Totally insane month with a lot of legal reading—maybe 500 pages—which I find fascinating, but you won’t. I added Grisham’s latest to that, but it’s emotionally cold and didn’t have much of an impact on me. Okay, yes, all of Grisham is emotionally cold, but usually that suits the story. It didn’t here. I enjoyed […]
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So much to tell you about that I won’t get to all of it. First, though, all of the Colliding Worlds books are out! Six science fiction collections, featuring 20 short stories in each book. Ten of the stories are from me and ten are by Dean. We had a blast putting these together. The […]
Continue ReadingI seem to recall that I didn’t get a lot of leisure reading time last February, and this February was no different. I managed some things, but other projects called, sometimes leaving me too tired to stay up for my regularly scheduled reading time. I did read a somewhat interesting mystery novel. The writing was […]
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I had a serious case of the sads yesterday, and for once, I couldn’t pinpoint the source. I mean, I could in general. I know we’re all feeling an undercurrent of sadness at the deaths and the changes and the suddenness. It is grief, as I wrote earlier, but grief comes in waves, and sometimes […]
Continue ReadingMay started much better than any other month in 2019. I carved out some time late in the day to get reading done, even if I hadn’t finished my email or any of the other work I had. I was really feeling the lack of leisure reading time and it was starting to have an […]
Continue ReadingFortunately, December started better than November in regards to the reading. Good nonfiction and fiction, some of which is listed below. (Some is just too…I don’t know. It doesn’t inspire me to share.) I also line edited a Fiction River and started line editing another, since I’m workshop heavy in my reading in January and […]
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A few weeks ago, I asked my Patreon supporters to let me know what they thought were the big take-aways in 2018. Since I had so many life changes and adventures in 2018, I wasn’t able to keep up on everything in the industry the way I usually do. The Patreon folk came through, and […]
Continue ReadingI’ve been reading a lot in the month of May, but much of what I’m reading is online and ephemeral. I had missed a lot of the ephemeral stuff during the move because I didn’t have the bandwidth for it. Apparently, I do now. I’ve also been reading some rather large books, some of which […]
Continue ReadingSo much fantastic reading in April, and no time to write it all up. That’s why this is a few days later than usual. First, I line-edited an issue of Fiction River, Spies, which is just marvelous. I had forgotten how good those stories are. You’ll see them next year, but for now, you can read a […]
Continue ReadingMy cat died in June. He wasn’t just any cat. He was what Dean and I call “a heart cat.” We have cats whom we love and cherish, and then we have special cats—the ones who simply take over our hearts and hold them hostage. Galahad was the best of the best, and we had him for fifteen years.
I’m telling you this not to get sympathy, but because Gally’s death factored into my process this summer. I knew he was going to go at some point, but he went fast. Fine one week, gone the next. Not as fast as our Ella, who literally died in an instant (vet thinks heart attack or stroke) in February, but still, faster than expected.
That, on top of the deaths of several friends since the first of the year, some close and some not as close as they once were, left me reeling. I hadn’t realized how down I was until I figured out that my writing had nearly ground to a halt.
In fact, the one thing that kept me going was the schedule I had drawn up earlier in the year…
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