With apologies to Charles Addams Thing breathed a contented sigh as Esmeralda buffed the nail on his ring finger. As a disembodied hand, he didn’t exactly know how sighing worked, but the fat muscle at the base of his thumb relaxed, and he counted that as a sigh. Esmie chatted while she worked. She knew […]
Death in the Family Read More »
For the past several years, I’ve been on the steering committee for DFWCon, the DFW Writers Conference, put on by the members of the DFW Writers Workshop. Before the pandemic, we’d get 350-400 attendees and had some great keynote speakers. Each year, it takes us several months of weekly meetings to gather agents to take
DFW Con 2019, the 2020 Online Version Read More »
Last Friday morning, I received the call every writer dreams of answering. I’d been trading emails with a publisher over the previous month. This time the phone rang. “We want to buy your book.” “Our editor loved it, and when she loves something, we listen.” “Her words were ‘I want to read more from this
How I Sold My Novel Read More »
I recently had a publisher ask me to submit the manuscript of a novel I’ve been pitching. This book has been years in coming. It feels like I’ve worked on it forever. The characters have practically become family members. It’s been through dozens of drafts and rewrites. Writers always hear that, but nobody wants to
I entered DL Hammons amazing contest on a whim. I had a snippet of a piece I’d done for Daily Science Fiction, which features pieces shorter than 1500 words in a daily email. They didn’t like my piece, but I did, so I edited it down and entered it in the 2019 installment of Write
Writing the Good Fight Read More »
I’ve had some personal issues over the last several months. Serious family and personal medical complications because, hey, you can’t go hang out at the hospital for a couple of weeks and not catch something yourself. And when the flu is really bad, apparently it can turn into pneumonia. Who knew? All in all, that can
Are You Still a Writer if You’re Not Writing? Read More »