Monday Meanderings
One of the key parts of a good story is the use of detail: not exhaustive, generic detail, but the right handful of details to shine light on the heart of the story. Of course, in direct contradiction to that statement, that's not exactly w......
Song Styles
This post contains indirect potential spoilers for Unnatural Causes, a book which is still in the editing process and thus some ways from submission, much less publication ... which makes the odds of remembering an unspecified song reference, out of co......
Monday Meanderings
I've been quiet for a while because, almost three weeks ago now, my desktop crashed with a dramatic bellyflop, leaving me to the tender mercies of my old laptop, (mostly) affectionately know as the Frankenlaptop. It is called the Frankenlaptop fo......
Song Styles
Happy Mother's Day to all the moms, grandmoms, foster-moms, stepmoms, like-a-moms, expectant moms, even fur-moms ... and all the moms I might have forgotten.Because it's my day for songs, this one seemed appropriate:Mom - Meghan Trainor...
Monday Meanderings
I feel as if there's a constant tension in my creative process between the old and the new.As a writer, I'm restless: always moving on to new worlds, new characters, new ideas. I love short stories in part because it enables me to take a sn......
Song Styles
When I first started writing Scylla and Charybdis, I put together a soundtrack for it: songs appropriate to the overall plot / theme, specific characters, relationships, and some choices for the gender elements that were just plain bratty (s......
Monday Meanderings
When I say I enjoy creating things and being creative, I mean it in two ways. The first is the standard usage: I like the invention, putting together something out of nothing or the mental bits and bobs of everything. The intellectual......
Song Styles
I've spoken before about the difficulties of arranging certain tunes for harp, primarily centered around accidentals and key changes. What exactly does that mean?Between the notes of the musical scale lie sharps and flats. The easiest way t......
Monday Meanderings
Some marketing advice will tell you to build a brand: a tagline, phrase, description of the type of books you write that will attract readers interested in them ... a way of saying, "If you like this element, you'll find it in all my work." ......
Song Styles
I mentioned earlier in the month that there are two romance stories in Surgeburnt, one in the past storyline, one in current events. It provides me a lot of opportunity as a writer to compare and contrast, though my narrator may be in denial abou......