Something About Third Times and Charms

I keep starting and stopping this post and then having to restart it again, mainly because the landscape changes under my feet rapidly enough that whatever I’m trying to report on shifts before I can finish this post.
So here goes, typing fast before it all changes again…
One of the big drawbacks I’ve found to the [...]

Ten Chapters, Two Interludes, a Modest Amount of Begging, and a Boatload of Letters

Lots of developments over the past few days…
First off, the podcasting is underway. The first ten chapters or so — read by the author — are available for download from iTunes. It’s a free download, (although do not neglect to note the donate button down there in the lower right hand corner of this page). [...]

In And Out The Eagle

After a very late night last night, it had been my intention to go to bed fairly early this evening. My brain, apparently, has other plans.
Spent the evening being tired and fretful and writing agent query letters — well, one letter to one agent, really. But it’s a start.
I’ve sent out copies of the latest [...]

Penguins and Publishers

Well, it’s more than fairly late at this point and I really ought to be getting in bed and trying to sleep for a few hours, but…
I haven’t written for the past couple of days, which is very odd for me. Not that I’ve been idle. I’ve spent the time working on a variety of [...]

A Quick View from the End

“There is a sense of achievement that comes with finishing something that is unlike anything else I know. There is no word for it: The feeling that one has clawed something back from eternity, that one has put something over on a nodding god. That one has beat the system.”
– from ‘Signal to Noise’ by [...]

Manola Madness

On Twitter, you have a little thumbnail avatar that appears next to your name in the feed. You can upload anything you want for your avatar. There’s the usual crop of crappy webcam photos, but most people get pretty creative with it.
Late last night, one of the people in my “follower/following” network (so, basically, one [...]

Coming Home

Just a quick post to mark the milestone: I’m nearly through the fourth draft. Book Three was finished tonight and tomorrow I’ll start on Book Four — a mere eighteen chapters until the end.
Can’t wait.
But it gets dark from here on in. I’m hoping that, after spending a few weeks working through it from the [...]

A Little Bird

From my bedroom window, I could see the clock and weather flashing on top of a bank building a few miles away.
Late into the night, I’d sit at that window and pound out on my typewriter whatever self-indulgent, derivative insanity I was obsessing over at the time.
And when I was not writing, I would stare [...]

XKCD | Insomnia

Madeleine L’Engle (November 29, 1918 - September 6, 2007)

“With each book I write, I become more and more convinced that the books have a life of their own, quite apart from me.”
So strange. I was out at meetings all day and came back to the news that L’Engle had died and, separately, this e-mail from a friend…
So I had this dream the other [...]