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Celebrating 4 years in the IWSG
Today the IWSG celebrates its 12th birthday, and Monday was the 4th anniversary of my first-ever IWSG post. How cool is that? Anniversaries give us a reason to look back, to see how we’ve grown and changed over the years and to celebrate the person–or in this case, people–who have accompanied us on that journey. But first: In case you’re new here, the first Wednesday of every month is Insecure Writers Support Group day, on which we insecure writers share our doubts, fears, struggles, and triumphs. Our awesome co-hosts this month are Sonia Dogra, J Lenni Dorner, Pat Garcia, Sarah – The Faux Fountain Pen, and Meka James. Stop by and give them some comment love. We…
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2023 is off to a weird start
I had lots of plans for Winter Break and the start of 2023. Travel! New look for the blog! Lots of progress on my writing! Late brunches and desert hikes and lots of lounging in my PJs. Well… some of that happened. Long-Suffering Husband and I drove to Vegas right after Christmas (he won, I didn’t–as usual). I worked on the Blog Refresh from Hell that I started last Winter Break. I flew to Sacramento, drove to my hometown, hung out with friends, visited some places near and dear to me. Flew home ready to finish up the website refresh, work on my novel, and have those late brunches and…
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New story published, Organ Pipe Cactus trip, blog recap, recap, and New Years memes (Weekend Coffee Share #20)
Happy New Year, friends! I hope everyone had wonderful winter holidays. And a big thanks to Natalie the Explorer intrepid hostess of the Weekend Coffee Share! Thanks, Natalie, for helping me connect to so many awesome bloggers like yourself. Writing News–my latest short story is published! My big writing news: My Christmas horror story, “Woe is Me, Poor Child, for Thee,” has been published in the annual Deathlehem holiday horror anthology. See the linked post for deets. SQUEE!
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State of the blog and most popular posts of 2021
I’m one of those annoying people who enjoys taking stock at the end of the year. I like to twiddle the dials on the Wayback Machine and review my goals at the beginning of the year, the status of various aspects of my life back then, and see how far I’ve come. Sometimes it’s motivating, sometimes it’s disappointing, but it’s almost always surprising in some way. I’m usually too busy living life to track on exactly how far I’ve come or how much (or little) I’ve accomplished. So this will be the first of a few looking-back-on-the-year-that-was sort of posts. I hope you’ll pardon the public navel-gazing. First up: this…
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Not getting email updates? Please resubscribe
Back in January, I announced my new pen name and gave this blog a new look. Behind the scenes, I also moved it to a new host so I could have more control over how it looked and behaved. But, of course, there was a problem. There’s always a problem when technology is involved. Always. It turns out that when you migrate a WordPress site from wordpress.com to wordpress.org, people who follow your blog via email no longer get emails. Yeah, I know, kinda defeats the purpose of following via email, right? I’m guessing I had quite a few email followers, because when I migrated my site, my hit counts…
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New Name, New Look, New News
What’s with the new name at the top of the page? No, I didn’t get divorced (sorry, all you hot dudes, I’m still taken). Instead, I decided to adopt a pseudonym. No, I’m not on the run from the law/drug smugglers/the paparazzi. I just decided that I did not, at some future date when my first novel is published, want to sit across a conference table at work from someone who has read one of my sex scenes and knows I’m the author. I once had to sit across a conference table at work from the doctor who had done my most recent pap smear. That was weird enough. Over…
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Most popular posts of 2020
I’m still trying to find my niche on this blog, so I thought it would be fun to look at my top 91 most-liked posts of 2020 to see if any themes emerge. Here they are: Post Likes #SoCS: Clearing the clutter and creating a fresh start 17 #NaNoInspo: Write Badly 12 #FOTD: Nymphaea ‘Perry’s Almost Black’ 12 #IWSG: Genre-morphing–and a question for my readers 11 #FOTD: Rocky Mountain Bee Plant (Cleome serrulata) 11 #SoCS: A skeezy wrestler, a skeezy pickup line… and me 11 #SoCS: chirurgie 11 #SoCS: What am I attracting? 10 #SoCS: The pros and cons of time travel 10 I’m the first to admit that those…
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#IWSG: Genre-morphing–and a question for my readers
Happy IWSG Day! For those who are new here, I participate in the monthly Insecure Writers Support Group blog hop. This month’s optional question is: Have you ever written a piece that became a form, or even a genre, you hadn’t planned on writing in? Or do you choose a form/genre in advance? Before I get to this month’s question, I have a question for anyone reading this post: Would you be interested in a series of posts loosely related to self-help for writers? I’m not talking about over-the-top, Stewart Smalley style self-help but rather some practical ideas from self-help literature, applied specifically to writing. I’ve been looking for a focus…
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The Art of Writing an Epic Blog Post
The author of this post demonstrates the techniques he’s talking about… with this post. I love the clear, practical advice in an easily-digested format. Highly recommended. Be honest. You often dream of writing an epic blog post, the kind that gets shared thousands of times, liked, tweeted, and pinned, commented on by … The Art of Writing an Epic Blog Post
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
