Thank you for your comments, emails, or input on the West group list.  I’ve added a page to the sidebar, called Down­loads.  On it, you will find three short stories.  The first, Echoes, is a West-universe related story about Kallan­dras, the Master Bard.  The second, Birth­night, is the first short story I sold; it was written as Michelle Sagara.  The last, Nightin­gale, is one of the stories that I partic­u­larly like, and one of the few SF stories I’ve written.  For some reason, my SF stories end up being some­what darker than my fantasy stories. I’ve closed comments on the Down­loads page, because in theory it’s static, so if you have anything to say (links not working, etc.), here’s a good place to leave comments. … Continue reading →

I have some news for Michelle West readers. But first, a small digres­sion. I’ve said before, and will no doubt say again, that no two writers I know work in the same way. It doesn’t matter what their stated process is; when you get down to details, the process that sounds the same actu­ally differs widely. Some writers are outliners. They can write an outline which they can more or less follow, and use the outline to guide their story as they write the actual book. I can’t. I’ve done it once, and what it taught me was that it’s not a guide — for my partic­ular creative process — it’s a straight­jacket. Some writers can look at a story and have a natural feel for its length; they know when … Continue reading →