Shameful Confessions and Permafree Book News
This week, I’m sharing a shameful confession and some book news, both in a rather scattered fashion. First, the confession: I’ve fallen way behind lately on my word count. Prepare yourselves for the justification/excuses section, without which no confession of underachieving would be complete. Our household menagerie has gotten complicated lately, what with two stray dogs with health issues and a resident perfect dog that we’re suddenly realizing is not quite so perfect. I suspect single dogs are like only children this way; you don’t realize the level of their dysfunction until they have another dog/sibling to bump up against. Read more…
How Factual Do You Want Your Fiction?
On some level, I always associate suicides with Superman. Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Wasn’t that the opening of the old Superman series, the one in black and white? My brother and I used to watch the reruns on TV when we were children. We’d lie flat out on our bellies, propped up on our elbows, dead to the world until the end of the episode. By then the loops of my grandmother’s cheap red-orange carpet would have carved deep grooves in our arm and elbow skin that tingled as they plumped and came back to life. It was Read more…
The Audiobook Rabbithole, and Reader Poll: What do You Think Sydney Sounds Like?
You know those 10-minute limbos? The lulls when you’ve got something else scheduled soon so you don’t really have enough time to start a real project? Those times are dangerous. During a recent one I thought, eh, I’ll just check out ACX. ACX is an Amazon platform that distributes audiobooks, primarily through Amazon and Audible, but also through iTunes. Checking out audiobooks is one of the things on my list for this year. I love the idea of people listening to Sydney’s adventures on their commutes or while ironing or torturing themselves at the gym. (Maybe because I do none Read more…
Between Edits… Duh, a Book Trailer
A couple of weekends ago I found myself between edits and decided, well, gee, now I could try making a book trailer for Back to Lazarus. Because I have nothing else to do on a Saturday. Sort of like when I spent a day sewing a pleather vest and holster—literally by hand with a needle and thread—for a Halloween trunk-or-treat instead of finishing my master’s thesis or preparing for my upcoming thesis defense. The sewing put a crimp in my typing the next day, but I did have an hour or so of living the Serenity dream (Firefly—cowboys in space), so Read more…
The Second Portion of our Odyssey, with an Ode to the Library
[This post is a continuation, sharing Part Two of our recent journey from East Hawaii Island to the continental U.S. to visit family.] Living on the east side of an island with a honking big mountain in the middle, you get to appreciate sunsets. If the Gulf Coast didn’t disappoint us on that count, neither did the Mid-Atlantic. No, that fleur de-lis-esque shot (I think I just made spell check explode) isn’t from New Orleans, it’s from the car window driving through Winchester, Virginia. By the time we made it to West Virginia (the home of my kin-folk), changing time Read more…
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