Raima Larter - Author

Drabble News

2026-03-19T15:13:00.000-06:00

Just a quick note to let you know that my drabble (a short micro fiction piece that is exactly 100 words) entitled Ardha Chandrasana won Third Place in the Drabble Readers' Choice Awards for the Speculative Fiction Writers Association. You can read it on their website here!

And while you're at it, take a look at the other drabbles and stories published by this organization, which has become one of my faves among the various writing groups I'm in. We help each other through critiques, participate in various contests and prompt-writing activities, work together on craft topics and other writing-related issues, and much more.

If this sounds interesting to you and you write speculative fiction (scifi, fantasy or horror) consider joining us. Go here to learn more about the group and how to join. We'd love to have you!

A Year of Poetry

2026-02-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

Last month, while thinking over what I wanted to focus on in 2026, I quickly realized the answer was: poetry. I have spent years taking many classes centered on writing poetry, including one last summer at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, and I love writing it.

There's something about creating a poem that is, for me, different than the pleasure I find in writing stories or novels (or even blog posts!) To write a poem I somehow access a different part of my brain, and it just feels different (in a good way) when a poem comes together.

I've experienced similar feelings while playing the piano, sight-reading a piece of music in a choral group, or even (weirdly enough) doing a mathematical derivation. Weird, I know, but it's true, and I've talked to enough people about this to know I'm not alone.

So, after thinking this over in January, I decided I would be more intentional about writing poetry. Instead of waiting to take a class before I put pen to paper to try writing a poem, I would do it without a teacher telling me to--the problem was, I still couldn't get started.

I asked a former poetry teacher of mine who also works as a writing coach if she would mentor me, and she agreed. As we talked about what I wanted from the coaching experience, she came up with a name for it: "Raima's Year of Poetry." It made me laugh, I admit, but it's really helped to have a name for this project I'm doing.

I meet with my coach every couple of weeks, which has been hugely helpful to me in discovering the issues that were blocking me. I also joined a critique group of other poets. We meet monthly, on Zoom, and just having a deadline to get a poem written and submitted every month has worked miracles.

The thing is, I knew how to do all these things with my other writing. I am starting to understand what was stopping me from writing poetry, a thing I love to do, and am happy to report that I've written two brand new poems this year already, and revised a couple of older ones. So--things are off and running in my Year of Poetry and I couldn't be happier.

Happy 217th, Edgar!

2026-01-19T08:00:00.004-07:00

NOTE: I originally published this post in 2016 but the material is just as relevant today as it was ten years ago. Here you go--from the archives:

On this date in 1809 a boy named Edgar Poe was born in Boston, the second child of a couple of touring actors. His father disappeared soon after he was born and his mother died a short time later, leaving him an orphan. John Allan of Richmond, Virginia, took Edgar in as a foster son and we now know that boy by his full name: Edgar Allan Poe.

I was a huge Poe fan at the age of ten or so and read as many of his gothic horror tales as I could get my little hands on. This man knew how to tell a gripping story, one that caught and held a reader's attention, and his work certainly held my attention. I loved his poetry, as well, but it's only in recent years that I've learned another impressive fact about this important writer: Edgar Allan Poe invented the detective story.

Yes, before Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes or Agatha Christie introduced us to Poirot and Miss Marple, Poe wrote about C. August Dupin, an expert in "ratiocination," as it was known then. The word "detective" did not exist at the time Poe was writing, but the ability to reason things out with a nearly-supernatural ability (ratiocination) was of great interest to readers in those days.

Arthur Conan Doyle gives Poe credit for inventing this genre: "Each [of Poe's detective stories] is a root from which a whole literature has developed...Where was the detective story until Poe breathed the breath of life into it?"

Indeed, the formula used by Conan Doyle so brilliantly can be seen in its entirety in Poe's three detective stories -- "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" (published 1841), "The Mystery of Marie Roget" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1844). We have the brilliant detective, Dupin, his companion -- a "normal" fellow who is Poe himself and serves as the narrator of the story about Dupin's amazing crime-solving abilities -- and a police chief, Prefect G-, a fellow who tries hard, but needs Dupin's skills to solve tough crimes.

Poe explained his intent in writing these detective tales and a fourth story, "The Gold Bug," (which is similar and involves a code-breaking protagonist), as an attempt to arouse intellectual excitement in his readers by involving them in solving puzzles. He contrasted this with his intent in writing the Gothic horror stories I so loved as a child (such as "The Fall of the House of Usher.") These were meant to arouse emotional excitement in readers, and they certainly succeed in doing that.

His poetry, though, had a different intent altogether. To Poe, poetry was only meant to express beauty. And while his poems are, in fact, beautiful and metrical and basically like music, he never strays far from his focus on the dark and mysterious side of life.

Poe's own life ended in a mystery. He was found injured one evening on a roadside, beaten and delirious, and died in the hospital soon thereafter. It is now thought that he was involved in some sort of ballot-box-stuffing scheme and got caught and beaten for it, but the full truth remains shrouded in the past. Edgar Allan Poe died on Oct. 7, 1849, at only 40 years of age, after a brief, brilliant career as a writer who changed the course of literature forever.

I'll end with a quote from his most famous poem, "The Raven." Published in 1845, this poem is the piece that made Poe a household name. Many children (including yours truly) memorized this first stanza and can still, decades later, recite it from memory:

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,

over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore--

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

"'Tis some visitor," I muttered, "tapping at my chamber door--

only this and nothing more."

Annual Writing Report

2025-12-30T08:00:00.027-07:00

It's nearly the end of the year and time to do my annual report on writing accomplishments and activities. It's been a good year! I had some goals in mind when the year started and met most of them, but a few unexpected and unplanned-for things happened as well, all of them good.

First, I set a goal to submit more stories and poems this year than in recent years. My goal was 75 submissions, a 50% increase over last year, and I met that goal and then some, with 77 submissions. This effort was helped along by participating in the Rejection Competition, in which writers compete with one another to receive the most rejections. This, of course, requires a lot of submissions--it definitely works, and also helps to ease the sting of rejections a little bit. There will be another round in 2026, and sign-ups will start soon.

In addition to lots of rejections, I did get a few pieces published: two stories and one poem. My strange little sci-fi/fantasy tale, The Pack, was published in July by the Literary Fantasy Magazine, and I recently had a second story, I Know You're There. Somewhere, appear in Macabre Magazine. Finally, my poem, Dreaming Double was published back in February by the Tipton Poetry Journal.

I was also very happy to finally publish my novella, Silver Rush, in June. This is a prequel to my earlier novel, Belle o' the Waters, and is available on Amazon or through your local bookstore. Belle is currently out of print, but I plan to re-release it next year as the second in a series of books about the fictional mining town of Silverton, the setting for all the stories. Stay tuned!

I also re-released two of my earlier stories that had been published by literary journals that no longer exist. Both The Black Forest, originally published by Chantwood Magazine, and Master Gardener, published by Mulberry Fork Review, are now available as inexpensive e-books for Kindle.

In order for all these things to happen, I knew I had to spend more time actually writing. And although some writing definitely happens when I'm walking or even washing the dishes, nothing will make it to the page unless I sit down and actually write. I've been keeping track of my "real" writing time (also known as "seat time" or "butt in chair time") for several years now and have made a concerted effort the last two years to turn the downward trend around. I'm really proud of this graph and hope to see an even higher number next year.

Some unexpected events this year have also contributed to my writing life. First, through a series of unlikely events, I stumbled upon SpecFic Writers, a group of speculative fiction writers located largely in the Mountain West, although several active members are from other parts of the country and world. This group has been fantastic, offering support and comradery and lots of fun activities, in addition to a weekly critique group opportunity. We mainly meet on Zoom, but I enjoyed getting to meet several of these folks in person at the September conference hosted by Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.

Another thing I did not plan to do when the year started was to attend a poetry workshop in Iowa, but I'm glad I signed up, since the event turned out to be the last time the Iowa Summer Writing Festival will be offered. The organization was unable to weather the funding cuts that so many arts and humanities programs suffered with this year, and finally had to shut down. The group of poets I met in that class decided to stick together and form our own online support group. I'm very happy to be in this group and am hoping that having a regular critique group for my poetry will help me in that genre.

Another thing I did not expect to do this year, but which has been so helpful for everything else I've been trying to accomplish, was to participate in the StoryADay May project, hosted by Julie Duffy. I used this program to write 700-800 words every day in that month, and several of these attempts turned into full-blown stories that I have continued working on and even started submitting. A couple of these beginnings coalesced into a novel, which I've spent the last two months working on. More on this project in the coming months!

Reading has happened as well--lots of it. In addition to much reading of works-in-progress by my writing partners, I also read several published books, and managed to reach (barely) my Goodreads Challenge of 25 books for the year. A couple of these books were assigned to me for reviewing by the Washington Independent Review of Books, which named my review of Tim Weed's The Afterlife Project as one of its most popular posts of June.

Finally, I continue in my role as Nonfiction Editor at Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. Our December special art issue is available now in print at this link or as an e-book here. A portion of the proceeds from this issue goes to the "Space for Art Foundation," which supports kids involved in creating space-related art.

I hope 2025 was good to you. Onward to 2026!

Another Novel?

2025-11-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

Yes, dear reader, I am writing yet another novel, thanks to Novel Writing Month, formerly known as NaNoWriMo. I have been participating in this for years, and as I wrote last month, just because the sponsoring organization folded earlier this year, I wasn't about to stop in 2025.

I'd decided I was going to do this challenge on my own, and try to write 50,000 words on this new novel project this month. But, then, I talked to some other writers in my critique group, SpecFicWriters, and several people wanted to join me. One of our members found a site, TrackBear, where we could log our word counts and create a progress graph, which is the single most important thing for me in keeping me focused. If I can see that word count graph going up every day and staying close to, or over, the target number, I'm happy and can keep writing.

So...I've passed 30,000 words! And, actually, this morning I'm a little over 34,000 words, so pretty much right on target for where I should be 9 days before the end of the month.

By the way, these badges are from the good people at NaNo2, who, just like me, wanted to keep the November writing experience going. Check them out if you are participating and want your own badges.

And now...back to writing. See you in December!

Novel Month Starts Tomorrow

2025-10-31T10:39:00.000-06:00

For many years, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month, known as NaNoWriMo. Many of us were saddened when, earlier this year, the organization that sponsored NaNo folded - but this doesn't mean we are not going to try to write a novel this month. We are!

One of my critique groups (SpecFic Writers) will be participating on our own. We are planning to use the TrackBear.app website to log our word counts and cheer each other on. I found out about this site from another person in the group, but had already found another place to log word counts: My Write Club. I might use both! We'll see.

For those who are still unclear what this means, the idea is to challenge yourself to write 50,000 words in the month of November, usually for a novel, but it can be a bunch of stories or whatever you're working on. That total works out to 1667 words per day, which is a lot - and that's the part of NaNo that I've always loved. Being totally immersed in a new story as the weather gets grayer and colder is something I look forward to every year. Just a few more hours!

I'll try to get back here in November to post about my progress, otherwise, I'll see you in December...oh, and Happy Halloween!

Publishing and Submitting

2025-09-16T07:18:00.000-06:00

It's September, which always feels like the start of the year to me. It brings new pens and notebooks, sometimes even new clothes--but the main thing is that summer is over and my attention is no longer diverted to all those outdoor activities and distractions that keep me from writing.

Still, the summer brought a few publishing successes, including for a brand new story of mine, The Pack, that was published at the end of July by the Literary Fantasy Magazine. You can read my strange little dog tale here, but if you like what you see, you might want to purchase the entire issue, which is available either as a paperback or e-book.

I also started a process of re-publishing some of my short stories that had disappeared when the literary magazines that published them went out of business. First up was The Black Forest, which is now available as a low-priced (99 cents) Kindle e-book. I also just published Master Gardener in this same format. I'll be offering these as free downloads now and then, but if you want to buy them now, they are as cheap as Amazon will allow. As always, if you do read them, please leave a review--pure gold for authors.

The big publishing news this summer was about Silver Rush, my first installment in a new series of novels and novellas. A Goodreads Giveaway contest just concluded for this book, and I'll be sending out some signed paperback copies to the lucky winners. If you didn't win, or didn't submit your name to the contest, you can still buy the book--it's available as either a paperback or e-book. You can also order the paperback from your local bookstore through the Bookshop website.

All these publication successes are possible only because I have submitted my finished work many, many times, persisting even when editors and publishers reject it repeatedly. As an example, The Pack was submitted to 13 different places, all of whom turned it down, before I tried the Literary Fantasy Magazine. Most of the 13 places I submitted to were science fiction publishers and while I really didn't think my story was fantasy, I gave it a try -- and the editor accepted my story in less than 24 hours. I'm so glad I didn't give up on this story, which is truly one of my favorites. If you believe in your work and have done your best with it, it's really just a matter of finding the right home for it.

To help me stay on track with submitting pieces this year, I'm participating in the Rejection Competition with a number of other writers. The idea is to log every rejection you receive each month and compete with the other writers to get the most rejections--which, of course, means you submit a lot. I just received a rejection and when I logged it on the spreadsheet, I moved into 3rd place and am now on the leaderboard. Yay! And just to show you the extent of this, that was my 53rd rejection this year, which shows you how many times I've submitted (over 60). I am aiming to submit 75 times this year and am on track to reach that goal. Onward!

Saving Another Story

2025-08-20T16:02:00.000-06:00

My short story, Master Gardener, was published by Mulberry Fork Review way back in 2016. This online literary magazine, like so many others, eventually went under, taking my story with it. As I explained in last month's post, this has happened to nearly a third of all my published stories, so I have decided to rescue these from whatever black hole on the internet they fell into, and re-issue them as low-cost Kindle singles.

Master Gardener has been re-published, as of today, in this new form. You can get it for just 99 cents at this link. Please consider leaving a review or rating if you read it!

In honor of this new release, last month's re-issued story, The Black Forest, will be available as a free download this coming weekend. Access this link to download your free copy anytime from Aug. 21 - 25, 2025. Start and end times of the free download period are midnight Pacific Time.

Finally, one more bit of writing-related news: my novel, The Kiss Catastrophe (published 2024) just received a fantastic review by the Speculative Fiction Writers Association. Thank you to SpecFic Writers and Dana Cain for this great review!

The Kiss Catastrophe is still available in paperback, hardback or e-book form, either from Amazon or Bookshop. If you haven't read it yet, I hope you will--and, as always, will leave a review. Thanks!

Saving My Story

2025-07-14T13:18:00.000-06:00

I wrote a story that was published back in 2018 by Chantwood Magazine, a press that has since gone under....taking my story with it. The same thing has happened to about a third of my early stories, so I've decided to rescue these from oblivion by publishing them as Kindle singles.

The Black Forest, the story originally published by Chantwood, will be released as a low-priced (just 99 cents) e-book this Wednesday. You can order it now and it will magically appear on your device in a couple of days. I hope you like this modern-day fairy tale as much as I enjoyed writing it!

Publication Day!

2025-06-17T08:23:00.000-06:00

My latest book, Silver Rush, a novella set in the 1850s Western US has been published today! It is available in paperback and as an e-book. Please consider leaving a review on either Amazon or Goodreads. The book is currently available only on Amazon, but once it percolates through the system, you should be able to find it in other locations. I'll keep you posted.

May Went Well

2025-05-29T12:41:00.000-06:00

I've been participating in StoryADay May all month and we are nearly done--two more days to go! I've managed to write something every day, which is the first time I've done this in all the times I've attempted this challenge.

This year, I followed some of the prompts provided by Julie Duffy, who organizes this challenge, but if the prompt didn't resonate with me, I used my own prompt. I have a few up my sleeve that I can pull out when I don't know what to write about it, and they did not fail me this time.

The image above is the chart I've been using to log my progress. So far, I have written over 20,000 new words this month and have started 14 new stories. I've also written a few scenes for one or another of the books I'm working on. I'd set these book projects aside to do this challenge, but if I had an idea for something that would fit in one of the books, I let that be my writing installment for the day.

This feels great, because not only do I have a lot of new pieces to work on, I've also made a bit of progress on existing works-in-progress.

I'm ready to move on to June, though, I have to say. Generating new material is fun and rewarding, but I'm now ready to look back over some of this stuff and start the revision and editing process.

One last thing: my novella, Silver Rush, will be published very soon--in less than 3 weeks! You can pre-order the e-book at this link. The book will also be available in paperback. You can read more about this novella and the series it inaugurates here. I'll be in touch about this again when we reach publication day!

Write a Story A Day

2025-04-28T08:46:00.001-06:00

April is just about to wrap up and May is right around the corner. What are you planning to do with a whole new month? Maybe you'd like to join me in a writing challenge, Story A Day May, in which those of us participating will write a draft of a short story every day in the month of May.

I have started this challenge a couple of times in the past and have always gotten at least one or two stories out of it. This year I am hoping for many more. I'm always optimistic at the start of a challenge, though, so I'll check back in during May and let you know how it's going.

If you'd like to join me, sign up here. It's free and you'll get daily prompts in your email to help you succeed!

Pre-Order Silver Rush

2025-03-31T09:28:00.000-06:00

My forthcoming novella, Silver Rush, is now available for pre-order as an e-book. Publication day is June 17, 2025, and if you pre-order now, the book will magically appear on your device on that date!

This book will also be available as a paperback on the same day, and I will post a note when it comes out. You can also follow me as an Amazon Author and they will send you a message whenever I publish new items (including this one!)

Silver Rush is the first book in a new series I am launching. The book series, Silverton, will be all about the fictional mining town of Silverton in the territory that will become Idaho partway through the series. The second book in the series will be a revised edition of Belle o' the Waters, one of my first novels. Although a few copies of that book are available at booksellers, the book itself has gone out of print, so I'm planning to re-issue it this fall with a new cover. If you'd like to read it sooner than that, let me know, as I still have a few signed copies in a box in my closet. I'd be happy to send you one!

New Book Coming Soon

2025-02-25T09:45:00.003-07:00

I'm pleased to announce that I have another book coming out this summer. Silver Rush is the story of Maggie and Silas McPhee as they navigate the sometimes chaotic and dangerous world of late 1850s America. A war is about to break out, but Silas, a doctor in Boston, wants to seek his fortune in the West where he hopes to test his new method for extracting silver from ore and, at the same time, get away from the impending war. When Maggie discovers her hopes for starting a family are not in vain she must decide a course of action. It's risky and the still-young country is wild and dangerous--will she follow him?

This book is due out in mid-June and is the first of a planned series set in the fictional town of Silverton in what will become the state of Idaho. More details and pre-order information soon. Stay tuned!

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

2025-01-29T15:07:00.001-07:00

Is there a silver lining in all this? Not sure..but holding onto hope.

For more Wordless Wednesday, check the main site.

For more of my photos, see Flickr.

Annual Writing Report

2024-12-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

Here we go, almost the end of another year, so it's time for my annual writing report. This post will be a little longer than normal, since I have a few categories to cover. In summary, though, I'm happy with the way things went this year in my writing life. I've spent a lot more time writing, thanks to the support of other writers and teachers.

I'm sure some people think that writing is a solitary venture, and it does involve a lot of time spent alone, but without the support of the writing community, I would get almost nothing done. So--thank you to all who have accompanied me on my writing journey this year! You know who you are!

Submissions: I had a goal to submit 50 times this year and I managed 46...so far! There's a few days left in the year, though so I still hope to reach this goal.

Short Stories Published: It was a pretty lean year, with only one story published. I can trace this to a paltry submission rate in 2023, when I only submitted 23 times. (Hence this year's more generous goal!) Thank you, Gone Lawn, for publishing my strange little story, We Have Always Lived on the Earth.

Books Published: I'm very proud to report that my first science fiction novel was published this year. The Kiss Catastrophe came out in paperback, hardback, and e-book form in early June. You can buy it in all three formats on Amazon, but the paperback is available on Bookshop where you can order through your local bookstore. I also have signed copies if you'd like one! Just send me an email (raima.larter@gmail.com) or find it in my online store.

Time Spent Writing: Last year I noticed a distinct and disturbing downward trend in the amount of time I'd logged writing. I keep track of my writing time, as I do for other things that it's easy to fool myself about, so I knew that my sense that I wasn't writing, even though I wanted to, was real. I have done better this year, as can be seen in this graph. There's still a ways to go to get back to those impressive numbers (achieved during the covid pandemic....probably not unrelated!) but I'm happy with the upward tick in the trend.

Reading: Writers must read; there's no way around it, and reading books was also something that fell off for me in recent years. So, I've made an effort to read more and my local library has been a huge help in that regard, since I'm out of bookshelf space at home! I signed up for the Goodreads Challenge this year with a goal to read 25 books--and I crushed that goal. 32 books read so far, with another about half finished and likely to be added to the total before the calendar turns over to 2025 in a few days. Some favorites this year have been City of Dancing Gargoyles, by my friend Tara Campbell, a strange post-apocalyptic world peopled by some odd but very engaging characters (yes, some are gargoyles); Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel (finally read it and wish I had done so sooner! Fantastic time-travel tale); and a whole slew of books by Alexander McCall-Smith who I'd never heard of until this year when I stumbled on his books at the library. These very cozy reads were just what I needed this year, and help explain how I smashed my reading goal. If you like humorous BBC programs, you'll love these light tales.

Other Writing-Related Activities: I continued my volunteer work as Nonfiction Editor for Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. We are still going strong and were excited, this year, to increase our pay rates for writers to what is considered the "professional level" for scifi magazines. I also took a few classes, mostly at the Lighthouse, Denver's fantastic writers center, but also a few online. And I've spent quite a bit of time meeting (usually via Zoom, but sometimes in person) with several groups of writers for help critiquing each others' work and just generally supporting one another on the journey. Thanks to all of you; you know who you are!

In the Works for Next Year: I am currently working on copy edits for a novella, Silver Rush, which I plan to publish next year, probably early summer. This novella is a spin-off featuring characters from my earlier novel, Belle o' the Waters, and follows the saga of Maggie and Silas McPhee as they travel the US in the 1850s, each seeking a different goal (hint: Silas is looking for silver!) I will have more to say about this project soon.

That's it! Sorry for being so wordy...but it was a pretty good year, at least in my writing life. I hope your year was good, too. On to 2025!

Thankfully Reading

2024-11-27T09:38:00.001-07:00

Fourteen years ago, in 2010, I participated in an online reading challenge over the Thanksgiving weekend and I just discovered that it's happening again! This event is hosted by Jenn, a book reviewer in the DC metro area where I used to live. Count me in!

The point of the challenge is to encourage people to relax and enjoy the holiday rather than stressing out over cooking and shopping and travel. People who participate use the hashtag #thankfullyreading to post updates about their reading throughout the weekend. I'll still be cooking, but will definitely be reading in those moments when I'm waiting for the bread dough to rise, the pie to bake, etc.

I am especially grateful to be able to participate in this challenge this year, since it wasn't that long ago I was finding it difficult to read at all. I posted about that here and am happy to report that this year is totally different. In fact, I've met and surpassed my Goodreads Challenge of 25 books for the year and have just started my 28th, another installment in the Corduroy Mansions series by Alexander McCall-Smith. These easy-going, cozy books are just the thing I've needed to read this year...which may explain why I've already read 8 of them! Onto to #9.

And for my US readers, have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Happy reading!

November is coming....soon

2024-10-31T09:42:00.000-06:00

For the last 13 years, I have participated in National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo for short. I've not always "won" this event, which generally requires writing 50,000 words during the month of November, but I've always benefited from it. I've completed and published two novels that started in NaNo, drafted two novellas that may someday see the light of day, and made progress on two more novels.

This time I hope to draft more material for a book I started last summer. I love the sense of immersion in another world that happens when I participate in this event, and I'm looking forward to starting again tomorrow.

One note, I feel I should make: the NaNoWriMo organization has had a number of difficulties this year, largely stemming from their lack of moderation of social media spaces they maintained for young writers. The organization's response to this is posted here, so I won't repeat all this - and I don't actually know all the details.

This controversy has led some participants to leave, but I've decided to stay. I feel the current organizers are doing their best in a difficult situation. I don't believe we should leave, or threaten to leave, whenever a group (or, ahem, country) does something we disagree with, It doesn't solve anything or help anybody to walk away when someone disappoints you.

So, I'm cleaning my desk and making room for a new writing project. See you on the other side, with (hopefully) 50,000 new words that haven't yet been written.

Goodreads Giveaway

2024-09-01T15:26:00.000-06:00

I am giving away 5 signed paperback copies of my latest book. Sign up at Goodreads for your chance to win!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Kiss Catastrophe

by Raima Larter

Giveaway ends September 21, 2024.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

New Release!

2024-07-08T14:56:00.000-06:00


Get your copy here!

Publication Day!

2024-06-03T10:50:00.000-06:00

And it's here! My new novel has just been published today. It is now available in paperback and hardcover but you can pre-order the e-book version, which is due out July 1. As the book percolates through the system, it will become available at local bookstores and through bookshop.org. And I'll have some copies on hand. Let me know if you'd like one!

Although not my first novel, this is my first science fiction book, and I'm very excited about it. I hope you enjoy it!

Coming Soon!

2024-04-30T09:31:00.002-06:00

My new novel will be available in just a little over a month!

Publication day is set for June 3. Here's a short synopsis for you:

It is 2071, 29 years after Earth's Great Climate Catastrophe. Syd, a chemist at a powerful mega-corporation, meets Jake who takes her to a cave that contains a portal to another planet, Cascadia an oceanic world suffering its own climate crisis. Meanwhile on Cascadia, Ruddy, a poet employed by the Ministry of Poetry is pursued by resistance forces of an enslaved minority, the In-Between, who see him as the key to their deliverance. An explosion strands him and an In-Betweener scientist on Earth and the four must join forces to save both planets from their climate crises.

I will have pre-order information for you soon, so stay tuned!

Happy Book Birthday

2024-02-27T06:00:00.001-07:00

Five years ago today, my first novel was published, and things have not been the same since! Although Fearless was the first to be published, it wasn't the first novel I'd ever written. In fact, it was the third. The second one (Belle o' the Waters) came out a few months after Fearless, and as to the first? Well, let's just say it is STILL a work in progress. Maybe some day!

You can still buy Fearless directly from the publisher, New Meridian Arts. Another way to purchase it is through Bookshop.org, which allows buyers to designate their own local bookstore to receive a portion of the funds. It's a great deal and helps support both independent publishers and independent bookstores. Fearless is also available on Amazon and B&N.

And, yes, I can send you a signed copy if you'd like. Find those here.

Finally, to celebrate this milestone, I'm excited to announce that my latest book, Motherhood and Other Magical Realms, is available as a free Kindle e-book all this week! From Feb. 27 - March 2, you can download this collection of sometimes weird stories for no money at all. Someone once asked me if the collection is "memoir," and I had to laugh -- because, no, it isn't, but yes, it IS in a way! All of these stories came from my life, even the ones that some might feel are impossible (like the one about humans who live on the moon).

Thanks for all your support through the years and happy reading!

A Return to Reading

2024-01-30T10:03:00.002-07:00

I have always been a big reader. I zipped through books as a kid like I was drinking water, and although my interests evolved over time, I really never stopped reading. Until I did.

The Covid pandemic brought a halt to my ability to read a book. In recent years, I've logged my reading on Goodreads and, as can be seen in the above screenshot, my reading took a nosedive just as Covid surged. I suspect it wasn't just the pandemic that caused this, but everything happening in the world - I couldn't let go of reality long enough to lose myself in a book, and it shows in my reading challenge statistics.

The low point occurred in 2021, with only 3 books read. Two of these were books written by friends; the third is a book of poetry that I don't even remember reading. It distressed me that I wasn't reading, but not enough to do anything about it.

And then I was asked to write a selection for the Washington Independent Review of Books column Bedtime Stories, where authors write about what they're reading. Panic! What could I do....but be honest. So, I was, and talked about how I couldn't focus on books anymore, but fondly remembered books I'd read in the past. It's still posted here, if you're interested in reading my rambles.

In 2022, I decided I needed to at least try. I started with another book by a writer I personally know: "The Other Ones," by Dave Housley. This turned out to be a great read, but I still couldn't get into novels. The next book I tried was nonfiction: "American Republics," by Alan Taylor. This fascinating history of the US and Canada in the period before the US Civil War kept my attention all the way through, and I was able to read the whole thing.

I tried a few more novels after that, and really enjoyed "News of the World," by Paulette Jiles. I'd never heard of this author, but found this short novel in a Little Library in my neighborhood. The short length helped me finish, but the story and the writing were both fantastic. That year, I also enjoyed "Sleepwalk," by Dan Chaon, a bizarre but totally compelling thriller about a near-future world much like our own.

I still felt like I was not reading, though, and months would go by without me picking up a single book. I decided enough was enough; I needed to approach this the way I do my running. I needed to go back into training - put myself on a schedule and read at least one book each month. It worked!

Last year, I exceeded my Goodreads goal of one book a month, and I have kept the momentum going. I am currently on my fifth book of the year in 2024, so have gone back to my goal of 25 books per year, a goal I never had trouble reaching before the near-end of my reading life.

There are no shortage of books to read, after all. One favorite among the five I've read so far this year is Jill McCorkle's new book, "Old Crimes: and Other Stories," which I found on the "New Books" shelf at the library. I've become a regular at the local branch of my public library. This is the way it should be. This is who I am: a reader.

Annual Writing Report - 2023

2023-12-21T10:06:00.001-07:00

For months, I've been feeling as if my writing was not going well, either in terms of submitting things or even spending time doing it. It was both a vague feeling, as well as a fact based in evidence. I'm the sort of person who keeps track of things, and I could look at data such as pieces submitted, hours spent on writing, etc, and see that things were bad.

The first thing I noticed was that I just haven't submitted very much this year. I have finished a few pieces and sent them out, but only 24 times so far in 2023. This is much lower than my submission rates in recent years, as shown in the above graph. The lowest number of submissions in recent years is for 2019, when I was battling breast cancer. There's at least an explanation for that! This year is lower than even 2019, so I needed to dig a little deeper to understand what's going on.

In addition to keeping track of submissions, I also log my writing time. Despite having totaled these hours up each week, I really didn't have a good sense about how much I was writing, since I never looked at monthly or yearly totals, much less at any trends.

So, last week, I started adding up entries in my little writing log book. When I saw that I'd written for a grand total of three and a half hours in the entire month of April and only 45 minutes (total!) in September, I knew this was going to be a bad year. I kept on tallying things, calculating the total hours spent writing for each month, then averaging over the months of the year. I did this all the way back to 2017, the year after I received my MFA, and was shocked to see the result:

That first year is probably an anomaly, since I had so much work in the pipeline from my master's program and the writing just poured out. The next year is low, but I don't trust that number since I apparently did not keep track of any writing for most of the year. 2019 is, again, the year I was battling illness, but then things get back on track.

Until they don't. There is a clear and obvious decline, year by year, in the amount of time I spend actually writing. If one were to lay a ruler on the above graph for the last four years and ask where this is headed, it looks like one would predict that Raima will stop writing completely in two years time.

And I don't want that. Not by a long shot! So, something needs to change. I've already set a rule for myself that I will write for at least 15 minutes every morning Monday - Friday, and so far I've had a pretty good initial week. This is a slightly early new year's resolution, and my plan is to continue doing this into the new year.

Last year at about this time I announced that I was starting a new position as Assistant Fiction Editor for Utopia Science Fiction Magazine. I have done that for over a year now, and was elevated to Nonfiction Editor several months ago. We are still going strong, and it's been a real pleasure to work with the other editors and staff of this great scifi publication. Although it's been a lot of work, I can't really blame my lack of productivity (summarized above) on this volunteer position, since I've been reading for literary journals of one sort or another for several years. This type of work has been, and continues to be, a real joy and I have no intention of giving it up.

In addition to the distressing data shown above, I had a some good news in my writing life this year. My flash fiction piece, Maude's Place, was published by Flash Fiction Magazine back in January. This was the only new piece I had published this year, but Big Blue Marble was reprinted as part of the 5th year anniversary anthology for Utopia Science Fiction. Perhaps with some of the new year's resolutions noted above, I can improve on these statistics next year. I'll keep on keeping track and will report back in a year.

Wishing everyone the best in the coming year!