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Better Babies Contests: Eugenics at the State Fair
I’ve written before about what we writers call research, and everyone else calls farting around on the internet. Today I’ll share an example from earlier this week of where farting around on the internet research led me. Warning: disturbing content ahead. I’m polishing up my time travel romance, Vanishing, Inc., to get ready to query agents, and I wanted to add a funny date scene set in a traveling carnival. A little Googling, a few clicks, and I found myself browsing through an Arizona State Fair program from 1916. Pictures of the fair commissioners, rules for livestock judging, who was in charge of harness racing that year… and then I…
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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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Boost Your Writing Productivity: Make Writing a Habit
Every writer I’ve met has struggled to get in their daily word count or find a block of time to revise or escape work and family responsibilities long enough–and consistently enough–to make steady progress on a writing project. Every. Single. One. Including me. Of course. Absolutely. I can’t tell you how to get your spouse to stop asking you where the Pop Tarts are and let you write (1. I ate them. 2. I have a few suggestions, but most of them involve duct tape, so I’ll keep them to myself on the advice of my lawyer). I can’t tell you how to convince your boss that you should be…
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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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7 Reasons Why I Will Hate Your Book
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: Being a writer, when you’re reading someone else’s work, what stops you from finishing a book/throws you out of the story/frustrates you the most about other people’s books? The more I learn about the craft of writing, the more I read differently. I notice problems in other people’s writing to which I would have been oblivious before. Before, I might have noticed that I wasn’t really into a book, that the book didn’t hook me or engage me or hold my attention, but I might not have…
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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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Looking Back on 2020, Episode 1: The Phantom Plans
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, we all made plans for the bright, shiny new decade. New year, new you! Set some goals! Live your best life! Uh, huh. Man plans, and God laughs. In the immortal words of Aerosmith: Dream On. Or, in psychological terms, a lot of us spent most of 2020 orbiting the bottom sections of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In my case, I spent most of the year orbiting my laptop, held in place by the tractor beam of Zoom meetings. Could I strain a little harder for those metaphors? I bet I could. But I won’t. I promise. Seriously, despite what…
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#SoCS: What am I attracting?
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; this week’s prompt is, “magnet. I pondered over this week’s prompt for a bit, thinking about magnets, like the big rolling one in our carport that my husband uses to pick up nails in the gravel around our new-to-us house. The house isn’t actually new. It was built in 1946, and my husband has made a hobby out of rolling the magnet around, gathering nails and screws and other objects that might puncture our tires. He keeps all of them in an old wastebasket in the carport next to the magnet. They…
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#IWSG: Gimme that sweet, sweet deadline
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: Are there months or times of the year that you are more productive with your writing than other months, and why? I’ve been mulling over this question for a few days, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m more productive with my writing when a) I’m not dealing with a major life event (like moving… sigh… we’ve been here a month, and the house is still full of boxes) and b) I have a deadline. Time of year, by itself, doesn’t seem to make much…
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#SoCS: Our choices make our lives (with bonus pics from Saguaro National Park)
This post is part of the Stream of Consciousness Saturday blog hop. Linda Hill posts a prompt every Friday; this week’s prompt is: “opt.” Use it as a word or find a word with “opt” in it and base your post on that. Yesterday my husband and I opted out of unpacking, organizing, and cleaning. Instead of doing those responsible adult things, we opted to explore the western unit of Saguaro National Park, about a half-hour’s drive from our new home in Tucson. I read a lot of self-help books, because I want to be the best version of me than I can, and I have a lot of dreams I want…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
