Holiday, Schmoliday–Finish That Draft! You Can Sleep Next Year
Hope everyone is having a pleasant holiday! We opted not to travel and to generally be low-key this year, so mine should be relaxing. Unfortunately, I keep watching the clock and calendar, feeling the pinch of approaching deadlines. I have a draft of the fifth Sydney Brennan book due to my developmental editor on January 1st. (My husband and I were brainstorming titles at breakfast this morning.) When we first set the due date a couple of weeks ago, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed, realizing I probably wouldn’t be able to release the book as Read more…
Forget the New Year–Carpe Bibliotheca!
It never bodes well when you disrobe in the kitchen—while making breakfast—because there’s an ant in your pants. Yes, I literally had ant(s) in my pants. It was a fire ant, but the kind that hurts just enough to make you angry for about an hour, not one of the horrible ones. But really, it’s been that kind of week. That’s why this week’s blog post will be light, because of the [cue scary music] Holiday Convergence. I’m sure you’ve all experienced those times, when things come together in your life to make a perfect storm of high stress and low Read more…
Seriously? You’re Playing the Amnesia Card?
This week’s blog post is a quick (or at least somewhat scattered) combination rave and rant. The rave is me sharing a show I’ve been enjoying lately. As for the rant, you may remember a post a while back on things that can jolt you out of a story (How Factual Do You Want Your Fiction?). This week I stumbled upon another very specific story jolter, and I thought I’d share. A lot of people claim we’re in a Golden Age of TV, and there do seem to be a lot of quality shows on television now. I don’t have Read more…
A Stories I Love Holiday Tradition: Thunderheart
Last week, in addition to eating yummy foods we usually don’t take the time to fix (mmm… gravy), my husband and I indulged in another Thanksgiving tradition. Almost every year for—let’s just say a lot of years—we’ve watched the same movie. (I even stuffed it in my suitcase when an earthquake sent us to England during the month of November, but that’s a story for another time.) And it never gets old… Thunderheart is the story of a gung-ho FBI agent, Raymond Levoi (Val Kilmer), assigned to investigate a murder on a Native American Reservation in South Dakota. Tensions on Read more…
Channeling My Inner Blue-Slapper and Making the Decision to Decide
I’m not counting on many Americans reading this post the day it goes live. Most of you are probably either lying in a dark corner in a food coma, still reeling from overeating, or jacked up on adrenaline from elbowing little old ladies out of the way to grab the last [insert most popular item of the 2015 holiday season that will be forgotten by January 4, 2016]. Yes, boys and girls, it’s Black Friday, according to the History Channel not the day retailers traditionally finally go into the black, but the day lamented by Philadelphia cops in the 1950s Read more…
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