Category: writing

  • N’Inktober 2023

    N’Inktober 2023

    And so it begins…  Another year of fun and drawing during the month of October.  

  • Postcard Challenge

    Postcard Challenge

    One weekend.  Fifty words.  You can write it. I believe in you.  Email for an image! and follow the rules… 

  • Odd Prompts: Let the Air In

    Odd Prompts: Let the Air In

    As I’m typing this, I have a kitten patting and biting at the screen. He’s hunting the ‘bugs’ of the black letters and cursor as they dance across the screen. Here’s hoping I don’t have more typos than the usual, but… well, kitten!  *** James closed the door firmly after the letting agent, and then…

  • Calculated Writing

    Calculated Writing

    and not the kind of writing you may be thinking of. I haven’t been writing non-fiction for… a while. I miss the deep dives into a research topic, and then pulling it together into a cohesive whole. On the other hand, the time to get stuck into a topic well enough to produce a cohesion,…

  • Christmas Day

    Christmas Day

    I may not have a tree in the house today, but there are presents wrapped by the fireplace. While all of us are in some degree sick (the First Reader is slowly recovering, I seem to have a mild case, and the Boy was awake coughing but is sleeping in now) we don’t have anywhere…

  • Bonsai of the Soul

    Bonsai of the Soul

    I’ve been fascinated with bonsai for as long as I can remember, along with my affection for orchids, and horticulture in general. Unlike the orchids (looking around at my office window at my happy plants there) I’ve never been able to keep a bonsai alive. Too scattered, insufficient time, and too many moves where there…

  • Books, Books, Books!

    Books, Books, Books!

    A book promo post with a twist I have a new release out!  Also, a note – if you click through a link to Amazon from my blog, it’s an affiliate link. I get a little bit (tiny, but it adds up) from these links, it costs you nothing, and it’s what keeps the lights…

  • Call for Stories: But Not Broken

    Call for Stories: But Not Broken

    Just a reminder that there is a month remaining in the open submission period for stories in this anthology.  But Not Broken will be the second of the PTSD anthologies, taking up where Can’t Go Home Again  left off. You can read more details about the ideas behind the anthology here, in my first call…

  • Hippos and Moose

    Hippos and Moose

    And just what do those two have in common, you may wonder?  I’m so glad you asked.  One of the things Peter Grant has mentioned, when the topic of dangerous critters arose, is the sheer wrongheadedness of American Tourists in Africa. “You see,” he says, with a shake of his head, “they have seen the…

  • No, it’s not Nano time

    No, it’s not Nano time

    Nearly done with N’inktober, so far, I haven’t missed a day. Some days were better than others, but understanding how I could do a month of daily art without a hiccup, when so many on the art feeds struggle for this… requires a look at what I do on a routine basis. I make art…

  • It’s Not Perfect

    It’s Not Perfect

    Iterate better, friend and fellow author Dorothy Grant keeps telling me. If something isn’t working, make changes until it does. I started doing that several weeks ago when I moved the desk off the wall to the center of the room. This afternoon once I’d shut down the work laptop, I cleared it off the…

  • Chatty Today

    Chatty Today

    *flexes fingers a few times* Hits the keyboard, hands flying.  I’ve been an erratic blogger. Yes, Cedar, you’re thinking, you’ve been like that for… (checks blog date) sixteen years now.  I don’t mean that kind of erratic! I mean the kind that doesn’t post on the regular, which means that readers stop coming to see…