The Reading List 2023, Part I

Long-time readers of this blog may remember my sharing of my reading list. Why share my reading list? Well, I figure if anyone’s actually reading me, they may be interested in what I read. Also, maybe you’ll find something here that will interest or excite you and you’ll be inspired to pick it up. Note […]

The Thicket

About a month ago, maybe two, I don’t quite recall, I started working on something new. It came about in an odd way for me, because I knew three things about it before I had set a single word to page: The title. This is really unusual for me. Titles rarely come so early in […]

Pulling the Thread

Last year I got a t-shirt for volunteering at an event sponsored by our local Soil & Water Conservation District. I liked the shirt: it fit me nicely and it has a nice logo. It also had a loose thread at the hem on the bottom. Even though I knew better, I pulled the thread. […]

Flexing the Muscle

First, let’s be clear about one thing: I know that the brain is not a muscle. The physical brain is a collection of neurons, glial cells and blood cells, wrapped in a membrane full of fluid. It is not a muscle. It cannot move. It can’t go out for a brisk run. It can’t lift […]

Pound, Pound, Pound

Yesterday morning I did something that I a) thought I would do several weeks ago, and b) thought I might never do: I typed ‘###’ at the end of my WiP. In case you don’t know, ‘###’ is a fancy way of saying, ‘THE END.’ This brought to a close the first stage of what […]

Too Many Twists?

I just finished a well-regarded thriller/horror book. I cracked it open a few days ago with great anticipation. When I joined Twitter and started engaging in that world, this author started popping up everywhere, and I’ve been meaning to get to one of their books, and I finally did. The book itself was…okay. It was […]

Finished, and Not-so-finished

Happy 2023. When I started thinking in earnest of this post to wrap up 2022 and set up 2023, I was going to start by saying the year ended a lot like it began, with me working on revisions of a project created long ago, but a quick search of the “archives” revealed that this […]

Giving Thanks

Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of doing something I haven’t done at least since a run of glorious Indian Summer (apologies for the phrase, I just don’t know what to call it now) days in October: I woke up in a warm house. For most people checking out a writer’s blog, this is no […]

Missing in Action

I’m writing very off-the-cuff today. Normally, when I write these blog posts I draft them in a Word document and edit them heavily, often over several hours or days. However, life has been such that even when I have an idea for a post, I rarely get to sit down and work on it. So, […]

Of Dogs and Tricks

When our departed and much-beloved German shepherd, Cassie was well into her middle age, she did something “old dogs” are reputedly unable to do: she learned a new trick. We discovered this trick on a Thanksgiving Day. After the meal, we all staggered away from the table to comfortable parts of the house to collapse […]