If you are like me and writing science fiction and fantasy, take a gander at  the link at the end of this post about world-building.

I am not a huge world-builder.  I mean, I have thoughts on what is going on…

Back at the coffee shop with the daughters this afternoon....waiting too late and didn't get any of the special pesto pasta :-(.  Oh well, the chicken salad sandwich and  peanut butter cookies were delicious, and the latte, of course, was its usual fantasmic!

It's Friday.  I did a smidgen of writing today and plan to do more as the girls play and goof off for the rest of the afternoon.

I finally wrote a scene that I had been having a hard time getting into my head - for a month…

Do you have a place to go to get away from it all - to write, to dream, to breathe? 

Some of us don't have the option of escaping our daily lives for long, or at all, really.  And we must make do with the snatches of peace and silence and reflection that we can snag here and there.  I try to write when the kids are in school, or after they are in bed.  Sometimes I write with them hustling and bustling around me.  But I wonder what it would be like to escape for a few days…

Although I am trying to blog once a day (except sometimes only once on weekends) I am just too dang tired to blog today...having stayed up waaaaay too late writing/editing last night.   Three hours sleep doesn't cut it for me, folks.

So, instead, I thought I'd share something someone else wrote today.  Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Here's Jim Butcher, super fantastico author of a whole bunch of wonderful books, including one of my favorite series:  The Dresden Files, with…

Do you have favorite quotations about books?  I have several.  Here are some good ones, some things to ponder, and my ponderings on each one.

'Classic.' A book which people praise and don't read.  ~Mark Twain

I relate to this one, because of all the books I was assigned in high school and college (especially college) that were "classics" that bored me to death.  I decided after I got my Bachelors in English that I had no wish to pursue a…

There is an interesting distinction between adult romance novels and young adult romance novels.  It's an obvious distinction, of course, and it has to do with sex.

Well, actually, it has everything to do with sex.

But more specifically, it has a lot do with teenaged girls' perceptions about sex.

Here's the thing:  In adult romance novels, the sex is pretty much the whole point, with the between-sex parts being better or worse, depending on the skill…

My husband is a doctor.  I'm a writer.  I decided to mash-up these two professions today.  Hope you enjoy.

I just figured out something indisputably awesome.

Here it is:  I have pressed myself into a hard-core edit of The Time Minders.   I am rolling through it.  It is tiring and tiresome, but there are two positive things that have come out of it.  1.  Today was Sunday…

Here's some fun for Friday-eve:

Consider how you imagine people will remember you once you become famous.  For some reason I thought about this today.  If (oops, when) I become a famous best-selling author, I wonder how the people I hang out with will think of me . . .…

Had a great time learning about the publishing industry process tonight at the WNBA (Womens National Book Association) - Charlotte Chapter, which met at the most lovely independent bookseller,…

Nerds rule.  They rule the earth.  They don't rule middle school or high school, but they rule the earth.

If you look up the definition of "nerd," here's what you get:

1. 1.  A foolish or contemptible person who lacks social skills or is boringly studious: "one of those nerds who never asked a girl to dance".
2. 2.  An intelligent, single-minded expert in a particular…

Some of you probably saw this on Yahoo today, but I liked it and wanted to link it here.  I know it’s about titles of television shows, but it could be just as easily about book titles.  Enjoy: Picking Titles, Dos & Donts 

This is the third official time I've been through my "completed" manuscript.  I put the word completed in quotation marks because, as any…

Hmm. I rather like this one.

A.A. Milne, C.S. Lewis, E.B. White, H.G. Wells, J.K. Rowling, R.L. Stine, T.H. White, V.C. Andrews, W.E.B. duBois . . . .

Why do writers go by their initials?

Many modern women writers know that there is a “literary glass ceiling” in the…

I am home with a sick little girl today.  She caught her daddy’s wretched stomach virus.  My hands are positively chafed from the extremely frequent hand-washings.  I hope that the preventive measures work and I don’t get what they have.

Whenever I can’t find inspiration inwardly in my writing, all I really have to do is look at and engage in the world around me and write it…

In trying to process what really wins me over in a book, television show, or a movie for me, I find that I like so many, many things.  In books, I want to “see, feel, hear, taste and smell” what’s going on – like a movie in my head but better, since I can involve the other senses beyond sight and sound.  In TV and movies, I look for the subtle emotion playing on the actors’ faces that can communicate volumes just with a look.  I love description.  I love sensory words and imagery.  I love…

On the kitchen windowsill sit two large green plants.

Plant #1 is a sprawling lemon basil that my seven-year-old planted and has tended with me since last Spring. It is doing well and has thrived these many months, even when we nearly killed it at one point last summer. She had poured water onto its base with a little too much force and cut its stem, knocking it over. She thought it was going to die for sure, and shed real tears over it. But I used toothpicks as splints and wrapped it…

There is a rooster that lives on a farm that is situated through the woods behind our house. This rooster is one noisy S.O.B.

I hear him all the livelong day, from the crack of dawn (if I’m awake at the crack of dawn) until the sun goes down.  As we move more into spring weather here in NC, he gets more…