Background
- Back West for Winter
- East Coast “Home”
- 2021 Eastbound — Boom
- Third Leg of 2021 Westbound
- Second Leg of the 2021 Westbound Trip
- Back on-line 2021 Westbound
- FindMeSpot
- The First Leg the 2021 Westbound Trip
- The 2021 Crossings
- The 2020 Journey — Part II
- The 2020 Journey — Part I
- Almost Ready
- Once Isn’t Enough
- The Return
- The Initiation: Road of Trials to the Ultimate Boon
- Prepared for Departure
- A Kind of Hero’s Journey
Bio
- Back West for Winter
- East Coast “Home”
- 2021 Eastbound — Boom
- Third Leg of 2021 Westbound
- Second Leg of the 2021 Westbound Trip
- Back on-line 2021 Westbound
- FindMeSpot
- The First Leg the 2021 Westbound Trip
- The 2021 Crossings
- The 2020 Journey — Part II
- The 2020 Journey — Part I
- Almost Ready
- Once Isn’t Enough
- The Return
- The Initiation: Road of Trials to the Ultimate Boon
- Prepared for Departure
- A Kind of Hero’s Journey
Inspiration
- NaNoWriMo
- Another Tack
- Some Real Work
- The One-Page Novel Beat Sheet
- Character Design, Revised
- Inspiration
- Violence, Consequences, and Retribution
- The Road Calls
- Horror
- Geology
- Saving Some Notes
- Voice
- Gut-Wrenching
- Pitch Writing — A One-Two Punch
- Drama and Character Arc
- Structure
- Character Design
- Points of View
- MC Parallels
- Reveals and Anticipation
- Empires and Kingdoms
- Roget’s Thesaurus: a Taxonomy of Concepts
- More Character Conflicts — Where Are Their Boundaries?
- Book V — A Glimpse
- Five Movies
- Timeline vs. Flashbacks
- Two Sentences
- Opening Action
- Advice
- The Red Knight’s Marginal Victories
- Volition, Compulsion, and the Vast Space In Between
- Scope of Action
- The Map
- Minor Bad Guy Conundrum
- The Trailer View
- Grimdark
- Verbal Tics
- How to Tell You’re In A Novel
- An Improvement
- A mcGuffin Epiphany
- Cover Art and High Concepts
- A Sad/Happy Thought
- The Damaged Hero
- World History, Part II
- World History, Part I
- Inspired By
- What’s at Stake?
- Approaches to World-Building
- Drake and McTrowell
- And then the murders began
- Randomness and Inspiration
- Backstory
- Personification
- Gritty and Detailed
- Character Details
- Dreaming of my Characters
- Hero’s Journey
- Waking Up In The Middle Of The Night
Maps
Marketing
- Upgraded Web Pages
- An Important Lesson
- Subsequent Drafts — Lesson Learned
- Saving Some Notes
- Word Count
- More Querying
- Digesting More Query Letter Advice
- Additional Critical Reading Thoughts
- Critical Reading
- Critiques and Beta Readers
- The Size Problem
- Complications [updated]
- The ABC’s of Querying
- More Pitch-Writing Practice
- Pitch-Writing Practice, part II
- Querying and Pitch-Writing Practice
- Query Shark
- Querying
- Best Rejection So Far
- Drake and McTrowell
- The Agent Search
- The Debut Novel Problem
- Social Media
Process
- The Veil
- Beat, Scene, Chapter
- NaNoWriMo
- Another Tack
- Some Real Work
- Outlines and Details
- Taxing Work
- Focused Writing
- Speculative and Bespoke Work
- Moving Day
- The Road Calls
- Travel writing and the Daring Enterprise
- The Verb Form of “Nomad"
- Trying to “explain” retirement
- The tyranny of “desk toys”
- Ending One Job — Focusing On The Other
- The Time Crunch
- Non-Fiction Progress (Feb)
- Co-Author Big Sigh
- Non-Fiction Progress (Dec)
- Scrivener and Word Count Target
- Aspirations
- Restructuring
- An Important Lesson
- Subsequent Drafts — Lesson Learned
- The Ancillary Texts
- Home Again
- That Got Complicated
- Second Editions
- COVID-19
- Word Count
- Not Stalled — Exactly
- Editing and Beta Readers
- Going Nowhere
- Foreshadowing
- Thoughts on Some Writing Strategies
- Work Time
- I Don’t Want to Eat My Broccoli
- Today's Dark Place [Updated]
- Found My Missing Map and — Who’s That?
- Drat — Wrong Computer
- The Red Knight’s Marginal Victories
- Leap — No, Wait — Leap — Reconsider — Leap
- Moving Forward
- Outlining vs. an Alternative
- Pressure
- Dropping the F-Bomb
- Non-Fiction Interruption
- Second Stand-Alone Story
- What a Mistake
- Another List of Rewrites
- A Sad/Happy Thought
- Pre-Final Drafts
- Chop That Out, Too
- Time, Focus, Intention, Love
- Ouch. That was an ill-conceived mess
- Gritty and Detailed
- Second Edition
- Revisions and Rethinking
- Distractions and Coffee Shops
- Drafts and Read-Aloud
- Step Away From The Keyboard
- Vacation Writing
- The Luxury of Time
- Outlines and Tyranny
Querying
- More Querying
- Digesting More Query Letter Advice
- The ABC’s of Querying
- More Pitch-Writing Practice
- Pitch-Writing Practice, part II
- Querying and Pitch-Writing Practice
- Query Shark
- Querying
- Best Rejection So Far
- The Agent Search
- The Debut Novel Problem
- Marketing
Tools
- Outlines and Details
- The One-Page Novel Beat Sheet
- Upgraded Web Pages
- Scrivener and Word Count Target
- Character Design
- Going Nowhere
- World-Building Nuance — Coinage of the Realm
- Empires and Kingdoms
- Found My Missing Map and — Who’s That?
- Drat — Wrong Computer
- Roget’s Thesaurus: a Taxonomy of Concepts
- The Map
- World History, Part II
- World History, Part I
- Approaches to World-Building
- Randomness and Inspiration
- Over-Engineering
- The Dungeon Issue
- Tools and Outlines