Outgrowing Mentors by C.D. Watson
It’s Ok to Outgrow Your Mentors

It’s Ok to Outgrow Your Mentors

I started researching self-publishing a couple of years before publishing my first novel in 2014. Richard, my editor and a close friend, discovered Joe Konrath’s blog way back in, gosh, 2012 or so. Maybe earlier! From there, we slowly began consuming the wisdom of other indie authors. Dean Wesley Smith and his “Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing” posts. His wife Kris Rusch, whose weekly “Business Musings” are a personal favorite. David Gaughran of Let’s Get Digital fame, and Joanna…

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Men Are from Mars by C.D. Watson
Men Are from Mars

Men Are from Mars

I met this guy a couple of years ago. Great guy. Sweet, intelligent, funny. Everything a woman wants in a man. First thing, he asked me if I wanted to run away with him to Key West, and I knew, right then, that he was the one. It’s crazy how you just know something’s right. On some level, he felt the same way, and said so. Therein lay the problem. At the time, I didn’t understand it as such, a…

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Rose Red and the Jesus Freak by C.D. Watson
Rose Red and the Jesus Freak

Rose Red and the Jesus Freak

We found this short snippet tucked into an old family Bible that was stored in a battered trunk in the attic. It has been updated to reflect current technology and culture. One winter’s night, Rose Red drove to a nearby town for pizza at one of her favorite restaurants. She parked on a side street, locked her car, and pulled on a heavy wool coat as she walked toward the pizzeria. The streets were nearly deserted. Her breath misted in…

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Evolving Plots by C.D. Watson
Evolving Plots

Evolving Plots

Warning: Major spoilers ahead for Witch Hollow (Celia Roman) and other stories in the Sunshine Walkingstick Series. When I’m working on a story, it’s not unusual for random ideas about future stories within that story world to come to me in odd moments. I keep dedicated pages in my OneNote story folders precisely for recording those moments, usually labeled “Ideas.” Sometimes the ideas are simply titles, sometimes they’re characters, and sometimes entire plot threads pop into my head. Today, I’d…

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Play YOUR Game by C.D. Watson
Play YOUR Game

Play YOUR Game

Last Friday, my sister’s high school basketball team (she’s the coach) played in the first round of the state tournaments in their division. The team did well during the first three periods by first maintaining an even score with their opponent (the defending state championships) and then pulling ahead. In the fourth period, the opposing team pushed back with a full-court defensive press and an aggressive offense, and pulled ahead of us. Meanwhile, our girls were struggling to defend a…

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Bigotry Is Not Ok (or Ravelry Is at It Again)

Bigotry Is Not Ok (or Ravelry Is at It Again)

Ravelry has allowed another pattern to be posted on its site that violates its community guidelines, namely the ones forbidding hate speech and the targeting of politically conservative users (not to mention the ones not allowing certain curse words). First, let me reiterate that I am a non-political libertarian who believes that no limits on free speech should be imposed by the government. This includes so-called “hate speech.” Individuals and private institutions and businesses, however, can regulate speech within the…

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Friendship Wins by C.D. Watson at DreamingIf.com
Friendship Wins

Friendship Wins

I have some rules that help me navigate the world without having to spend too much time stressing over silly things like what to wear and whether a particular sentence is appropriate in a particular story. The rule for the latter is much simpler than the rule for the former (which is a series of rules), so that one goes first. The rule is: Story trumps everything. Well, the core of that is that Story is Character, but the rule…

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Sunshine Walkingstick Book 5 by Celia Roman
The Great Thing about Sunshine

The Great Thing about Sunshine

A while back, I wrote a blog post about how difficult Sunshine Walkingstick (Celia Roman) can be to write. At the time, I was completely burned out on Sunshine from pushing myself to write and release three books in the series back to back (common advice in self-publishing circles). I was certain I would never work on Sunny again. And yet again, I proved myself wrong. I ended up adding a third short story and a fourth book to the series,…

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Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix
September 2019’s Reads

September 2019’s Reads

The short list below probably looks like I didn’t read much in September. Not true! I started reading IT by Stephen King at the end of August or so, which took up quite a bit of my reading time in September. Notice that I didn’t finish IT, though. It’s a massive book. I finally had to put it down about halfway through and read something else. I’ll come back to it soon, but wow. I still have around 650-700 pages…

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After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia edited by Ellen Datlow
Is Authoritarianism the Answer to Social Unrest?

Is Authoritarianism the Answer to Social Unrest?

Last week or so, I finished reading After: Nineteen Stories of Apocalypse and Dystopia edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. Datlow is an award-winning editor. I heard about her last year when I participated in the Books of Horror Christmas exchange. (Books of Horror is one of the reader-oriented Facebook groups I follow.) So when I was looking for new-to-me Horror recently, I decided to give one of her anthologies a go. I’ll have more on my impressions of…

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