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When to start a writing career? The second best time is now (#IWSG)
The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” Chinese proverb This post is part of the Insecure Writers Support Group monthly blog hop, co-hosted this month by Erika Beebe, Olga Godim, Sandra Cox, Sarah Foster, and Chemist Ken. This month’s optional question is: What’s the one thing about your writing career you regret the most? Were you able to overcome it? Before I get to this month’s question, I want to share some exciting news with my IWSG friends (and anyone else who missed my announcement last week): I’ve published another short story! It’s a Christmas horror story, published in this year’s Deathlehem anthology, The Colour…
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2021: My year in writing
2021 was an eventful year in my writing career. I published some stories, made some progress, endured some frustration, and learned, learned, learned. Such is the life of a developing writer. I hope you’ll indulge me in a little year-end navel-gazing. I enjoy these kinds of posts from other writers, because it helps me see behind the curtain of their careers and get a more realistic understanding of what a year in a writer’s life can look like. And as I mentioned in my last year-end retrospective post (State of the blog and most popular posts of 2021), I find it helpful to do some annual stock-taking to evaluate my…
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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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My short story, “Woe is Me, Poor Child, for Thee,” is published!
My Christmas horror story, “Woe is me, Poor Child, for Thee,” is published in the 2021 Deathlehem anthology! One foggy Christmas Eve, an ex-con mall Santa seeks camaraderie in a California Delta watering hole—and learns that the spirits of the season don’t always rest easy. Billy Foraker had it all: lovely family, big house in the ‘burbs, good job making good money. Then he lost it all and traded the American dream for a prison cell. Now he’s a free man again, trying to rebuild his life, but his past is still out there, waiting for him in the Delta tule fog. The Colour Out of Deathlehem contains 24 holiday…
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November: A month of stress and delight in writing (#IWSG)
I just finished NaNoWriMo. For you non-writers (a/k/a normal people) out there, NaNoWriMo, affectionately known as NaNo, is National Novel-Writing Month, a worldwide phenomenon in which millions of writers try to write 50,000 words in the month of November. Free investment tip: buy stock in coffee companies before November. Alcohol and cigarette companies too. But I digress. A subgroup of NaNo participants are known as NaNo Rebels. We bust our butts all month like the “regular” NaNos, but we do something other than write 50K words of a brand-new novel. In my case, I committed to spending as much time revising a previous NaNo project as it would have taken…
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Delta Dawn won first place! (Weekend Coffee Share #14)
Good morning, and happy Friday! I have big writing news to share with y’all, but first: Welcome to the Weekend Coffee Share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer. Have a seat, grab a treat, and let’s chat out in the garden on this gorgeous desert morning. Big writing news I’m excited to report that my second novel, a domestic suspense/thriller called Delta Dawn, won first place in the unpublished novel division of the Arizona Authors Association Annual Literary Contest! I still need to make substantial revisions before it will be ready to query, but I’m so excited that people actually liked it. I’m also grateful to the judges, who provided helpful…
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California Delta Part 1: Paradise Cut (+Books! and Memes!)
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Blurbs, pitches, loglines, and other book marketing necessities I suck at (#IWSG)
For those of you who aren’t masochists don’t write fiction, here’s something about the writing world that you may not know: authors have to be marketers. Yes, even traditionally-published authors, because apparently even the big publishers don’t invest a lot in marketing authors unless they are big names. I’m going to admit 2 things up front that will color the rest of this post: I find this fact frustrating. With a family and a day job, I barely have enough time to write, let alone learn how to market my writing. When I first started writing, I thought that’s what publishers got paid to do, seeing as how they have…
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Gratitude, wins and losses, and weird Bisbee (Weekend Coffee Share #9)
*Yawn* Good morning, and welcome to the weekend coffee share, hosted by Natalie the Explorer! It’s Sunday morning, and I’m only half-caffed, so come on in, pull up a seat, and let’s finish caffeinating. I’m still scrambling to finish a Christmas horror story to submit for an anthology, so I’m going to keep things short today. Why losses seem to outweigh wins First, let’s talk about wins and losses–in writing and in life. Jenny Hansen on the wonderful Writers in the Storm blog has a great post called Writing and the Law of Loss Aversion. I’d never heard of the law of loss aversion before, but once she explained it,…
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Where do I draw the line? (#IWSG)
It seems like everyone has an opinion these days about what writers should and shouldn’t do: Show me all the sex! Keep the sex behind closed doors. Write about diverse characters! Don’t write about identities you don’t share. Write honestly about difficult topics. Stop writing about rape. And on and on. Yeah, those are oversimplifications, but sometimes the discourse about what writers should write isn’t very nuanced. So today I’m going to piss off everyone by wading into these controversial waters. I’ve written about this topic before, but I’m going to get into it in a bit more depth in this post. But first: This post is part of the Insecure…
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Snippet from “Open House,” my newly-published short story
Good morning, and welcome to this week’s Weekend Writing Warriors post! Today’s snippet is the first 10 sentences of “Open House,” my 80s haunted house story that JUST GOT PUBLISHED on the Storyteller Series podcast! Why yes, I am just a wee bit excited. Yes, I did squee all over this blog announcing it. Those of you who are veterans may shrug, but this is a big ol’ deal for little ol’ me. OK, on to the snippet: The woman in the Nike jacket was staring at Kim Idlewood’s husband. Oh, she was trying to be discreet about it—they usually tried to be discreet, unless they were young, hot, and…
Janet Alcorn
Suspense | Horror | Romance
