The Day of the Literary Lions has Dawned

Woke up just before 5:00 this morning and lay awake, thinking “Why did I agree to this? Why?” I’m hoping hard that at least one other Literary Lion is roiled with similar apprehension. In black-tie clothing news, I discovered my black top/black skirt combo wasn’t going to work (I had envisioned it looking chic and [...]

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Into the (Literary) Lions’ Den

To my surprise, persistent incredulity, and general befuddlement, I was invited to participate in this Notable Local Writers Fundraiser Gala Thing, put on by my county library system in conjunction with a local independent bookstore. Literary Lions Gala: A Grand Affair, it’s called. It’s next week. Lee Child (is he local to the Pacific Northwest? [...]

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One Trip to the Library Later…

Somewhere in here, I’m hoping hard, is the plot for my next book.  I know who the hero is, and the heroine is starting to take shape, and I have some ideas for the dynamic of their relationship, but beyond that it’s all a daunting blank. Plot = blood; Cecilia = turnip.

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My Date with Destiny, Deferred Just a Bit

I’ve been saying A Lady Awakened will be out in spring of 2011, but it’s now looking like Bantam will fit my debut into the fall of that year, with, hopefully, the follow-up book (as yet not officially titled) to come a few months later. I’ll be honest:  I did indulge, briefly, in fears that [...]

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Sherry Thomas, Are You Kidding Me?

I picked up Sherry Thomas’s latest, His at Night, and tore through it in three days.  (For me that’s fast.) It was a pretty rich book and I have a lot of thoughts on it, which I may or may not distill into something worth saying later, but for the moment this is the thought [...]

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More Twitter Trouble, or, The Eyebrow Lady Means Well

Ugh.  This is squirm-inducing, because it involves personal vanity.  Which I happen to love in fictional characters, but don’t find half so endearing in myself. Anyway, the backstory here is that God, or my gene pool, did not do right by me when it came to eyebrows.  Too few hairs and the hairs are too [...]

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Dammit! I forgot to be interesting!

There are more ways than I ever dreamed of to fail as a writer. I mean, besides not actually being good at writing. You can choose a story that’s too similar to something someone else recently wrote, and come off looking like a pallid imitation. You can get a historical detail wrong, and lose all [...]

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My Photo-Shoot Do-Over

Yesterday I had my second photography session, necessitated by the fact that my shots from the original session were lost when my photographer’s studio was robbed.  I think – fingers crossed – it went better this time.  The first time I just felt like I was squirming, nonstop, under that dreadful sense of exposure that [...]

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The Thing I’m Worst at in the World

There are a lot of things at which I’m fairly hopeless.  Anything that requires upper-body strength, for example.  Higher mathematics, and things that look like it.  (Computer programming; chemistry formulas.)  Bowling, although maybe I already covered that under Upper Body Strength. But yesterday I went to a photographer to get my official author photo done [...]

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Book 2: It’s Official

My editor has given the thumbs-up to my proposal (3 chapters + synopsis) for the second book of my two-book deal. I aspire to one day be more blase in reading her e-mails.  I always have to do deliberate deep breathing when opening one, for fear of… what, exactly?  That this will be the e-mail [...]

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