Tales from the Raven

On Sunday evening I was driving to a friend’s house, listening to the thunder and feeling grateful the rain hadn’t hit yet.  Then lightning split the sky–just in front of me and off the road.  It was one of those straight up and down streaks and the tail disappeared in the trees.  I’m a pretty [...]

I haven’t posted much of late, and it’s easy for that to be a self-perpetuating cycle.  It goes something like this:  “I need to post, but since I haven’t posted, a quick post won’t do.  I need to post something really funny/insightful/momentous/amazing, to make it up to my blog readers that I haven’t been posting.  [...]

Today I swapped my daughter’s black Sunday shoes for white sandals and we checked on the status of everyone’s swimwear.  The garden is in, the trees are leafed out, and summer’s just around the corner. I’m excited to dig in to the summer projects we have planned–but rushing to finish up the spring list.  Of [...]

You know what they say about out of the ashes, new life is formed?  Well, sometimes it’s after liberal use of the delete key. Last week I sent the new and improved first chapter of 13 Demon Days to my readers, and waited for feedback.   I was a little nervous because I’ve never been as [...]

If I were the squeeing type, I’d be squeeing over here.  Impossible, you think?  Let me explain. Since I wrote three novels over the last year plus, I’m doing a lot of revising of late.  When I’m writing a novel the first time through, I want everyone to go away, be quiet, leave me alone, and [...]

With the umpteenth re-write of 13 Demon Days coming along, I’m once again updating my agent list.  And I’ve found the perfect way to keep myself energized while I search.   Listen to lots of Buffy music! Now, I could go into the subconscious reasons as to why music to slay by is also great [...]

My YA novel The Popcorn Potion has been sent back to the kitchen with a request that the ingredients get a careful taste testing.  In its stead I’ve pulled my mid-grade, 13 Demon Days, back out and served it up. Last summer I started the re-write before bootcamp, but was sidetracked by Popcorn and my write for [...]

The snow is almost gone, and the Ice Pirates are panicking.  They thought they had a pretty good hideout, complete with a mean billy goat watch dog, but it’s melting fast.   Now they’re scrambling to move their stolen goods before the warm weather comes. I’ve suggested they try one of our hollow trees, but [...]

I still haven’t actually, quite, managed to start a rewrite on Popcorn that lasted for more than a day.  Every time I think I’ve had my Eureka moment I change my mind two days later when some part of the plotting equation proves to be so much sludge. One part of the problem was that [...]

Every year for it seems like an eon I’ve come up with new goals sometime in early January.  Sometimes even on the first.  And I’ve noticed a pattern. Some of my goals will be met over the course of the year, but often the goals for the year change as the year progresses–which is a nice way [...]