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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
Launched!
I do not know why it has been so hard to write this post. Really, it should be the easiest one ever: When I woke up on Wednesday, August 24, Powerless was no longer on pre-order. Friends reported having downloaded it on their e-readers, making me an officially published novelist, woohoo! It has been wonderful, […]
Culmination point
In a few days, I will officially join the ranks of the published. I will go from being a writer to being an author. For all intents and purposes, I already am. I have held Powerless the novel in my hands. I have seen occasional spikes on its sales charts on Amazon, indicating that someone […]
The Story of Powerless, Part II
First off, let me say that Powerless releases in three weeks–holy crap! If you want to preorder, check the main page to links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc. Last time I wrote on this subject I talked about the two moments of inspiration that ultimately led to Powerless. Today I’m going to talk more […]
The Next Thing
When I left off the original iteration of this blog four years ago, I had just completed and readied for query a manuscript that I loved (and still do). I sent a dozen or so queries off into the world and got mostly silence. Bruised, battered and a little burned out, I shelved the whole […]
The Curve in the Road
Somehow, in the last two months I’ve managed to cobble together enough writing time in the early hours of the day and on weekends to put 47,197 words on 147 pieces of virtual paper. They’re not the best words, not by a long shot. They may not even be very good words, but they’re words […]