Leap Day always seems a bit magical to me and inspires me to check in with myself and my calendar. Four years ago on Leap Day, I was still working at FedEx making happy plans. Steve had been offered the opportunity to speak in New Orleans and we were looking forward to exploring the city…
Month: February 2020
Writing is Agile
Last night I met a new fascinating person and the topic turned to writing and representation. Those who know me know that I agonize frequently about this issue and the hopelessness of ever being able to get things right, especially when writing about people in the distant past. I worry too much about offending people…
Tea and Courage
When is your courage at its highest? For me it’s morning, just after my first cup of tea. It’s not that I feel I can do anything, but I haven’t yet accumulated the excuses of why I can’t accomplish what I want to. That’s why I do my blog in the morning. I am rested…
New Beginnings
Between sickness, cold, and trips, I haven’t hiked since early January. So it was an intense pleasure to be outside tromping through the woods again. Apparently the natural world thinks it is spring. The trees are in bloom. Birds and toads sing into the quiet forest. I didn’t see any snakes yet, so perhaps we…
Suspending Disbelief
I mentioned yesterday that one of the things I’ve learned from writing a short story a week is that some genres and settings come more easily to me. Surprisingly to me it isn’t about what is the most fun for me to read. I love Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Diving the Wreck series. I love Lois…
The Great Challenge
After I turn in today’s story, I will only need eleven more stories to complete The Great Challenge (52 stories in 52 weeks). At the beginning, I found the challenge truly difficult. I had never written a short story so quickly and I agonized with lots of false starts, bad middles, and stories that didn’t…
MidsouthCon
MidsouthCon is coming up March 20-22. This year I’m going to be the change I want to see in the world. Each year MidsouthCon serves up substantial writing and cosplay tracks (along with tracks for art, gaming, movies, anime, music, and everything else you’d expect from the largest SFF convention in the Midsouth). More than…
SSWS 2020 Wisdom: Professionalism
Kevin J Anderson and Rebecca Moesta presented information on how to behave as a professional. I covered some of what they said on appearance elsewhere. Here’s what they have to say about how to behave to be accepted as a professional. Be happy for other people even when they get a job you wanted. Others…
Before Selling Books…
I’m reading Lee French and Jeffrey Cook’s Working the Table: An Indie Author’s Guide to Conventions. I’m reading it partially because I want to figure out whether it even makes sense to do conventions as an Indie and partially because I really like Lee and reading her book makes me feel as if I’m conversing…