You can’t keep a good cat down
Holy Foreign Sales, Batgirl! While looking up info for the new website, I came across a new German edition of Bewitching Kittens, the Halloween-themed Regency that contains my novella Charlotte’s Kitten. (Side note: yes, Halloween and Regency England, I was as skeptical as you are when I was given the assignment.) The English edition of the novella quickly earned out, and though Zebra didn’t go back to press, they did sell German language rights. And the German language edition sold well. And kept selling. And they reissued it with new covers, and those editions kept selling. By...
Read MoreA journey of ten thousand steps begins with…
hiring someone else to do it. The key to adulthood is recognizing your limitations and figuring out how to work around them. I’m not a visually oriented person so much of web design passes right over my head, and I’m not willing to invest the time needed to get good at it. So I’ve found someone who is willing to take on the project of bringing my website out of the Jurassic era. My website designer knows and accepts my limitations, and can expertly translate commands like “Make it shiny, but not too shiny” into a working design. In the 90s she helped me build my...
Read MoreMy favorite time of year
Ah, it’s the end of summer. The favorite time of year for any writer, due to four little words… Sale on office supplies! (I know, you thought I was going to say “kids back in school.”) And for some, that is indeed a blessing, but for those of us without rugrats, now is the time to pick up pocket folders, notebooks and all those other necessities of the writing life. Indeed, I’d been distressed when I ran out of pocket folders earlier in the month, but now I have a fresh new supply which instantly makes me feel more organized and efficient, even if all I’ve...
Read MoreHow much is that plot arc in the window? The one with the wagglely tale?
Yesterday, in the span of a half-hour, I came up with not one but two new story ideas. Different genres, different tones, even different POVs, the only thing they have in common is me. I drove to the Cybercafe, whipped out a notepad (silly me, I’d left the laptop at home since I was supposed to be running errands) and wrote them up. This is the part of being a writer that most folks don’t understand, as they sidle up next to me at parties and offer to let me have the privilege of writing up their great idea. Having ideas is never the problem, the hard part is picking just one to...
Read MoreEverything you always wanted to know about sidekicks, Part 2
This summer I was a guest instructor at Odyssey (odysseyworkshop), where I focused on the role of sidekicks as part of an overall discussion of characterization. The first half of the lecture was posted as a podcast last month, and they’ve just made the second half available on their website here. Podcast #32: In this podcast, the second of two parts, Patricia Bray explains how the sidekick’s characteristics can balance those of the protagonist, or contrast with those of the protagonist. She discusses the requirements for a good sidekick, and describes how the sidekick’s...
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