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How the devil is it the end of March already? I swear we just started this month. It's probably at least in part because I just got back from Norwescon, so I'm still in con-brain-mode. That's my excuse, anyway. Words written: 8,836 on one project (Paranormal Investigations) Things accomplished in fiction: Alison and Jonathan have their First Date, and a new character emerges from out of freakin' nowhere (seriously, dude?) Writer-ly things accomplished: I guess I'll figure out where the new guy is coming from? He'll help move things forward, and I've got a decent idea of what comes next. Prepping for Camp Nanowrimo! New books read: Reflections (Indexing book 2, AKA how Seanan McGuire uses her folklore degree); The Jewel (for I am a sucker for a decent YA dystopia); Adulthood is a Myth (collection of comic strips that speak to my heart); The Tropic of Serpents (book 2 of the Lady Trent memoirs); and  Chaos Choreography (book 5 of the Incryptid series, ...

It's getting close to that time again! Camp Nanowrimo will be starting April 1st, and I'm hoping that my goal this year is realistic enough to make winning something feasible. I know my current goal is to have a complete draft of Paranormal Investigations Inc book 2 finished by the end of this month, but I realized that I had a bigger gap that needed to be filled in with the end of book 1, and that's what I've been working on. My goal for Camp Nanowrimo is to finish filling the book 1 gap, and get to the big climax of book 2. After that, we'll see if there's still enough material for a third book, or if I'm really just writing one volume - either is a possibility at this point. In the meantime, I'll be heading to Norwescon this weekend (meaning Wednesday) for a weekend of reading and being around my people. I'm looking forward to it - it'll be nice to get away from the stresses of the day to day for a little bit, and I'm hoping I'll be ...

I've been working on (slowly) finishing my draft zero of the Paranormal Investigations trilogy, or at least the first full book. I know what needs to happen, but I'm truthfully not hugely excited about it. I figured that now would be a good time to talk to my main character, and get into her head a little bit. Lucky you, you get to read my extremely rough writing! You can thank me later. Enter ALISON - mid-twenties, blonde, short, stocky, dressed in jeans and an oversized sweatshirt with beat-up tennis shoes and carrying a large messenger bag. She sits on a stool, gripping her bag to her chest as though afraid to let it out of her sight, and smiles tightly. INTERVIEWER:  You OK there? ALISON:  I'm fine. This is just a little bit weird. There's nothing here, you know? No walls or ceiling or...anything. It's just open space, and this stool on a little bit of floor, and I can't see who's talking, so it's kind of freaking me out a little bit, you know? ...

Several years ago, I started reading books by Seanan McGuire and listening to the Writing Excuses podcast. These things may not seem all that related, but they are, through one Mary Robinette Kowal. She is a regular part of the Writing Excuses podcast, and she is the audiobook narrator for Seanan's October Daye series. So when I heard that she was going to be publishing her first novel, I was interested. When I heard that the premise could be summed up as "Pride and Prejudice with magic," I knew I needed to find it. I have never been happier to have a book series cross my path. The first book of the series,  Shades of Milk and Honey , sets the stage for an alternative Victorian-era England, in which there is a kind of magic known as glamour. As it deals with light and illusion, it is frequently considered a woman's art, alongside embroidery and painting. The main character, Jane, is the eldest of two sisters and the "plain" one, so she tries to content her...

Lately, my husband and I have been watching  Lucifer . We're playing catch-up on episodes on the DVR, so we're a few episodes behind. One episode started with a woman standing up somewhere high, looking down. Lucifer comes up behind her and starts whispering in her ear, encouraging her to jump. He keeps talking, until finally she jumps... Into a pool. It's not actually as high up as it looked, but it was still one of those moments that I would have loved to have had some kind of warning. It felt like I'd had the wind knocked out of me, and it took a few minutes before I could breathe properly again. I've always understood intellectually why people reference trigger warnings when telling stories or writing articles about traumatizing things. I had just never actually been "triggered" before, and it put the whole idea in a new light for me. I've mentioned before that I had some hard times in college, and there were times when I didn't think the...