Say When

So, I quietly did Camp NaNoWriMo in April. I thought maybe without the fanfare of announcing I was doing it and worrying about write-ins and taking part in the community (although all those things are great, and a wonderful part of the experience of NaNoWriMo) I would be more focused on the writing and less …

Cast of Players

I've been mulling over the vampire novel, and decided I need another character, another foil. It just wasn't working with the characters already in there, I need more people. So, I'm expanding the cast by at least one, possibly more later. You know what this means, right? MASSIVE re-write coming. Got some ass-kicking to do …

Out, Out, Damned Words!

UPDATE: I've put up a new page with the chapter in question. You can find it under the Fiction tab, labeled "Revenants Abroad." After consulting with my beta reader/editor (aka GypsyScarlett)  I'm cutting the first two chapters from the vampire novel and going back to the original opener, which had become Chapter Three. I feel …

You know it’s a bad sign when…

...the novel you're working on makes you cringe at the idea of actually showing it to someone. So what to do. I can toss the whole thing, forget it ever existed, and start something else, hoping it'll be better. I can revise, losing large chunks of what I've already written and take the story in …

Hi-ho, Hi-ho, off to revise I go…

So the revisions on the vampire story are coming along, albeit slowly. I'm having a weird experience with it, though. As I read along, I'm finding that what I wrote in the first draft is often not matching up with the flow of words I hear in my head. It's as if I'm reading someone …

Spring!

TO SPRING by: William Blake (1757-1827) THOU with dewy locks, who lookest down Through the clear windows of the morning, turn Thine angel eyes upon our western isle, Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring! The hills tell one another, and the listening Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turn'd Up to …

Toy, Amusement, Mistress, Tyrant, Monster?

‘Good novels are not written, they are rewritten. Great novels are diamonds mined from layered rewrites.’ Andre Jute I suspect most writers know this, but every once in awhile you run across someone who doesn't believe in revising or rewriting, as if their prose is sacred in its original form. I'm having a hard enough …

Traction

The snows are beginning to melt and turn into a slushy mess, although many of the sidestreets are still impassable without chains, and not much better with. Several weeks ago as I raked up the last of the maples leaves in my front yard I found my daffodils were already poking up through the ground! …