Hallelujah! HOPE DAWNS ETERNAL is finally ready to publish, or almost. Yesterday I finished combining the prologue and 36 chapters into one gigantic document of 265 pages and 78,318 words – longer than I’d expected, but an ideal length for the first book of a trilogy. Or who knows, maybe it’ll become a longer series…. [Read More]
Hope Dawns Eternal nearing the Finish Line
How do you know when you’ve finally finished your novel? Especially when it’s the first in a series? I thought I’d completed Hope Dawns Eternal, my vampire soap opera thriller, a couple of months ago, but when my husband read it, he thought I needed a more dramatic ending that wrapped up more of the… [Read More]
Is Sloth Still a Deadly Sin?
This New Year’s morning, I awoke full of good intentions. Rather than committing to the usual litany of resolutions I’ll never keep, I decided to focus on just one goal: I vow to write at least 500 words per day, which comes out to 3,500 words per week. If I don’t reach 500 words… [Read More]
My NaNoWriMo win: I may be a cheater, but I’m not a liar
I made it! Last night I validated my National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) score of over 50,000 words, and the site declared me an official winner. They provided a link to an online certificate I can download, with lines to fill in my name and book title, and links to order merchandise, including a… [Read More]
The NaNoWriMo Challenge – Do you play well with others?
Warming up the car this morning before taking off for my Nia class, tardy as usual, I caught the tail end of an interview with the best-selling novelist David Baldacci on WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Joe Donahue, the interviewer on The Roundtable, asked him if he’d ever consider collaborating with another writer. “No,” he said…. [Read More]
Drifting downstream in search of inspiration
In search of illustrations for this blog post about NaNoWriMo and my writing process, I Googled “Woman Writing Painting.” Hundreds of images popped up, and as I scrolled through them, this painting of the Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse* caught my eye. The woman is drifting on a river, face tilted skyward, eyes… [Read More]