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I published another book! (though I didn’t write it)

For most of this year, I have allowed myself to get sidetracked from my writing. After my semi-hopeless-sounding post last January (good heavens, 10 months!), I actually did finish the draft of my novel in February, and felt good about what I produced in the first several weeks of the year. And then, I was

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A little good (writing) news, amidst the usual chaos

As the title says, I need to share some good news about my writing. I spent several weeks reading through the draft of my romance novel, making corrections, filling in gaps, and generally tweaking anywhere that tweaking seemed necessary. I decided I was about ready to contact an editor and cross my fingers that they

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Where have I been? What the heck have I been doing?

This is just a quick post to explain what I’ve been doing for the last six to eight months. This is a photo I took of my TV screen a week ago, of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, and her now-famous wall-size display that lists all the people (by position, not personal name) who

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Touching base: writing update, audiobooks, and everyday stuff

Just checking in on my blog/website for a little while this evening — after months of neglect — and found this paragraph on the “About” page: Although the book I published is a poetry collection, I’ve turned my attention to fiction, and have spent much of 2015 working on my first novel — specifically, a

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Writing, or reading? Can I do both, maybe?

Here’s a three-minute overview of my past nine months of writing (or trying to write) fiction — specifically, a romance novel. First, start with the germ of an idea, and “pants” through several chapters. Realize there isn’t enough conflict, change some things, and start over with basically the same characters but different circumstances. Work on

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Yep, I’m doing Dewey’s Read-a-thon!

I took the day off from work, but since the boys were also out of school, and Jeff left a to-do list for me, I haven’t had a chance to do what I’d originally planned to do today: to get some more of my books in order before the read-a-thon, and do some of the

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Late July journal updates

Wow, I knew I hadn’t posted in a while, but didn’t realize it’s been over two months — jeesh! And truthfully, this is sort of a faux-post, which I’m able to put up only because Ryan’s baseball coach decided not to go to the post-season awards night.  Apparently Ryan was one of only two or

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So many books: To Keep, or Not to Keep?

Yesterday was the last day to use a coupon at Hastings to “trade in five, get an extra $5.00 in credit.” The five items could be any combination of books, DVDs, music CDs, and games. I found nine or ten books I was willing to part with, knowing that they never take everything I bring.

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An apology of sorts

On March 2, I started writing something that I expected would be a blog post. It’s now March 13, and that piece still isn’t done, and I’ve neglected to post anything else here in the interim. The conundrum is that I’ve really been wanting to do more writing, but no matter how many ideas I

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