RITA ® Award-Winning Author of Fantasy Romance
//Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is “Holiday Pot Luck Dish: If you had to bring a dish to a winter holiday potluck, what would it be & what’s the recipe?”
My holiday must-have are my Sparkly Sugar Cookies. Come on over for the recipe!
//I posted this pic to Instagram Stories asking people to vote on whether this is a helpful cat or not. Something like 82% voted “yes.” (I forgot to look at the final score before the story expired.) This only proves that my tribe of followers are TOTAL CAT PUSHOVERS.
And yes, that’s THE FATE OF THE TALA on the monitor. I was amused by how many people messaged asking if that’s what they spied. Those who listen to my podcast know that I’m struggling with this book, but I’m also at 88K now – which I originally thought would be my total! – and I’m getting there…
NOT helped by cats who insert themselves between my hand and the mouse.
Anyhooo….
Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is our #1 Thing to do to keep our sanity this holiday season. Come on over to find out mine!
//Exciting change in my life: my mom bought me a new bedspread, etc., and I’ve totally changed up the color scheme! I really love it. 🙂 Also, Isabel is pleased by how well it matches her blue-smoke fur.
I’ve been absent from the blog lately, I know – except for cross-posts with the SFF Seven blog – because I did thirty days of podcasting in November. (Well, I missed November 30 because of travel, but I hit October 31, so I *did* do thirty consecutive days!)
I’m also funneling all my word energy into writing THE FATE OF THE TALA. I tell you people: I thought this book has been hard to write. But I just got on the phone with my lovely bestie Grace Draven to talk through some plot points. She ended up making a diagram as we talked and more than once said “You’re trying to do WHAT?” and “Wait, that TOO?!?” I had to point out several times that her incredulity wasn’t helping. (She just laughed, the way she does, that high-pitched giggle that sounds just like Dolly Parton’s.) At least I ended up feeling better about the fact that this effort really IS difficult.
And she gave me ideas for how to proceed. We ended up with the writer’s version of AA, where I’m just taking it one scene at a time. So that’s what I’m doing. Getting through this scene. Then I’ll think about getting through the next scene.
Amazing how that perspective helps!
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This week at the SFF Seven we ask “Have you ever invented a holiday for your books – or if not, what holiday would you give your characters?” It happens I have invented a holiday – a midwinter one, even- and I wrote a novella around it. Come on over for more – and to read a bit!
//Also our topic at the SFF Seven this week is “With Gratitude: Shout Out to someone who makes you a better author (peer, editor, reviewer, SO, pet, etc.).”
Mine is weird, I know. Come on over to find out more.
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I love these #shelfie pics – ones readers send me of my book spotted in the wild. This one is from a Kroger grocery store in Anchorage, Alaska. Pretty awesome company it’s keeping, huh?
Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is Mentoring: my mentors, ways I’ve mentored others, how to do it right, how to do it wrong, and whether it’s possible to lone-wolf this writing journey. Come on over for my answers!
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As requested, I’ve put THE SNOWS OF WINDROVEN, HEART’S BLOOD, NEGOTIATION and THE CROWN OF THE QUEEN into print format! You can find those on my website.
Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is One thing we’re really good at as an author and one thing we’d like to do better. Come on over to find out mine!
//On yesterday’s podcast, First Cup of Coffee – November 2, 2019, I talked about building up daily wordcount gradually. So I’ve resurrected a previous post that gives a suggested strategy for hitting that 50K in November NaNoWriMo goal. Come on over to the SFF Seven to read about it!
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It’s laundry day here, and Jackson takes laundry VERY seriously.
Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is Gravedigging: Share Something Great from a Dead Project.
While intriguing, this is also a tall order. I mean, for me, very few (if any?) projects are truly dead. Though I suppose zombie works also qualify for this spooky theme. Also, if there’s something Great in it, then the projects is almost certainly not dead. The truly dead projects are those that have nothing redeemable in them.
Also, this topic seriously took me down a rabbit hole of looking at old fragments of stories and various projects that languished for one reason or another – some going back twenty-five years to when I was first rooting around and finding my voice as a writer.
But here’s a little something that’s kind of been hanging around in the Undead Files. I wrote it down in part to capture a certain feel. It came from a dream when I was immersed in other projects and couldn’t devote time to this. Turns out that was ten years ago! I could’ve sworn it was only a couple. Alas.
Anyway, it’s rough – the names are placeholders – but I still see the shine in it. Come on over to read it.
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Here’s a little tease of the cover of THE FIERY CROWN, sequel to THE ORCHID THRONE, and book two in the Forgotten Empires trilogy. The full cover will be revealed on Wednesday, October 16, at Tor.com. There will also be a sneak peek of the first chapter!
Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is the big career goal to which we currently aspire. Come on over to where I’m spilling mine.