I appear to have missed the month of March entirely >.<. When last I wrote, I had mentioned plumbing failure. Plumbing failure did, indeed, cause destruction of the basement from the back of the house to the front of the house. They have to jackhammer through the cement flooring and dig up a trench to get to the old pipes so they can remove those, and then replace them with new pipes. This was also required on the lawn, so lawn — which is a tiny city lawn to begin with — is less grassy as well. While the plumbers will put the dirt back and pour cement once they’ve finished, the cement takes a suggested three weeks minimum to dry enough that we could paint or glue. Which is fine. And … Continue reading
Category Archives: writing
January was the month of reviewing copy-edits for Cast in Atonement, while writing the Sagara book that is not yet titled — Magic School 2. Copy-edits are gone, and until page proofs arrive, only writing remains. The West novel in progress is The Wild Road. I have broken 100k words, and I am hoping that the book will be 250k words long. Or less. To be fair, I was also hoping Hunter’s Redoubt would be 250k words long. Which it wasn’t. The only West novel that has stayed on the right side of 200k words was City of Night. Which came in at 176k words. I honestly do not write long books on purpose, but… I write them to reach the end. Sometimes the end is farther away than I thought. … Continue reading
In 2023 I finished and published Hunter’s Redoubt, the first book in the final sequence of the West universe. In 2024, I intend to finish The Wild Road. Or at least finish the first draft of the book. It will still have to be revised, editing, copy-edited, proof-read. Having a publisher didn’t mean those things didn’t have to be done, but my part in the doing was much smaller. It was reactive, not active. But having done it once, I think I’m more aware of what can go wrong, and things should be much smoother. *** In 2023, I finished Cast in Atonement, but that’s author-finished; the book will be published in, I think, August 2024. 2023 also saw the publication of Shards of Glass. For me, “finishing” a book is done … Continue reading
This book had a bit of journey. I’d written 200k words. I’d cut 110k of those words, but still believed I had 90k words. This is not what happened. What happened in the end was I had 0k of the original words I’d written — and 303k of the new words I’d started once I’d typed “the end” (which is figurative as I don’t think I’ve ever typed that unless instructed to do so). It is the longest first book in an arc I’ve ever written. Which was not my intent. But. Michelle. Story length. It is the story of my writing life >.< Jody Lee did the cover art, and Kathleen Oudit, the cover design across all four formats. This is the front cover and the … Continue reading
I’m writing to you all from Australia, where I have come on my writing retreat, which used to be an annual thing until Covid. I have an unfortunately tight deadline, and I’m neck deep into Cast in Atonement, which is not yet done. I hope to be finished before I leave Brisbane. And when I say finished, I mean: finished first draft. After which I will revise for submission, and then submit. Shards of Glass is due out at the end of November, so I’m fielding a few questions about that — but my head is fully entangled in the Cast novel, so Shards feels like it was written years ago (it wasn’t). My toe has improved enough it doesn’t bother me much, but according to X‑rays taken a week before I left, … Continue reading
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