A few nights ago, we were heading to bed when my husband said, “I like your laptop.” Yeah, seemed like a non sequitur to me, too. Then he added, “It’s like you smashed something in there, and all the ideas are squishing out.” Ahh… Not a total non sequitur after all. He’d just evicted the cat from our dog Fritz’s crate (Ninja loves Fritz’s new bed, and the pit bull is too much of a wuss to kick him out), and the crate is directly behind my desk where rests my frilly laptop. I’ve previously confessed my love of/unhealthy addiction Read more…

Things have been a little crazy-making lately here at the Writer’s Desk. Good crazy-making, but crazy-making nonetheless, causing great difficulties for said desk to fulfill its designated purpose. In other words, there’s not been so much of the story writing. 😛 I’ll share some juicy details about the best of the crazy-making another day, but today I have some news (news that will not be “new” if you’ve subscribed to my Newsletter—hint, hint). First off, the identity of the manuscript that various non-writing tasks have been keeping me from… Founder, Book Two of the Dead Hollow trilogy, is currently with Read more…

I spent much of yesterday morning messing up my website (that wasn’t my goal, I can assure you), and then desperately trying to restore it to its former not-so-glorious, but also not-so-crappy state. My afternoon and much of this morning was devoted to messing up my print files and trying to get Prodigal paperbacks placed with other distributors. Do you see a pattern here? No—not the part where I mess things up. The part where I do things other than writing… That’s right, I finally finished the rough rough (made your dogs look) draft of the second Dead Hollow book. Read more…

I recently started reading Finders Keepers, the second book in Stephen King’s Mr. Mercedes trilogy. There seems to be a recurrent theme among readers of Stephen King, and even among readers of garden-variety serial killer or other dark crime thrillers. You’ll often see the question asked (or not asked, because people are too afraid to): What kind of person comes up with such twisted ideas? I suspect a close second is: What’s it like to write something like that? Do you have to sleep with the lights on? I’ve shared before that for me, the depth and quality of my emotional involvement with Read more…