tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3068189862640494962024-11-08T08:10:30.508-08:00Oh no! Not another Writing Blog! Why yes, exactly that! Come join my friends and me as we play with words, ideas, plots and characters. This blog is dedicated to those of us who love to write and who feel naked if they're not carrying a pen or notebook or something else to jot down their ideas. No doubt I'll be suggesting my favorite books on writing, and sharing my favorite novels as well.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger46125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-73255754839362753952016-03-12T13:23:00.001-08:002016-03-12T13:23:25.568-08:00

I'm moving to hubpages! It's a struggle balancing several blogs and websites. Over the next several weeks I'll be moving my articles to http://hubpages.com/@lionrhod. You can also find my magickal, witchy and metaphysical writing at http://www.lionrhod.net. Blessings!

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-48633006836766868162013-05-26T08:13:00.000-07:002013-05-26T08:13:25.676-07:00

Weee! Earlier this month I FINALLY published Nenfari and Dark Moon Gates! LOL you'd think I'd have blogged about it before now, right? Dark Moon Gates is the first installment in the Witches' Gates Saga. Willa, high school Junior and witch-in-training has a problem. No, not the ordinary problem of being a lonely, geekish misfit, though sure, she can add that to her list. And not the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-45260207599243490232013-03-02T09:28:00.000-08:002013-03-02T09:33:42.049-08:00

Ohmigosh! Smashwords announced that Read an Ebook Week starts tomorrow! I've been prepping four books for ebook publication, Nenfari (free), Bad Man (free), Dark Moon Gates and Spellcraft Secrets. Not a one of them is done yet! Eeek! Nenfari is mainly waiting for a cover pic before we can face the evil Meatgrinder (the Smashwords tool that converts docs to ebook). Hubby is on it, fortunately.

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-37158462641030455722013-02-14T09:38:00.002-08:002013-02-14T10:12:32.804-08:00

I was pretty shocked by the BitterBarista debacle. Some guy blows off steam on Twitter. Some other blog exposes him and links to the company he works for. The guy gets fired. Here were my first thoughts: The posts are satire, and people think he's funny. What's the big deal? Wow the blog that exposed him must be creeps!  Based on the feedback they got, a lot of other folks thought

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-66723248993492835602012-11-17T14:07:00.000-08:002012-11-17T14:07:47.259-08:00

Sorry, yes this is a rant. And no, despite the title, my rant isn't really about spelling. Not exactly. Maybe I'm super-sensitive to the issue. I was, after all, raised by an English teacher or two. I'm not perfect either. I'm sure if you dredge the waters of my blog you might find a spelling or grammar mistake here and there that I haven't found and corrected yet. But hey, this is a

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-40811887593799773122012-10-13T16:36:00.000-07:002012-10-14T09:40:30.548-07:00

Wisdom has it that when faced with a bad situation, you can either cry about it, or laugh. As a writer, I can go one better and write about it. Right now I'm virtually homeless. Can't afford gas to run the generator (for heat and computer) up at my land so I'm staying at a friend's house. Unfortunately, my buddy is the Beta roommate. The Alpha roommate (the lease is in his name) sits on the

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-3418236464118503082012-09-03T13:13:00.000-07:002012-09-03T13:13:40.963-07:00

 Nothing like an excuse to rant! Today I found An Open Letter AboutAuthor Behavior In short, one particular author has been going around using pseudonyms to 1) give himself glowing reviews and 2) give his "rivals" bad reviews. While giving your own writing glorious reviews under a false name is clearly unethical, I was really surprised with the second half of that equation,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-47248657924215340512012-07-25T18:28:00.000-07:002012-07-25T18:28:41.504-07:00

What happens when you've spent the last couple weeks reading Query Shark and a few dozen other query letter websites? You wake up from weird dreams about the worst queries someone could possibly write. Here's the one I came up with, and the really scary part is that I can imagine it might not be the worst one some of these agents might have to read. (Or have to delete.) As someone who was

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-82494487374039672732012-07-12T18:37:00.000-07:002012-07-12T18:37:45.229-07:00

So I'm at the point where I think my novel's ready enough to start sending out, and I actually got up the nerve to send to the first agent. Meanwhile I'm reading as much advice as I can on marketing. Most agents these days want you to have a "platform" already. Meaning you should have a gazillion folks who read your blog, have crazy numbers of friends on Facebook. A roiling mob just

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-9300057300992875732012-07-09T13:14:00.000-07:002012-07-09T13:14:30.870-07:00

If you've ever been working on a story, and wanted a more original way to show (rather than tell) your character's emotions, The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide toCharacter Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi is the book for you! It's full of gestures and physical, mental and internal cues that give the reader an idea of what your character is going through. The book covers 75

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-1438064148199610872012-07-09T12:00:00.000-07:002012-07-09T12:00:57.079-07:00

"Hostility toward human males marrying into were clans is to be expected and taken seriously. Potential sons-in-law may want to carry wolfsbane or silver items in their pockets. Weres find both substances to be extremely irritating. -- Mating Rituals and Love Customs of the Were." (from Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men) Some sequels don't live up to the first book. This certainly isn't one

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-67161094790967078552012-07-05T17:26:00.001-07:002012-07-06T08:21:08.963-07:00

Jane Jameson's having a bad day. She gets fired from her job as a librarian. She doesn't even get a severance check, just a $25 gift certificate to a local pub. There, she meets the gorgeous and mysterious Gabriel. Her evening starts looking up, but as she drives home (alone) her car breaks down. Who should come by just then? Gabriel? Nope. It's a drunk redneck hunter who mistakes her for

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-6862028511366357152012-07-05T16:03:00.003-07:002012-07-05T16:03:49.992-07:00

One of the challenges of writing is that we talk ourselves into believing that writing is "painful and frustrating and slow. Those are lies," author David Fryxell says. "You can write. Writing is joyful and liberating and fast." Fryxell was one of those annoying kids who always turned his homework in on time. (His teacher made him an example for the class--and must have REALLY made him

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-51127696536338434872012-06-29T18:54:00.000-07:002012-06-29T18:54:14.789-07:00

It's a sad day when you find a piece of software that looks like it will make organizing your writing easier and more efficient...and learn that the support behind that software is not only unhelpful, but downright rude. Storybook 4 seemed like a dream come true. It would help me organize my characters, my scenes, and the other bits of information in my story (objects, relationships between

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-6778122640708195472012-06-27T16:19:00.000-07:002012-06-27T16:19:29.453-07:00

This week I'm revising my novel and feel almost ready to send it out in search of a publisher. So imagine how silly I feel when I find I've written an entire long paragraph about a woodstove. Now this post could almost have been entitled "Kill Your Babies" because that's what I had, a lyrical and long description of a woodstove, based on, yes, an antique parlor stove that I once owned

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-13541935274727161522012-03-27T13:51:00.000-07:002012-03-27T13:51:19.565-07:00

I just joined LadiesWhoCritique.com an online site to help you find a critique partner. Living out here in the woods has been challenging especially since I haven't yet found a community of writers here to share with. The site is free and seems friendly, so I'm looking forward to meeting some folks. Will keep you all updated!

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-55030316899362673022012-03-27T11:36:00.000-07:002012-03-27T13:15:09.900-07:00

I was reading this book review on Kat Loves Books where the protagonist spent most of her time drinking tea. It seems like every other action she took was drinking tea. (Once or twice she had wine instead.) It made me go back and look at my manuscript and wonder if my characters are cooking and eating too much. In Chapter One my protagonist is cooking dinner, and there are a LOT of other scenes

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-10063483744147125132012-03-25T13:46:00.001-07:002012-03-25T13:46:44.373-07:00

It's hard to believe it's been almost a year since I've posted. Isn't that a mess? The good news is that between burgeoning gardens, broken computers, escaped yaks and rescued pit bulls (yes really) I've finally got my ms to the point where I feel ready to send it to a publisher or agent. I've been working hard, and sometimes the lesson is that you need to cut down your areas of focus and just

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-55526817278722734202011-03-11T18:02:00.000-08:002011-03-11T18:02:44.223-08:00

I know I was supposed to post about vain characters today. My apologies, I spent the day with my eyes glued to the TV. More about my feelings on that here. I'll try to write something about writing tomorrow. Meanwhile my love and heartfelt wishes to all involved.

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-64701910959543400002011-03-10T09:02:00.000-08:002012-03-27T13:14:16.135-07:00

Trying to come up with a theme for today's post, I asked a friend what was notable about the last book she read. "I'm reading one of the books in a series," she said, "it's a long series and in the current book the protagonist is listing her heroic achievements. She's vain. It gets annoying." I pressed her on the issue. My buddy gave a sigh. "Well the protagonist says, 'hello I am a *insert

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-40180764745812348942011-03-07T15:01:00.000-08:002012-03-27T13:17:51.056-07:00

If I had to choose just one book that would help improve my writing, Make Your Words Work: Proven Techniques for Effective Writing for Fiction and Nonfiction by Gary Provost would probably be it. What does Provost mean by his title? "By writing that works, I mean writing that does the job it's supposed to do, whether that job is to inform, entertain, anger or instruct. Writing does not work if

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-66363769405361032082011-02-25T12:04:00.000-08:002012-03-27T13:14:16.144-07:00

This is an exercise designed to help you get in touch with your characters. It might even give you fodder for some new scenes. Try it, play with it, have fun! Nowadays they have whole aisles in the craft stores devoted to scrapbooking, and some folks have turned this from a hobby to an artform. When I was a kid, it was just a blank album that I could stick mementos in. I was probably 10 or 14

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-22968556964819660792011-02-10T08:14:00.000-08:002012-03-27T13:14:15.979-07:00

PLEASE NOTE: No, I don't hate Nancy Drew. In fact, she's one of my favorite childhood heroines. That said, the Nancy Drew books are an excellent example of writing that could use improvement. If we want to be good writers, we have to read a lot and face up to when we or others (even our icons) are less than excellent. For a detailed explanation of my feelings on this writing series

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-3703785935756409852011-01-13T11:04:00.000-08:002012-03-27T13:14:16.031-07:00

PLEASE NOTE: No, I don't hate Nancy Drew. In fact, she's one of my favorite childhood heroines. That said, the Nancy Drew books are an excellent example of writing that could use improvement. If we want to be good writers, we have to read a lot and face up to when we or others (even our icons) are less than excellent. For a detailed explanation of my feelings on this writing series,

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-306818986264049496.post-22881451619928468732011-01-05T11:26:00.000-08:002012-03-27T13:14:15.970-07:00

PLEASE NOTE: No, I don't hate Nancy Drew. In fact, she's one of my favorite childhood heroines. That said, the Nancy Drew books are an excellent example of writing that could use improvement. If we want to be good writers, we have to read a lot and face up to when we or others (even our icons) are less than excellent. For a detailed explanation of my feelings on this writing series, go

Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0