Category Archives: writing

A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 3

I’ve said before that I want this whole apocalyptic novel-in-stories to focus on the characters and their personal struggles more than on the trappings of the whole apocalyptic genre thing. Which is to say, I don’t want to eat up much page space with descriptions of the apocalyptic environment or background on how the worldContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 3”

Merry freakin’ Christmas (don’t worry, we do Thanksgiving and New Year’s, too)

It’s been a good week for publications. On Monday, my story “Barefoot in the Guadalupe” appeared in Red Dirt Review, and the same day I got word that I’ll have a story in Scintilla sometime in the future. Then today, Jersey Devil Press‘s special Holiday Half-Issue my colleagues and I have been working on turned upContinue reading “Merry freakin’ Christmas (don’t worry, we do Thanksgiving and New Year’s, too)”

Who’ll get me a book I ain’t read….

Oh, where to begin? It seems like the publishing market — or, at least, the small press and indie lit markets — like to work in tandem, with everyone publishing stuff all at once. It’s like our literary periods are in synch or something. I say this because a lot of my friends and acquaintancesContinue reading “Who’ll get me a book I ain’t read….”

New publication

Just a quick note about a new story of mine, though “new” is a bit misleading — I actually wrote the first draft of this one something like a decade ago and have been revising and retooling it ever since. A while back I finally got it where I wanted it, and it’s been makingContinue reading “New publication”

A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 2

This has been a strange week. If you’re following my daily word counts, you’ll see a lot of spikes and dips: on days I teach, my word count plummets, sometimes into the mere hundreds; then, on days I don’t teach, it leaps up as I try to make up for lost time. So far I’mContinue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 2”

The sounds of my NaNoWriMo

Long-time readers know I love having music while I write. Sometimes it’s just background noise, but often it’s a specific set of songs, and in the case of whole books (like my story collection or two of my novel projects), it’s full-blown soundtracks, with each song selected and organized to reflect what’s going on inContinue reading “The sounds of my NaNoWriMo”

A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 1

I’m on day four of National Novel Writing Month. And it’s been a good but strange few days, because while I have a table of contents already and a relatively solid idea of what I’m writing about — the apocalypse, and, now that I’ve done some quick-and-dirty background research and settled some things in my head,Continue reading “A Writer’s Notebook: NaNoWriMo 2011, week 1”

Photo blog 69

As I did last year, I’m using November’s photo blog posts to record some mood-setting pictures for my NaNoWriMo project. This year: the apocalypse, which involves a lot of ash. Hence these doctored, ashed-up photos of fog in Portland. (Today was eerily — and almost undrivably — foggy as well, so it felt like good timingContinue reading “Photo blog 69”