a writer” and all that jazz, sure. Except, since having my surgery in 2010 I hadn’t actually finished a novel. Yeah, there was that pregnancy thing that accounted for nine months. But about three weeks after the baby girl was born, I started Rock Revival to my own surprise. I mean, I had other books to write. Speculative books. Good books, surely! Yet, for whatever reason, it’s the story that wanted to be told first (in spite of my…
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The middle of Octember.
These -ember months do seem to pile up rather quickly, don’t they? Last week I went away to the West Coast, spending some time with family. I don’t know what it is about me, but every single time I make a trip like that I somehow think I’m impervious to jet lag. The truth is, I’m terrible with jet lag. Eastbound is nuts. It’s almost been a week and I still haven’t acclimated, not even close. So the last few nights I’ve been up well past 2 AM, then up again at 3 AM with the little girl. So lucidity is not exactly my strong point at the moment. Anyway,…
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The GeekMom Book is Here (And Available for Preorder)
I got a very nice package in the mail today containing one copy of the finished book I worked on with Jenny Williams, Corrina Lawson, and Kathy Ceceri — Geek Mom: Projects, Tips, and Adventures for Moms and Their 21st Century Families. It was a labor of love that started more than two years ago, even before GeekMom.com existed. We’re really excited to share the geeky side of being a mom with the world. If you’re so inclined, you can preorder the book on Amazon, or wherever you so desire. From a writer’s perspective, I do plan one day to write about the million differences between writing and publishing non-fiction,…
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Words are flowing out like endless rain inside a paper cup
I have been meaning to work on The Wind Through the Wheat, but my brain and the characters in Rock Revival are telling me otherwise.
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In the trenches between pain and progress.
So. This is me trying out the new dictation for Mountain Lion. Why am I dictating? That’s a good question. You see, I had a lot of fun in prose. Too much fun. It’s definitely a mixed bag. I’m really excited to be writing again, but it’s been difficult. Just when I started getting in the groove my hands gave out. Thankfully there is such a thing as dictation software. But it’s far from perfect. It isn’t so bad that writing has come to a complete stop, but it’s enough that when it comes to things like blog posts, I figure it’s probably worth it to save the fingers (and…
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Escapism of all stripes
It’s been a busy weekend here in our household, with my husband away at the Escapist Expo most of the time, and me wrangling the babies. I did have a panel there yesterday on geek parenting, and it went rather well–a great audience and, as usual, more questions than we had time to answer. The Expo is really impressive for a first-year con (reminds me of ConTemporal that way) and I’m super excited that it’s right around the corner! This area of the world is quickly becoming home to some fun geek conventions, and I highly approve. Anyway, once the kids have been in bed I’ve used the time for…
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One foot in sea, one on shore
A post in which to say the novella writing is going well... very well. Too well. 9K in four days is pretty much the most I've written in one go in, oh, two years? It has nothing to do with time, since there's hardly enough of that to go around these days.
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Burning down the house. Again.
If you’ve been following this blog for any amount of time, you may notice that I occasionally redecorate. Well, I did it again. The last template was okay, but I wanted something cleaner that had a similar look without the clutter. I’m happy where it is, now! It’s not finished completely, as I’m working on a nice custom header graphic and whatnot. But the layout works, the fonts make me happy (which is a big deal) and… I even changed the blog’s tagline. It’d been a long time coming, and I wanted something that represented the multitude of things I write and post about. So, voila! Writing has been slower,…
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‘Cause I’m Short On Time, I’m Lonely and I’m Too Tired to Talk
The above lyric is from Keane’s “Can’t Stop Now” and it’s apropos for more reasons other than I just like the song. Life, in short, these days, has been nothing short of OMGWTF. I really don’t want to go into the details, ’cause honestly, this blog ain’t that sort of thing. We’re okay. We’re managing. But I hadn’t been able to write a lick in the last almost three weeks due to the insanity of life as of late but… BUT! (Oh, shit, she’s whippin’ out the caps) I wrote last night and came close enough to the middle mark in the novel that I will call it 50% finished.…
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On Feminism and Women Who Rock
The Spark I was sitting in the bleacher seats in one of the music classrooms at UMass, and sort of staring top-down at the Music 101 professor. She walked around the podium and said, “Now, some of you have been asking why we’re not covering the sections of women composers, the ones listed in the book. Well, the truth is that they’re just not very good.” My breath caught in my throat. She continued with a smile, “And it’s just more important that we cover the influential composers.” This was roughly twelve years ago, my freshman year. At the time, I was still hellbent on becoming a singer-songwriter. Hearing the professor–a…
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Jonathan Wood’s No Hero and Yesterday’s Hero are FREE at Wired!
Okay, so granted I had a little something to do with this. But seriously, folks. I’ve known Jonathan since, oh, 2008 or so. He was one of the first writers I “met” doing the spec fic thing through Twitter. We’ve been in a writers group since that time, and I’m consistently amazed by his imagination and writing skill. Not to mention he has a fantastic taste in video games, and we’ve got a shared appreciation for the magic of DragonAge and other epic fantasy RPGs. Also, he’s just a kind, sweet, often hilarious person. It doesn’t hurt that’s he’s also English. 😉 Anyway, a few months ago we serialized his…
