Category: A Writer’s Life
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To Be An Editor
Most of what I ran across as I gathered information for this topic was in regard to final content of a text prior to publishing such as a book, newspaper or magazine. Editors typically do the following: Read content and correct spelling, punctuation, and grammatical errors. In other words, they look for and correct mistakes. Rewrite…
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Orwell Nailed It
#PrideAndPerjury #JAFF #HistoricalFiction #SelfPublishing “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.” George Orwell First, please note what Orwell did not say. Writing is often intensely enjoyable – even non-fiction. It’s when your enjoyable project turns into a judgeable, sellable, editable book that the illness kicks in… My…
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Austen Friendships
In the past few months, I have been thinking about relationships, particularly friendships. Each of us has groups of friends. Some of them we met through family; some at church, school, or work; and others through our interests. Some friend groups crossover and some have never met. There are those friends that we attend specific…
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A Sneak Peek at What’s Coming
Growing up with two younger brothers was an adventure. I may not have found a snake in my bed, but that did not mean restful and peaceful sleep was always had. What I also remember was trying to tell them how to avoid my mistakes, like taking a bike down a hill that had a…
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Paths Retraced: Travels and an Anthology
As I write this post, I’m still dusting the final vestiges of jet lag from my shoulders, almost but not quite back into the routine and—yes—time zone of my normal, everyday life. We returned just a week ago from another visit to the United Kingdom. We were there to help my daughter settle into her…
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Point of Personal Privilege
Today, I muse about the Austenesque genre from the perspective of my ten years of publishing Austenesque fiction. Our #Austenesque world is one of the older ones regarding variations of a popular author. The first identifiable Austenesque Variation, Sybil Brinton’s Old Friends and New Fancies, was published in 1913. This credible mash-up crossover brought Austen’s…
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Song of Pemberley
In 2021 I started a novel called ‘Song of Pemberley’ but never finished it. Between selling my house in Texas, packing up everything and moving to Illinois, a number of things fell to the wayside until lately. Now, I’m working on playing catchup, and you know how much fun that is. However, since I am…
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Ghostwriting and Other Gory Tales
Ghostwriting, and other gory tales ‘Though I prefer first-rate fiction, for the last few years my reading seems to have been concentrated on letters and journals and biographies. It doesn’t bother me to read while I am writing… I mean, I don’t suddenly find another writer’s style seeping out of my pen. Though once, during…
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Vertigo in the Regency
In January of this year, after having 4 barometric migraines in 5 days, I found myself on the floor in my library, vomiting into the trash bin. For the next two weeks, I was told I had positional vertigo, but they didn’t want to treat it beyond medications to control the dizziness and nausea until…
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All The World’s A Stage
We just returned home from our second visit of the summer to the Stratford Festival here in Ontario to end the summer with a celebration of theatre. This time, it was all Shakespeare! The festival—being in a place called Stratford, which is most conveniently on the River Avon—concentrates on The Bard’s works, and has a…