Hi, The previous post was about the next few novels or novel series I intend to work on this year and for several years after that. My main focus at the moment is on trying to finish my novella, Flood and Fire, but it hasn’t been as easy as I originally hoped it would be. …
Hi, The previous post, “What I’m Working On,” was about my plans for finishing and publishing my novella, Flood and Fire, and its sequel, The Jagged Man. If I can somehow manage to complete those two books and get them ready for publication this year, I will start working on Murder Between Friends, the first …
Hi, If you’ve been following this blog for a while you’ve noticed that I have been (in between all of the household and medical interruptions) trying to complete two particular tasks, finishing my novella, Flood and Fire, and re-editing its sequel, The Jagged Man. Sadly, I haven’t made much progress on either of them. Flood …
Hi, New Year’s Resolutions (NYRs). I wonder why we choose the start of a new year to resolve to accomplish something we have probably have been meaning to do for some time, but didn’t manage to get it done earlier. If the task was important, why didn’t we do it when we first thought about …
Hi, [Medical and Literary Updates: I’m finding it difficult to focus for long periods of time, which makes the writing more difficult, of course. Some of it’s mental fuzziness, although most of that disappeared after I stopped taking pain medication, The rest of it is because of my daily routine now. One of the things …
Hi, [Medical and Literary Updates: I have done a little more writing, but not much. I need to push myself over the next few weeks to finish the first draft of the novella. My thumb has (almost) healed nicely. My whole hand is stiff when I wake up in the morning, but it gradually loosens …
Newsletter 58 – March 8, 2024 Hi, No one is perfect. We all have our flaws. I certainly have my share, and I’ve been struggling with some of them lately. I have lots of ideas for novels I would like to write, but I find I spend a lot of time planning and plotting and …
Newsletter 039 – May 26, 2023 Hi, Quick Update: The first draft of Flood and Fire is now about 26,000 words, but far from complete. I’m working on it a couple of hours a day, in between video training on some of the software I’ll talk about below. I usually lose a quarter of the …
Newsletter 037 – April 28, 2023 Hi, Note: (4-29-2023) The winner of a free autographed print copy of Jagged Man is Diana Hardt. When the book is republished (hopefully later this year) she will get one of the first copies of it. Congratulations, Diana. The newsletter this time is just a brief (semi-mild) rant about …
Newsletter 029 – December 23rd, 2022 Hi, The previous newsletter was about story openings. This one is about how to wrap a story up, and whether writers need to know exactly how a story will end, and whether they need to know exactly what words they will use to end it. As you saw in …