Ever heard of a blog carnival? If you have, you’re ahead of me. Well, that is to say, I HAVE heard of it, but just in the past couple of days. Pat Loomis will be hosting one on Tuesday, Feb 15. In it, she will be pointing folks to various blogs, including mine; we’ll be…

Wednesday was one of those frustrating non-writing days. I SO hate when that happens. I’m a moderator over at Forward Motion and one of the boards I help to oversee is the Young Writers’ Scene. This section is private, and can only be accessed by kids under 18 (and their trusty moderators) upon approval. It…

I have to laugh that I thought I’d cut words with all the rewriting of the first fifteen pages. Not so much. Sure I cut a scene. I also added one. According to the over all word count once I’d shuffled my Word doc back into Scrivener, I added about 500 words with a honkin’…

After a week of vacation and a couple of weeks working on a *secret project* to be announced here in a few weeks time, I am finally back in the saddle with editing Marks of Repentance. A year ago a border guard waltzed into my story and made a much broader statement than I’d expected…

Something like 8 1/2 hours to go here. Around the world, the calendar rolls over to November first, one timezone at a time, and thousands of crazy people begin their own private (and collective) Nano insanity. We pledge to write a minimum of 50,000 words in the month of November, and some of us are…

I had another good writing day today, for which I’m thankful. Starting to approach the grand finale for the book, currently estimated out at about 65K. Ish. I cut a couple of *future* scenes out of the outline today as I realized they didn’t have enough reason to exist. Anyway, everybody in the story is…

Yes, I know it’s Friday. I usually post on Friday. Here’s all I’ve got for you today: Tomorrow is the Big Reveal Day! There will be party food and raspberry vinegar for all. Come on back!! Or, if you’re on my newsletter list you’ll hear it a few hours sooner. With bonuses. No pressure or…

I’ve sent the novel crit back to Mar and have just four chapters left in the edits of Marks of Repentance. I saved the best for the last, of course. These chapters don’t even vaguely resemble the outline they were (theoretically) derived from, and for some reason that I can’t remember I thought it would…

Reading in the Gospel of Matthew these days. This time around I’m reading it in the Contemporary English Version just to change things up. Ya know Jesus talked to the people in stories (the old King James calls them parables) using familiar things to them: farms, harvests, weeds, bread, yeast, animals, etc. And sometimes the…

You hear a lot in the blogosphere and twittersphere about NaNo (NAtional NOvel WRIting MOnth–November). For everyone that jumps gleefully on the bandwagon there are scoffers who say you can’t write anything of value when you push yourself to write 50,000 words in 30 days. The key, of course, is that a writer knows this…

My new novel isn’t quite ready to be written. It’s begging for a bit more gelling time so I am letting it percolate on the back burner for awhile more. (I’d hoped to start writing this week.) That brings the revision of Quest to be Queen to the foreground. I’m hoping to have a round…

Hello there! Welcome back to My Little World, and thank you for not abandoning my blog while it has pretty much lain in a coma for the last while. The past six weeks have seen me on hyper-focus, and that isn’t likely to change any minute soon, but I know at least a few of…

If you’re a fiction writer, you may wonder what the best programs in the business are. Michael L. Martin shares a video review of his five favorite programs, and why he chose them. His number one program? Scrivener. He says he wouldn’t necessarily advise PC users to run out and get a Mac just for…