In my last post, I wrote about the editorial process and why it takes so long, and I promised that the next one would be suggestions and strategies writers can use to make that process go more smoothly and, hopefully, a little bit faster. In the interim, I have finished up edits on one bigContinue reading “Help Me Help You (The Editorial Process Part 2)”
Category Archives: Writing process
The Hips of the Eel – Slang in the 1920s
One of the most fun things about writing Stella Hart is her dialogue. She’s a classic, F. Scott Fitzgerald-style New York flapper working in Hollywood as a silent movie actress and running around the globe solving murders with her hunky love interest, George Barrington, 13th Baronet of Kingsley-on-Pike. And she talks like a party girlContinue reading “The Hips of the Eel – Slang in the 1920s”
Losing My Grip
Heya Kittens. I’ve missed you. I haven’t been around so much the past few months, mostly because I haven’t really known what to write. The fall my dad took on November 4, 2019, the little spill in his bedroom we thought was no big deal, has turned out to be a very big deal indeed.Continue reading “Losing My Grip”
Ways to Keep Writing When You Can’t
Sometimes real life gets in the way. Sometimes there’s just no physical way to walk away from the house fire that is your mundane domestic life and get to your desk or your laptop or Starbucks or the picnic table behind the Circle K or wherever it is you do your writing. I’m not talkingContinue reading “Ways to Keep Writing When You Can’t”
Taming Plot Bunnies and Getting It Done
One of my New Year’s resolutions for 2019 was to be more productive and disciplined in my fiction writing. I’d spent the last three months of 2018 finishing a project that I’d been working on sporadically for years and ignoring everything else, and that had taught me that I actually produce more and better storyContinue reading “Taming Plot Bunnies and Getting It Done”
ConCarolinas 2019!
It’s that time of year again – ConCarolinas is back, and I’ll be there! I only consistently show up for one fandom and writing convention a year, and ConCarolinas in Charlotte, North Carolina, is it. And this year’s slate of guests and events is particularly excellent. The people in charge have worked their collective caboosesContinue reading “ConCarolinas 2019!”
Protect Your Through Line. Be Batman.
My fiction writing teacher in college told us there are only two kinds of stories: character stories and situation stories. In a character story, the protagonist evolves over the course of the action from one thing into another—The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Rocky, and “The Ugly Duckling” are all character stories. In situation stories, theContinue reading “Protect Your Through Line. Be Batman.”
Lucy Blue Edits!
Looking through my bills for last month, it suddenly occurred to me that I really, really missed freelance fiction editing. For anyone who’s interested, here’s what I charge and how I do it and why I think I’m qualified: Proofreading: $0.005/word ($250 for a 50,000-word novel; $50 for a 10,000-word short story) I’ll read forContinue reading “Lucy Blue Edits!”
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Missing Comma
You know how to write a great story, but you still need to fix the damned commas!
The Shocking Truth About What Writing Fiction Pays (a personal comparison)
Earlier this week, I got my royalty statement for Little Red Hen Romance for September 2015 from Amazon and went into a full-blown fidget. In spite of the fact that we had outsold our previous best-selling month, June 2015, by more than two to one, moving more than twice as many books to paying customersContinue reading “The Shocking Truth About What Writing Fiction Pays (a personal comparison)”
Lucy Blue Writes 