A lesson re-learned from disaster

The recent wildfires in California have devastated an entire city.  Paradise, CA was so completely destroyed that it may never be rebuilt.  Those who lived there have mostly lost everything, because the fire moved so quickly that there was no time to pack important belongings before evacuating.  Even fireproof safes turned out to be not... Continue Reading →

The Giving of Thanks

When this post goes live it will be Thanksgiving Day in the USA. There's a bunch of traditions around the day, many of them involving eating oneself into a food coma - which, for this particular holiday is a legitimate thing - and the one I find most important, the notion of giving thanks for... Continue Reading →

On Villainy

As you read this, I’m working toward being on the road again. We’re absconding for parts south, the littles and I. Just a few days, and eating turkey (I think we’ll be eating turkey. I’m not actually sure. I know I’ll be roasting brussels sprouts with bacon, and then mulling cranberries, for my contribution to... Continue Reading →

And the light dawns

Day before yesterday, I downloaded a bunch of books. They were of different genres. Some were from traditional publishers. Others were small press or indie published. My goal was to simply sit back for an evening or three and read. I haven't done that in a very long time and looked forward to it. Of... Continue Reading →

Round and Round

Image Pixabay. For we were just the product Of the ever spinning wheel Round and round we go (The Strawbs, round and round.) I read a story by a fairly well-known author the other day. The dialogue was good. The character was moderately interesting. The pacing was somewhat monotonous… but what made it a chore... Continue Reading →

Continuing Education

There's a flat spot of no new words on my NaNo graph. (A couple, actually). There's a book for Margaret Ball that I'm... a month? ack! overdue on writing a blurb for. (Yes, more mathemagics coming!) There's a writing class that I just threw up my hands and skipped turning in the assignment, and went and... Continue Reading →

Haut Couture 2080 in Space

I haven’t gone off the deep end, really. And yes, that’s a date in the headline, but I pulled it out of thin air. Reality is that what I’m speculating about in this post could be possible in, say 2080. If not sooner. Cutting-edge science and the garment industry aren’t exactly strangers, and the idea... Continue Reading →

Reality Check

Track sales, look for trends, they said. Shudder. But I did it anyway, and the take away is pretty straight forward. Being a visual type, I graphed it. This is the total sales in the first two months after it was published, in the order the books were published.   The old series (black line)... Continue Reading →

On Covers and Cheating

The Internet is a glorious thing. Recently I was mourning the loss of a treasured paperback, an edition of Northanger Abbey dating from the heyday of the '70's Gothic romance. But all I really wanted was the cover -- the text was, after all, exactly the same as it is in my three other editions of the... Continue Reading →

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