March 13, 2020
Grey has been brought to life in an amazing live read from the UK!
Grey has been brought to life in an amazing live read from the UK!
More snippets! More Notte! I hadn’t really planned for him to be in this scene, but here it is, anyway!
Just showing off the new business cards because they’re PRETTY.
All my books are free for 24 hours! Get ’em while they’re hot.
It sounds like exaggeration, does it not? I was there, and it is still difficult to credit.
I’m doing a life-change in my ongoing battle with chronic pain. And it’s working.
Sir Pratchette wrote 400 words a day to create Discworld. Imagine what you can do with yours.
It is my great pleasure to introduce you to my latest tale, FOR DAWS TO PECK AT. Get it free via the newsletter, or pick it up at Amazon!
This week, let’s make ourselves a pact. I’ll stop comparing myself to other writers – and so will you.
Do you know this game? If you’re a writer, you do: It’s where you write a draft, but it’s not right, so you put it aside and try again. And again.
If this describes you, congratulations! You’re a writer. And there’s hope for your draft.
She guided me – taught me, which by design should not have been possible – to never kill children, to avoid the unwisdom of well-armed cities. She
taught me, friend, to stop before my prey would die.
I had discovered a state of existence other than hunger, and I wanted more. Tranquility spins a siren-song of its own.
Tiny yearning tugged at me. What would I find, if I could find my way there?
They did not grow old. They never knew illness. They could be injured, but they healed, and they never simply lingered. All this was why Jonathan made no sense.
Just a sample from a new story I’m working on. (Context? What’s that?)
This was amazing food.
Writing after a dry period is really hard, but there’s no secret to getting back into it. There are only a few simple steps.
These two things seem contradictory. Spoiler alert: they’re not.
We write our stories, and we do the best we can. For many of us, that means we write from perspective born of backgrounds we didn’t control, educations we weren’t aware were cheap, and information we didn’t know was dated.
I’m going to tell you precisely why I love Neil Gaiman’s work, and I’ll do it by breaking down one of my favorite short stories.
I have been given an AMAZING gift and I’m out of my mind with joy.
The reason we feel the need to hold baby creations up to some 30-year pro’s for comparison is because our culture teaches us to judge all art according to salability – but salability is not the point of art.
So I wrote today for the first time since my dad died. It was not, shall we say, a *good* experience.
That power. Lips could lie but power could not.
I was in a van with Robin Goodfellow
and some Shadow’s Breath rando, and I had no idea where we were headed.
We carried stories from town to town, transmitting parables like pathogens, connecting people via the thin threads of empathy and imagination who would otherwise never meet.
Behold: a four-minute sample of this excellent, excellent audiobook. Enjoy!
The voice actor, Kain Foster, is an unbelievably talented artist, and embodies Harry in a way that gives me chills.
So many things seem eternal, seem, in the moment, to be without end and culturally permanent scars. The great flood; the memory of dragons; the knowledge that there are demons in the dark.
I now present an unedited snippet from Notte, the dramatic hero of my WIP. SO dramatic. Oh my.
This month is not about producing something publishable. It’s about teaching yourself to just keep writing, to ignore the inner editor, and to let yourself just spill words onto the page.
Fellow creatives, Stan Lee left big shoes to fill. We have some work to do.
“Do your words” may be the most important words ever for writers.
A bit of writing process and a brand-new NOTTE snippet.
There’s code in this one. I promise you don’t have to understand it. Trigger warning: death by choice.
SPOILER WARNING
(If you’ve read The Sundered, you’re good to go. Otherwise, head back to the short stories for safer fare.)
Nobody’ll find me here.
Fantastic art by the fantastic Sixelona, who’s one of my favorite readers.
SPOILER WARNING
(If you’ve read The Sundered, you’re good to go.
SPOILER WARNING
(If you’ve read The Sundered, you’re good to go. Otherwise, head back to the short stories for safer fare.)
There was that moment of hitting the button, the moment of relief
that this was over and life could go on, that the Sundered were dead and
the crisis averted.
The following is the letter Notte left on Grey’s dashboard in the beginning of Strings.
Grey, unfortunately, never got to read it, but we can.
The winners have been chosen! Congratulations, all. I’ll be sending out an announcement in the newsletter and reaching out to the winners later today!
This is the first time a store owner has said “yes” to me, and I am absolutely over the moon. To celebrate, I’m running a giveaway. 🙂 Read the details and enter below!
Hey. Creative soul, I’m talking to you.
This is your sign not to give up.
The tower was filled with breaking. Breaking wills, breaking minds, breaking cries. At every turn, every landing, even every stairwell, Saqalu draped and twisted, wings out, faces stretched, and if they were aware of me at all, they told me to run.
Flames dance thanks to exothermic reactions, a process that releases energy to its surroundings in the form of heat and light.
So did she.
She sort of… skipped, boots barely touching the treacherous ground, keeping on her feet even as I slipped and staggered and relied solely on her grip to keep me on mine.
Just a short, dark excerpt from my current WIP, Beloved Notte. Enjoy!
Yet another snippet from Notte! Unedited, messy, etc. Enjoy!
Horse’s instructions seemed simple: I was to find the city of Mercy; to locate the inn called Pearl’s Bottom; to rent a bed, yet not use it, and instead wait in the public room below for a week and a day.
Not this time, life. You don’t get to win this round.
I might as well call this ‘how to get published.’
Things are dark. Very dark. It’s time to ask yourself an important question: why keep going?
Here’s a lie I’ll bet you’ve been told: “You have to figure out what you want to do before it’s too late.”
Fellow writer, this will not feel good to read, but it is VERY IMPORTANT.
I got so many requests for books on outside Amazon that I decided to give Draft2Digital a try again. Here are the results.
Two of my favorite go-to videos when I’m feeling down about writing. Take a few minutes and watch. Your heart will thank you.
Pull up your trousers and tie your shoes. This year is going to be a fight.
For those of us who need to write, there’s good news: you can still be a writer even if you can’t write every day.
Bad Crap is happening. No matter where any of us fall on the political spectrum, we can see that. It’s frightening. It hijacks imagination and energy, leaving only fear. So what’s a creator to do?
I didn’t grow up seeing strong women represented – and neither did the rest of my generation. There was a cost.
Fellow writer, this is an important fact: It’s okay if someone doesn’t like your book.
I talk a lot about not giving up. I rarely touch on the cost.
Bad news: you will never FIND time to write. Good news: there is still hope for you, struggling writer.
May these encourage your creativity, whatever else you do. Enjoy!
This is it. We are MOVING.
I have rarely been so excited.
A ton of writer’s quotes to help you get through it all. Nothing fancy. Just encouragement. Enjoy!
“Frothy,” by the way, is going in my bio.
Note: this is a really simple recipe. You do not actually have to be precise about any of these ingredients.
Are there times when you’re unwilling to say you’re a writer?
Tomorrow is my 11th anniversary. Yay!
I’m using up my remaining “free” days as an Amazon author and giving them to you—starting tomorrow. 🙂
Bad thought-habits are hard to break.
I know I’m not the only one who struggles with them. For all of us who must deal with poisonous doubts spewing from our abused subconscious, I present the Doubting Writer’s Manifesto.
Tomorrow is my 11th anniversary. Yay!
I’m using up my remaining “free” days as an Amazon author and giving them to you—starting tomorrow. 🙂
First off, congrats to the winners of the fantabulous printed books giveaway. 🙂 Second, I have some news about my books.
Guess what? I’m moving – and I’m giving away the older copies of my books! This is your chance to get hold of my print books for free.
Readers and writers both keep telling me they love the bonuses and the price, so I’ve opted to keep this party going a couple more days. 🙂
Write. Paint. Create. Don’t let the darkness of this world stop you. Every time you pick up the pen, you’re pushing it back by inches.
GUESS WHAT GUESS WHAT? HALF-SHELL PROPHECIES IS LIVE!!!
I’m so excited about this that I’m thrilled to offer you BONUSES. 😀
Sometimes, we choose to do things not because they’re the only way, but because they’re the kinder way.
Well, here we are! We survived. Not all in one piece, but here, nevertheless.
Since my last update, my husband has been through a couple of surgeries, more than one miracle, and a TON of physical therapy.
When your muse to you, it’s giving you the tools to become a great writer. Let me show you how.
This year, you need to write. The power you hold as a storyteller is without measure.
Pain changes your character. It’s important you know how that character handles it.
The events of the last few days have been so awful, so violent, so terrible, that I find my attempt at equanimity slipping away. I cannot be silent.
Ta-daaa! I am so happy to announce this new book. It’s all but finished, and today is the cover reveal.
Writer’s freeze: when you know where you need to go, and maybe how to get there, but when you sit down to write it, your brain just stalls.
Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love the current crop of urban fantasy out there. But once in a while, it’s really, really nice to find something else. Something that reminds me of Charles de Lint more than Faith Hunter.
This movie is important.
I need to tell you how important.
There are spoilers.
Today, a black friend of mine posted a picture of himself, unsmiling, in a restaurant – the owners of which had chosen to decorate the walls with pastoral scenes of slaves picking cotton. I’m sorry. But that’s not enough.
Your location affects your other characters and plot every bit as much as your protagonist, antagonist, awesome sidekicks, eponymous heroes, or sarcastic love-interests.
Weird question, isn’t it? But if you don’t know the answer, your characters might not be 3D.
Fingers crossed, knees bent, hopes raised, and prayers raised: it’s the final countdown, and my heart is firmly lodged in my throat.
This is a really simple, helpful way to understand “show, don’t tell.”
Writer’s block can be summed up in two ways: Being afraid to write because we think it sucks, and not knowing what to write next.
Your characters didn’t appear the moment you write the first page. Just like in your own life, they were influenced by someone else—for good or ill. Understanding why your characters respond the way they do is crucial to character development, and knowing who influenced them is a key part of that.