A reminder, and random tidbits

One last thing [that I just edited to be the first thing, because it’s more important than my ramblings]: If you’re local to Utah and are a writer of the LDS faith and/or writing in the LDS market, remember that LDStorymakers happens next weekend. I believe the deadline is fast approaching (in fact, I just … Read more

Completely non-scientific thoughts on EMP-type doomsday stories

Well, nonscientific in that I am not going to even Google anything about the science on this (yet). Jericho was on TV yesterday in reruns–a big block of four episodes that I DVRed but ended up deleting when I realized that it was much later in the season, and that there are several episodes between … Read more

“Books to look for” page

I’m working on building a page of books that I recommend and that I’ve edited (which of course I also recommend!). So far, the page only has books that I’ve edited. I really love Indiebound‘s easy linking system–you look up the book, enter your affiliate number on the book’s page, and voila! A link (with … Read more

Community class and new ad

My sister was once an ad designer, and she has been helping me out in the last couple of weeks to design an ad for my critique services, which I’ll be placing in SCBWI newsletters. Check it out–pretty! You’re always welcome to pass on the word that I do critiques to writers you know who … Read more

And in other news…

It seems that FB has at least temporarily rolled back their terms of service to the previous, slighly less draconian terms until they can figure out why tens of thousands of people were protesting and even deleting their accounts. We’ll see what happens. On to other news. Suddenly life has gotten really busy! Especially with … Read more

The politics of names–on naming characters

As I’ve been trying to come up with a name for a particular character in my book–one who comes from a very particular culture considered to be low-class and uneducated–I’ve been pondering on the politics of naming our characters, and how that ties into our own personal experience with people from particular SESs. It makes … Read more

Manuscript critique discount

We’re all dealing with tough times right now. Getting your manuscript critiqued by an experienced editor is definitely a luxury, and an expensive one at that. With that in mind, I’m offering a discount for the next month (expires March 11) on my manuscript critique services. Critiques of submission packets (first three chapters and query/cover … Read more

And then there’s the writing end of things…

James Owen just pointed me in the direction of his post from a few days ago, A Career as a Novelist–In Layman’s Terms, a metaphor which those of you who are still in the throes of writing your first book will sympathize with–and those of you with published books will probably have experience with in the way James … Read more

And these are the *college* students

My cousin just shared a link with me that I had to pass on–a professor who has been collecting the worst of the worst sentences from his students. • “The person was an innocent by standard, who just happened to be the victim of your friend’s careless responsibility.” • “Society has moved toward cereal killers.” … Read more