I’d mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve recorded seven short readings and that my husband has been composing background music for them. Now he’s discovered imovie and has made the jump to adding moody and evocative visuals to his compositions. I don’t know that we’re going to be able to come up with the […]

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Just put the (almost) finishing touches on the new material being added to the upcoming reissue of my Discovering Japan short story collection, due out in December. This new version features a new cover, one additional unpublished short story, and THREE (count ’em, three!) sections from the Work In Progress, aka “The Witch Novel”. Stay […]

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I’m 475 words away from hitting 30,000 this year and, at the risk of invoking the displeasure of the gods, I’m relatively certain that I can manage that before midnight on December 31st. Roughly half of them will be for the Witch Novel, bringing me to almost 62,000 for that project. I had some breakthroughs […]

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I’ve been feeling stuck on the Witch Thing in Progress (see avoidance behaviour post) and so I thought “why not try writing something fun? Something silly and frothy and maybe a wee bit fanfic-ish and romantic and without world-building or pressure or magic systems or any of those things that scare you.” I dutifully hauled […]

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To clarify, the avoidance is all on my side.  The teachers on the Masterclass site are doing their jobs.  My husband decided to sign up for a year’s access to the online learning site, Masterclass, which features lectures from such luminaries as Ron Howard, Steve Martin, and Annie Leibowitz.  It’s not cheap but we figured […]

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A number of year’s ago, after reading Sarah Susanka’s book The Not-So-Big Life, I adopted a year-end ritual that involves asking myself some questions from the book about what I learned, achieved, and failed to do in the previous year.  I’d then set out my goals for the new year.  I now have over ten […]

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I saw yet another writer saying “there’s no such thing as writer’s block” on Twitter today.  I almost replied … but I mostly just lurk on social media and so I thought I’d write this post instead. I’m not sure how all these other writers define writer’s block.  Mostly they seem to assume that it’s […]

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                    Another year, another 10,000 words in November.  To be precise, another 10,027 words, which is 6 words more than last year’s result. (This is not at all suspicious or reflective of the fact that I grind out enough words to make the target and no more. […]

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It may just be the throes of first love, but I’m definitely enjoying my writing dates with the amazing, astounding, and inspirational Gemma Files.  We meet up at Balzac’s on Market Street, stake out two small side-by-side tables, set up our laptops and go at it, with breaks to discuss movies, plot points, and more.  […]

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Wednesday night’s Mortified Reading event for ChiSeries was a smashing success, with most of the audience wiping their eyes to keep from crying (with laughter! with laughter!) as Madeline Ashby, Don Bassingthwaite, Kari Maaren, Sandra Kasturi, Brett Savory, Elaine Chen, Stephen Michell, David Nickle, Gemma Files, Troy Harkin and I shared some of our best juvenile […]

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