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Snippet from “Collateral Damage” (WeWriWa #1)
Welcome to my first post for Weekend Writing Warriors! Yes, I’m joining yet another blog hop. If this keeps up, I’m going to have to find a support group for people addicted to blog hops. Anyhoo, I’m especially excited about WeWriWa, because it involves sharing snippets of writing, published or unpublished, and since my search for an agent is about as successful as New Coke (if you’re under 40, ask your parents), these posts might be the only time anyone outside my critique group gets to read my work. For my first post, here are the first 10 sentences of my postapocalyptic short story, “Collateral Damage.” This story won first…
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Saying goodbye to summer (Weekend Coffee Share #4)
Good morning, and welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share! It’s Saturday morning here in Tucson, the start of Labor Day weekend. It’s sunny and humid, and the wet pavement by my front door tells me it rained last night. The air is cool (well, cool for Tucson) and fresh, so before it gets unbearably hot and sticky, let’s plop on the porch with a morning beverage (got my Diet Coke right here) and look back on summer. But it’s still summer, you say? Well, yeah, the equinox is over two weeks away, and it’ll feel like summer here in the Sonoran Desert till November. But to me, Labor Day weekend…
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Define your own success in 6 easy steps (#IWSG)
Today we’re going to talk about success. I’m not going to define it for you, and I’m not going to tell you how to get it. I suck as a self-help guru. Instead, I’m going to suggest a way of thinking about success that doesn’t get much traction in our rise-and-grind culture. But first: This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop. On the first Wednesday of each month, I and my fellow insecure writers post something related to writing, and then we visit the blogs of our fellow members and read and comment on their IWSG posts. This month’s optional question is, How do you…
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Welcome to the Butt Rock Lounge (Weekend Coffee Share #3)
Good evening, and happy Friday! I’m writing this week’s Weekend Coffee Share post on a Friday night, which doesn’t seem like the right time for coffee, so we’re going to do something a little different. Welcome to the Butt Rock Lounge, where the hair is big and the spandex is sweaty. Pull up a leopard-print beanbag chair, and let’s get this party started! [Narrator: She’s in a faux-leather office chair in front of a garage sale desk, her hair is in a messy bun, and she’s in stanky gym shorts and a 20-year-old Def Leppard t-shirt.] Ignore the narrator. He’s an asshat. Let’s crank the tunes. How ’bout a little…
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New story coming out, bird rescue drama, and more (Weekend Coffee Share #2)
Good morning and happy Saturday! Welcome to my second post for the Weekend Coffee Share. Grab the beverage of your choice, get comfortable, and let’s chat. It’s Saturday morning as I write this, so let’s pretend we’re sitting on the back patio, smelling the roses and watching the bees work the cinnamon basil flowers. In last week’s post, I told you about our drive to Madera Canyon, but that was only half of our weekend adventures. I’ll tell you the other half in a minute, but first: Big news: my story will be on a podcast! I have a short story coming out as a radio play! It’s due out…
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Velvet-pod Mimosa (Mimosa dysocarpa)
I saw these gorgeous wildflowers for the first time Saturday on our way to Madera Canyon (more pix from that trip here). Learn more about them from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. See other posts for Cee’s Flower of the Day photo challenge here.
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A Photo Safari Through Madera Canyon, Arizona, After a Very Rainy Summer
Join me on a short photo safari in and around Madera Canyon, which, thanks to the rain, doesn’t look like it belongs in Arizona. This is my first post for Natalie’s Weekend Coffee Share blog link-up. Why yes, I am addicted to blog hops and photo challenges. Why do you ask? Blog hops like this one provide an opportunity to connect with other bloggers, so we can learn about each other’s lives and support each other. This particular blog hop should give me a great way to share the random bits and pieces of my life with the kind folks who read my blog. So, dear readers, grab a cup…
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We love our striped roses (#FOTD)
Today’s entry in Cee’s Flower of the Day photo challenge is a bud from our Rock & Roll rose. This poor thing has suffered through two moves and a ridiculous amount of neglect. We bought it in Southern California in about 2012. We dug it up in 2013 and stuffed it in a pot when we moved to Flagstaff, then planted it in our backyard, where it was abused by grasshoppers all summer and froze all winter. We eventually moved it to the front yard, where it would get more attention and better soil. Then when we moved to Tucson in 2020, we dug it up and stuffed it in…
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Pincushion cactus flower in Sabino Canyon outside Tucson, Arizona (#FOTD)
Sharing another photo from hubs’ and my attempt to hike in Sabino Canyon a week or so ago (see a few more pix from that aborted hike here). Note to self: do not hike at midday in Tucson in the summer. Sad that I have to leave myself notes about something that should be obvious to anyone with an IQ higher than a cactus, but here we are. Before we slogged back to the car to avoid heatstroke, we snapped a few pix of the local flora, including this adorable pincushion cactus. It’s just a phone pic, and taken in the bright midday sun (see aforementioned note to self), so…
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Read these 6 Books to Improve Your Fiction Writing (With a Sex-Related Bonus)
When I first started writing fiction back in 2014, I devoured books about writing. Nerdy little librarian that I am, I was sure I could learn this writing thing from a book. Or three books. Or maybe twenty. And you know what? I did learn. I read, then I wrote, then I read some more, then I wrote some more, and I got a little better. I still made mistakes, but I made better mistakes. You can’t learn to write from a book–you learn to write by writing–but books (and blog posts and podcasts and YouTube videos and, especially, critique partners) help. So today I’ll share my top 6 writing…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
