With the release of my next Celia Roman novel A Witch and Her Familiar (Vanessa Kinley, Witch PI, Book 2) a few days past, I’m already anticipating the release of the next book in the series. Mostly, that means the writing end of things. When the manuscript for A Witch and Her Familiar was finalized, I took a couple of weeks off from writing to brainstorm the next book, Black Witch Rising. This is the first novel I’ve brainstormed since…
It’s time again to review the previous year’s progress, personal and professional, and write goals for the coming year. 2022’s focus was on rebuilding my creativity and pulling myself out of burnout. I did this in several ways. The first was by exploring my innate strengths, beginning with the CliftonStrengths test and continuing from there to the Better Faster Academy, a Strengths-focused resource created by Becca Syme, a success coach for writers. I’m not going to bore you with my…
Over the past few months, I’ve sneaked in some time to watch a few TV shows of the unusual sort, beginning way back in November. Here are the ones I liked the best, plus some shows I’ve already watched and some I’m looking forward to watching. The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, a Netflix original, was based on the old Archie comic book series. Netflix excels at transforming comic books into really awesome shows, and Sabrina is no exception. It’s a…
The year in books is off to a slow if interesting start, beginning with some short stories. “The Endless Lives of Kama” by William Delman at Daily Science Fiction explores the consequences of prescience. It can be enjoyed with or without pondering the deeper layers within the story, but those who enjoy oracle type stories will surely delve more deeply. “ILU-486” by Amanda Ching is predicated on the notion that there is a war on women coming from the right. Don’t…
This month, my favorite short story was “Dear Ms. Moon” by Liz Argall. It’s a cute story about a young woman who’s just trying to look out for her brother. The ending made me laugh so hard, but other parts did, too. I only finished one non-fiction book this month, Become a Successful Indie Author: Work Toward Your Writing Dream by Craig Martelle. Craig is one of the powerhouse indie authors behind the 20Booksto50K paradigm, originally coined by Michael Anderle….
September was an interesting month, book wise. The coming of autumn, coupled with the writing projects I’m working on, inspired a not-so-brief spurt of interest in Urban and Contemporary Fantasy, plus I continued chipping away at my humongously large pile of non-fiction. I didn’t read any short fiction in September, which is a first, though I do keep up with several blogs. One of those blogs lead me to “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt,…
A few months ago, fellow author Rebekah R. Ganiere put out the call to a chapter of the Romance Writers of America searching for authors to participate in a Horror in Romance panel at the upcoming RT Booklovers Convention taking place 2-7 May 2017 in Atlanta.I jumped at the opportunity. Several of my published stories, and a few planned ones, can be classified as both Horror and Romance. The obvious ones, of course, are those within The Vampyr Series: The…
Stephen King was an oft-read author during my teen years, primarily because he’s one of my father’s favorite authors and his books were in our home library. King’s dark imagery has the infinite power to draw the reader in, like a spider luring a fly, and snare the imagination in the vividly drawn worlds he creates. The Gunslinger in its revised and updated version is no different. While King readily admits in prefatory comments to updating the language of this, one…
Header image: Smoke has become a real problem across Western North Carolina and the surrounding areas as wildfires burn in several national forest locations. Photograph courtesy of Cris Bessette. A roundup of interesting books, movies, and tidbits, some old, some new, and some stuff I just wanted to share.