The dyehouse is downwind of every other building, but its location does little to diffuse its smell. The building is squat and dark and windowless. Its roof is pierced with chimneys, like arrows sticking out of Saint Sebastian’s chest. The air around it is soaked in the moist, acrid stench…
Giving up on Old Yeller (my desktop) means I have to set the laptop up with all my graphics stuff. I’m still trying to get my font collection back to its former glory . In the midst of loading up the laptop, I decided to throw together a couple of…
I’m sick. Sick and sad and uninspired. Stupid cold. So here’s me cheating on my blogging by posting the start of a story I started a while ago, and mean to finish once I get three or five other Works in Progress out of my head and into my hard…
I should be all aglow with happiness–the final version of Like a Thief in the Night is turned in, and the excerpt is up on the Samhain site. Instead, all I see are things I want to change. I can’t help it, I’m a fiddler. I nitpick. I tweak. Editor…
I finally finished the WIP I’ve been working on for the past 3.5 weeks. Instead of running 12,000-15,000 words, Ember came in at over 31,000. That’s a big baby. Ember Charm is a curse. Love is a fire. And this story? It’s is no fairytale. 31,304 / 15,000(208.7%) Time to…
If you were wondering which fairytale I ripped off and ripped up to write Ember, this excerpt should answer your question.____________________________ I was not surprised when, scarcely nine months after my mother’s death, my father returned from one of his buying trips with a cartload of second-rate silks and a…
Updating my WIP list, both here (right) and on my website, I noticed something: I have 9 viable stories on the ol’ hard drive, of which I have finished exactly 2 –two! dos! deux! ni!. I’ve had good luck with both of my finished stories. Like a Thief in the…
This has nothing to do with Panama. I just like palindromes.________________________ About 11 months ago, I wrote a post about a story that was almost finished. It was the Original “The Bitter End“. That story, the “Untitled Sci-fi” is very close to finished. But I still haven’t finished it. It’s…
I’ve been here before. I’d hoped it wouldn’t be like this. I’d hoped that this would get better with practice. I’m five thousand words from the end of the short story I’m trying to finish, and putting words on the page is like pulling teeth–my own. But I’m going to…
I just read about Allison Kent’s 70 Days of Sweat challenge, so, of course, I had to go over and sign up. The challenge is to write your novel in 70 days, which, unlike NaNoWriMo, is a doable challenge for folks who are staring down the barrel of a 100,000…
