#butfirstcoffee
Old Friends and Archtypes
Once characters, fully formed and alive, populate an authors head, they and their friends and relatives keep coming back. You may remember the complicated family connections in The Ashmead Heirs, in which the old earl’s bastards were named in his will and given all the unentailed property. The Bensons and the Caulfields and their friends […]
Hitting Milestones
One down and one to go in my parade of novellas. “Well Done, Harry” went to the editor Friday. To get it there I had to consolidate comments from my beta readers***, edit it, add an author’s note and my bio, and proof it word by word. For that last step, I’m now using the […]
Up To My Neck
I was up to my, er, neck in alligators last week with an electrician coming and going, calls aimed at hiring painters, multiple church meetings, my weekly volunteer gig, a Belles meeting regarding our planned collections, and follow up to that. In spite of my delicate dance through the swamp, I got a newsletter out […]
Dog Days
Life, as always, rolls along, sometimes aiding the writing, sometimes interfering. Dogsitting, for example. I always swore I would never call a small animal my “Granddog” no matter how adorable and affectionate he might be. Family is family; dogs are dogs. But lately I’m softening. My daughter’s dog visited for the weekend while his hoomans […]
Summer Nights
After two weeks of evening and nighttime storms, summer nights have been pleasant here in the urban wilds of eastern Pennsylvania for the past several days. We went to the Jersey Shore on the 4th, had a lovely dinner, and walked in the surf watching the little coquina shells burrow into the sand every time […]
Summer Daze
Do you define the beginning of summer as Memorial Day? I tend to, meteorology aside. First of course, we remember the fallen, but it is always a joyful, if hectic, time around here. No parade this year, alas. We headed to the shore last week–feet in the surf, towel on the beach, toes in the […]
Buzzing!
How did I get so busy? I’ve been going in circles the past two weeks, so much so that I didn’t even get to this blog post last Monday. First of all, writing writing writing. “Music in the Night”, a novella for the Dragonblade collection, Dukes All Night Long, is finished! I typed THE END […]
A Writer’s Brain
In order to produce a good story, your author needs to climb into the story, if she can. Focus and imagination are required. With luck, she’ll be as involved with the characters as you are when you read a good one and lose track of the world around her. Alas that is not always (sometimes […]
Heading Down a Rocky Road
Staring at my lovely pink planner I’m a bit overwhelmed. Just a bit. I can do this. I leave on Saturday for a week away with my Grandson—more on that later this week. There is a long list of things I need to do before I depart. There are also church commitments, family commitments, and […]