I’m always depressed when a book ends, because those are my friends for however long the book takes to write. Since I spend so many hours with these fictional people, I sometimes see them more than my real friends. And then they’re gone, and we’ll never be together like that again. (Seanan McGuire) The above quote has plenty of truth in …
Clouds and Stories
A cloudless plain blue sky is like a flowerless garden. ~Terri Guillemets Ah, the beautiful sky. A blue sky with nary a cloud is something to be treasured. But at times clouds have a way of making a sky even more beautiful. Clouds are the sky’s imagination. ~Terri Guillemets Ms. Guillemets must enjoy studying the sky. As I searched through my …
Q & A Time Again
An expert knows all the answers – if you ask the right questions. …Levi Strauss I don’t presume to know all the answers because I’m no expert at anything. That might be a fun question to ask yourself. What are you an expert at doing? Hmm, none of you asked me that question, but it is tickling my imagination. I’d …
Another Hidden Springs Mystery on the Way
For an author, there’s nothing quite like holding in your hand that book that you’ve spent many long hours writing. You started with a shimmer of an idea. You added characters. You built a setting. You entangled your characters into all sorts of situations. Maybe some fun ones. Or romantic ones, or even dangerous ones for a mystery like Murder …
When the Words Disappear
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane Sometimes I feel as though I’m soaked in those words as the writer above says I must be, but then other times the words seem to be hiding from me. Especially those two …
Books, Bites and Birthdays
It was my youngest son’s birthday today. He has a family of his own now to be daddy to and he’s a wonderful daddy. But I’m not sure he ever taught his kids to eat the peanut butter and pancake syrup on biscuits that his dad taught him to eat when he was just a little tyke. He could never …
What’s in a Name?
One thing they never tell you about child raising is that for the rest of your life, at the drop of a hat, you are expected to know your child’s name and how old he or she is. ~Erma Bombeck That’s true for mamas and also for writers. I’ll be giving a book talk and somebody will ask something about one …
On the Hunt for “The End”
One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment. ~Hart Crane Once more I am searching for the end of a story. Once more it seems to be hiding from me behind a crazy mixture of words that don’t seem to be paving the …
Meeting a Character in Person
Readers make Blogging Fun One of the best things about blogging is getting to know you readers through your comments. You are such an encouraging community for me. Writers spend a lot of time in “solitary confinement” while digging stories out of their heads. Of course, we’re not totally alone. We have all those characters yanking on our imaginations trying …
Life Can Be Messy
When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor. (Eleanor Roosevelt) For the rainbow to appear in the sky, there has to be rain. Storms come in all our lives. Little dashes of rain sometimes and then at other …