Wednesday, December 10, 2014

Feeling versus Being

I guess there was some writer who vented on twitter or some other social media platform about not making some "Best Of" list. I haven't read the tweets (if they were tweets). I don't even know the name of the author, but she's spurred a huge conversation in the blogisphere about her 'behavior.' Much of that conversation is negative, so much so, I guess she's even apologized or has had to come close to apology. Putting aside all that, the one thing I know and know with surety is:

She's human.

I also know I'm very tired of people having to censure their feelings so others only see rainbows and sunshine. I do it, yes, and I'm sure you do, too, but that's not life. That's not the human experience. And doing so isolates us and the people around us.

Us: We can't really say what's on our minds.
If I have a bad day or I have a bit of crazy going on in my head (and let's face it, there's a lot of crazy in my head,) I can't express it because I'm not supposed to. Writers, we aren't supposed to talk about our experiences with rejection (even though some rejections hurt and venting would make us feel better). We can't talk about the contest we didn't get into or the tweet we know was directed at us. We can't say how sorry or disappointed we are when something doesn't go the way we anticipated.

We can only look at the tweets of successful writers, successful people, successful everything. That contest we were excited about? We aren't even supposed to say, 'Ugh. Bummed out, but better luck next time.' We're told to take it off the internet, off where others can't see that we've essentially failed. Because failure is bad. If others know we've failed, they'll expect us to fail them, too. There's nothing to be gained by failure.

Nothing? Really? There's nothing to be gained? There's nothing to be said about a shared experience? No camaraderie.

So what we do becomes a little more isolating, a little more lonely.

Others: They don't know they're not alone.
Writing is naturally a solitary activity. You can join a writers' guild or a critique group. You can talk to people online using twitter or posting on blogs, but ultimately, you are on your own. Then, when you have a hard day, when you have that moment you say to yourself, 'What if this wasn't meant to be?' you still have nowhere to turn--not unless you have a strong offline network, and let's face it; many of us don't because many of our friends and family don't take what we do seriously.

So you get a rejection, but you can't read someone else's experience about rejection because they don't post about it. You only read 'How I got my agent' and 'My publishing deal.' In effect, you only read about sunshine and rainbows.

But you don't have sunshine and rainbows. In real life, you'd talk to someone who has shared the experience. But you're the only writer in your family, the only of your friends. So you turn back online to the stories and you look harder.

But you only read about sunshine and rainbows.

And you read enough of these stories, that you begin to think you're the only one who doesn't have sunshine and rainbows. Then you start thinking, 'Hey, what's wrong with me that I don't have sunshine and rainbows?' which eventually becomes, 'Why the heck am I the only one?'

The only one. You see that? The only one.

We've created an internet culture of loneliness. It doesn't matter that you *know* you aren't the only one. The human experience isn't that unique. But you *feel* that way. It doesn't matter what is. It only matters what it feels like. And if you feel alone, you are alone. In the end, there's no one out there. (Again, it doesn't matter that there is, and you just can't see it.) You know it to your core because no one is talking about how hard this is.

I take that back. Sure they are. They say, 'This is hard.'

But give me a break. We're writers. We know we're supposed to show and not tell. I applaud this woman for showing me. She didn't tell me, 'You'll have some disappointments along the way,' and then hope her calloused sentiment was going to be enough. It's never enough for our readers; why should it be enough for us? She showed us she was disappointed. She showed us the world of writing is hard.

Thank you, sunshine and rainbows culture. You've effectively made a lot of people lonely. It doesn't have to be. It would be nice if we could talk about our failures when they happen,when the emotions are hot, when they're real. It's what we give our readers. It's what our readers expect of us, but not what we give or expect of outselves.

Because we're afraid. Maybe there's someone out there who's going to read this post. She won't want to read my book now because she disagrees with me, or disagrees with my sentiment, or disagrees with the apparent negativity, or disagrees with my humanness, or disagrees with any number of things with this post. Or maybe someone reads this, and she won't want to be my agent because she doesn't want a client who speaks about rejection, or speaks her mind (occasionally), or any number of things with this post. She might tell me it was this blog post or she might not. But in the end, I'll have lost something by venting, by speaking my mind, by being human. That's what we're afraid of, isn't it?

I know that's what I'm afraid of. After all, like this woman, I'm human, too.

Saturday, November 1, 2014

Hanging On To Wonder: Get to Know April Rose Carter - My 2014 PitchWars ...

Jaye Robin Brown interviewed me in anticipation of PitchWars 2014. I've had the most tremendous time being her mentee. She is simply the best mentor any writer can ask for. Her advice for everything--plotting, interiority, agent search--is just...just wow. There are no words. And you know me. I don't dole praise unless it's deserved.

You can read the interview here...
Hanging On To Wonder: Get to Know April Rose Carter - My 2014 PitchWars ...: With my second year as a mentor in Pitchwars, I entered the contest excited and hopeful and curious, oh so curious, about which manuscripts ...

Sunday, October 26, 2014

As the days grow shorter...

Come the end of every August, it feels like my life stops. It's ridiculous, I know, because my life doesn't actually stop, but that's the way it feels. There's something about my job that sucks up every moment of free time. Then, as the days grow shorter, I literally don't see the light of day. I get to work before the sun is up and leave when it's dark outside.

My depression is coming. Right now it's just a distorted face, pressed against the window, causing me to be unsettled and a little disturbed. I can't ignore it forever. Every winter, I try, and every winter I fail. Some winters, to a lesser degree than others. Actually, since I began writing two years ago, the face has backed up a little; there's the oily smudge against the window, but at least the dark man isn't in the room with me like he usually is.

This is why I'll be starting a new book soon. It will keep him away a little longer, and keep me a little saner. I'll try to NaNoWriMo it up, but with my adjunct position, NaNo might not be a feasible option. Still, I think I'll try.

In the mean time, Nightmare on Query Street (my entry is here) is this week and PitchWars is shortly after that. I've got a few fulls and partials out with agents already, so all this is very exciting. I can feel this novel working. I can see it being published. 

If you haven't taken the opportunity to read the first chapter of WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL, please consider it. Of course, I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Sunday, October 12, 2014

#PitchWars #TeamGrit

So if you've been following me on twitter, you know I was selected as the alternate for Jaye Robin Brown. I don't have time to write much now, but let me quickly tell you SHE IS AWESOME! Her feedback on WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL has been so utterly fantastic. She's made me feel much more confident about my scenes, especially those where I knew I had to fix something but couldn't figure out exactly what. Thanks to her, it's all come into place.

Also, she had some SUPER KIND words to say about my novel. "April Rose Carter's contemporary LGBT novel snagged me with the comps in her query, something along the lines of what if Rowell's Eleanor were to fall for Green's Margo. Then her words and story didn't disappoint....[read more]"

I mean, who wouldn't love encouragement like that? So anyway...the alternate showcase for #PitchWars doesn't occur until November. Cross your fingers and press your thumbs. I really want you to be able to pick this novel up from the shelf one day. Maybe you'll cry and laugh with Sarah and Bonnie too. :)

OH, and please, please, please add her novel to your GoodReads list (and then buy it and read it). Please. NO PLACE TO FALL comes out in December. It's completely the type of book I want to read, and I want you to read it too. Go here to learn more.

Monday, August 18, 2014

#PitchWars #PimpMyBio

Last year, I got hints of this Pitch Wars thing around the internet. Too intimidated by it, and feeling like it was something much scarier than it is, I didn't do much else but lurk by the twitter feed. I've since learned all about it and it's not scary or intimidating at all. If you were like me and you don't know what Pitch Wars is, I recommend you go here. Brenda Drake does a better job explaining it than I ever could. 

Part of Pitch Wars is #PimpMyBio, which you can read about here. Here's my bio. 

My name is April Rose, but not to be mistaken with April Rose the swimsuit model or April Rose the adult entertainment actress. My day job is less glamorous. I teach high school mathematics - my focus being Algebra II and Statistics - and I adjunct at a local college as a Statistics professor (actually, that last one I was just hired for, so I haven't done it yet, but I will and soon).

I homestead part-time, because, well, I love the earth. When I was a kid, growing up on a farm, I promised myself to get as far away from farming as I possibly could. By the time I graduated with my BA in Mathematics and English, I wanted to buy a sizable piece of land and farm as much as I could from it. Sizable turned out to be pretty small - only 2.222 acres - and right now I don't have any chickens or cows. Right now. (I want 3 chickens and 1 cow - so...enough to support my family on.) I grow nearly all my own vegetables, preserve/can an insane amount of food each year, buy my meat from local farms (and my in-laws who own a farm), bake all my own bread...

This is a panorama of the top of my kitchen cabinets. There's still more...
I am often mistaken as a snob. I am not a snob. I am narcissistic. I am well-educated. And I am INFERNALLY shy. (Seriously. I had to take the MBTI test in grad school, and I scored literally off the charts as introverted. I go to the bathroom at parties to hyperventilate and cry. Literally.) Put those together, I tend to give off an air of snobbery (unintended).

Well, I guess in some ways I'm a little snobby.

I'm a Snob #1: I have no problem spending $50 on a bottle of wine, especially if it's local and especially if it's good.
I'm not a Snob #1: I have never spent $50 on a pair of jeans. Actually, I've never spent more than $30 on a pair of jeans, and usually only spend $3-$18. I like to shop at consignment shops and Salvation Army (despite their politics, which I don't believe in).

I'm a Snob #2: I will avoid shopping at box stores and malls, if I can.
I'm not a Snob #2: I prefer local stores, including farmers' markets and small groceries. Why give all my money to big corporations when I can support my local economy? Plus, the people in the small stores know me.

I'm a Snob #3: I try to speak properly and I want my daughter to speak that way too. When she says, "good" instead of "well" when she should say "well," I correct her. There's no excuse to speak poorly.
I'm not a Snob #3: I will NEVER correct anyone over her misuse of grammar (unless I'm critting for her), and I welcome corrections to my own grammar.

I'm a Snob #4: I don't like dogs, and I secretly make fun of anyone who keeps a dog in her purse or has a "dog" smaller than, say, a labrador. I especially hate dogs that yip, jump, run from their owners, chase cars, or are otherwise ill-behaved.
I'm not a Snob #4: I love cats.  Cats don't drool, don't lick your face, don't yip, don't chase cars, don't...Okay, maybe that still makes me a snob. But really, cats are awesome! I have three.

I'm a Snob #5: I love to travel.
I'm not a Snob #5: I've only been outside the U.S. once and that was to go on tour with my college glee club (I used to sing alto in a religious choir, even though I am NOT religious). BUT when I travel, it's with a tent. I've camped across the U.S. twice in the last 7 years, the most recent being this summer. Hey, I had to share the love with my 3 yo.

I'm a Snob #6: Most of my sentences begin with, "I was listening to NPR and..."

And then there's the me that writes. It's my escape from...well everything - my depression, my Type A personality, the things I *can't* change with myself. It's how I control my life. I take criticism very well, and rejection equally well. Actually, I love personalized rejections. I can always find a spark of hope in them, and I'm always looking to improve, so what's not to love with that sort of rejection?

Monday, July 28, 2014

Universe, Give Me a Book Deal

Not so long ago, I was invited to a wine tasting. Being new to wine, I was entirely excited--so excited that even though my husband and I drove 46 straight hours from Montana to Massachusetts and only got home that morning, I was still going to go. In my mind, there would be ten to twenty people all bringing their favorite bottles of wine, there would be crackers to clear our palates, and I would leave with a list of new wines that I would love forever and ever.

It started out great because I saw these little cucumber things, but imagine my disappointment when people started showing up with cases of beer...in cans. I don't drink beer, but I'm a beer snob because my husband is a beer snob. No self-respecting beer comes in a can. Then there was a backyard fire. I hadn't dressed for a backyard fire. In fact, I hadn't even brought a sweatshirt, which I was sure to need.

The conversation eventually turned to people I had never met in situations where they might have been funny if I knew who they were. What did I do? I was rude. I pulled out my phone and started texting the babysitter. We spoke briefly of my daughter's refusal to go to bed and then moved on to the founder of Chinese communism. Yep. That's what we texted about.

Then, someone started telling a story in which she really wanted her husband to get a snow blower. It went something like this: Newly married and in a new house, she experienced her first winter in which she had to shovel snow. She told her husband they needed a snow blower. He said, "We live in the city and only have 50 feet of sidewalk to shovel. We do not need a snow blower. We aren't going to spend two grand on a snow blower." She told him, "That's fine. The universe will bring us a snow blower." Lo and behold, a couple weeks later, someone left one on their driveway for them.

So this woman continued. She told me her husband wanted a truck. They're sensible people, so after some discussion they decided they had neither the money nor the need for the power of a truck. But what did she say? She said, "If we really need a truck, the universe will bring us a truck." What happened? You got it. Someone gave them a truck, which after $300 in body work looks brand new and works like a charm.

Forgetting my whole texted conversation about Mao, I said, "I like your universe. Could you tell it I want a book deal."

"That's not how the universe works," she said.

If you know me, you know I have a really hard time in social situations. I promptly felt like I needed to go to the bathroom and hyperventilate.

"That's not how the universe works," she repeated. "If you really want a book deal, it's got to be something you need, and it's got to be something you're willing to wait for. The universe doesn't just give you things. You have to constantly give it things first. I'm always doing nice things for other people. That's why the universe gives us things. If you really want a book deal, you have to say, 'Universe, give me a book deal,' and then be willing to wait and give the universe back."

I was duly chastised.

Her husband saved me. "April's a teacher. She understands all about giving without receiving."

But it got me thinking. After I finished WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL, after completing and polishing it, I started to put every effort into my query letter. I wrote four drafts before putting a better draft up on Agent Query Connect to be peer-critiqued. Unfortunately, practically nothing came up for help. I had a maximum of 20 hits with only a few vague responses. I entered the New Agent Contest as hosted by Michelle Hauck. My query didn't make it onto anyone's 'maybe' list, but there was a tweet about an LGBT contemporary that might have been mine, saying it was still too much like a draft.Then I saw with dismay that WriteOnCon probably wasn't going to happen this year. And I thought to myself, "But I really needed WriteOnCon to help me with this query. I'm floundering here."

Still, I made sure to critique other queries on the AQC forum; all the while, I started to create a list of author friends who may be willing to take a look at my query letter and tell me where I went wrong.

But what did the universe do? The universe did not bring me a book deal--has not yet, at least. The universe brought WriteOnCon back! My vacation will have ended by then, and I'll have to overlap work with WriteOnCon. I'll be writing lesson plans while critiquing others' queries. So what. I'm optimistic now. With some perseverance, a little luck, and a lot of giving back, the universe may very well bring me that book deal yet.

Oh. Let's not be remiss. Thank you for the wine tasting. Even though I didn't taste any wine but that which I brought, I still learned some valuable information.

Friday, May 30, 2014

New Beta Readers

WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL has reached that point. You know, the one where I send it out to be read by awesome people so they can help me make it the fantastic novel I want it to be. That means one thing (or seven, depending how you see it)--BETA READERS!

Let them introduce themselves:

Ally
Ally didn't send me her bio (or if she did, I lost it), so I'll introduce her. If I were Ally, I'd say, "I'm Ally. Y'all need to know one thing 'bout me: I eat raw eggs and guzzle root beer." Actually, Ally would NEVER say that. I took some creative license here. :)

Chris
I'm Chris and I'm self-diagnosed as being allergic to fun and free time.  In that lack of free time, I teach kids how to do martial arts, collect books that I want to read in a pile on my desk, and wear polos.  Despite my self-proclaimed aversion to fun, my claim to infamy is being fan of terrible jokes that don't really make people laugh...just question why they agreed to hear yet another bad joke.

Hannah
Along with reading, I enjoy hiking, knitting, farming, and travelling. I'm a glass half-full type of person. My dream is to live on a farm and to dabble in many different hobbies and skills.

Hope
I am "Baby B" out of a set of triplet girls.  In my spare time I love listening to music (specifically twenty|one|pilots and Jack's Mannequin), reading, and exercising.  I will attend Framingham State University in the fall where I will study Spanish and secondary education.

Jackie
My name is Jackie and I really like driving with the windows open. My hobbies include breakdancing and Tae Kwon Do.

Kim
Hey there I'm Kim and I love hockey and country music. I bet a lot of people just groaned at the fact that I like country music. I love to read and am known to sit down and finish a good book in one day if I get the chance. I'm also a tree hugging  environmental science geek so please reduce, reuse and recycle :)

Query Kombat 2014

I got into Query Kombat!

Query Kombat? What's that, you say? Check it out here.

Thanks to SC's vote of confidence, I'm on team #writerbees. Check out my entry "Loving Logic" on June 1st. Follow the contest on twitter at #QueryKombat.

Look! I'm on the list!!!

Sunday, May 4, 2014

MSFV Drop the Needle Contest on Anger

If you write and you've never heard of Miss Snark's First Victim, a blog by the currently anonymous Authoress Anon, then you're missing out on some great writing and critiquing opportunities. With the exception of the Baker's Dozen--a yearly contest--all her contests are free, and they're excellent ways to connect with fellow writers and receive feedback on your own writing. Go there.

Last week, she called for entrants for her Drop the Needle Contest, this time looking specifically for 400 word scenes from novels in which the characters exhibited anger. I was lucky enough to have a scene near the end of WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL chosen. 

One commentator wrote: "This is really great -- so much tension! The dialogue felt very realistic, too. I wish I could keep reading!" Take a look for yourself and let me know if you agree. Although, SPOILER alert. (Yeah, it gives away a huge chunk of the ending.) Any and all suggestions are welcome!

Oh, and I plan to introduce my new beta readers in the next week or so. I so so so look forward to working with them to make WINTER the best it can be. :)

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Aaaaand DONE! (at least with the first draft)

This is what someone looks like when she completes the first draft of her second novel:
Alright, so it's what I look like. But I did it. I completed that difficult first draft of novel #2, WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL.

In case you've forgotten (not that you'd care to remember. I get that.) what it looked like when I completed my first draft of novel #1, it looked like this:

Here are some comparisons:
  1. D1 of N1: that's me inside in my jammies after having eaten an entire box of chocolate. D1 of N2: I'm outside in the shade (and not in my jammies). My hair surprisingly looks the same. Weird. Okay, so no one really cares about that.
  2. D1 of N1: completed during February vacation, after <2 months of writing. D1 of N2: April vacation, after 5.5 months.
  3. D1 of N1: I look a lot more excited than I am with D1 of N2. Part of that is because it's true. There's something exciting about completing that first book that can't be matched with the second. I guess the main difference here is that with N2, I've proven to myself that I can do it. More than one story exists in me, which is comforting. Awfully comforting.
So yeah, there you go. Now to reread that which I haven't read since November. Oh, and if you haven't read it yet, here's what WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL is about.

Friday, April 18, 2014

New Betas Wanted

There we go. I just did it. I sent the request to my principal for approval to obtain a new panel of beta readers. I'm, what I estimate to be, four or five hours of work away from a completed rough draft of WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL.

The novel itself has been more difficult to write than LitD. It's taken its toll emotionally. Whereas LitD was a constant high, a wave of pleasure and pride and fantasy, I've had more doubt about WINTER's contents...and more nightmares.  It's the book that I wonder at being able to write at all, and that at some points I feel trapped within. It's high school and college wrapped together--the containment within institutional walls with the delicate promise of liberation in the end.

I look forward to revisions.

Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Neglected but not forgotten

I have this large--and perhaps unfounded--fear that if I don't update my blog regularly, something evil will happen to my writing career. I read several writing blogs, and many say, "make sure writers have an online presence," and, "agents want to see that you're out there," and, "agents don't like to see a forgotten blog."

It's not forgotten.

I've been busy writing. I'm up to 50K consecutive words in WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL.

So while I have been neglecting my blog, I haven't been neglecting my novel.

That's more important, right? :)

Friday, February 21, 2014

Science fiction to contemporary, first novel to second

Much of my writing time has been spent on my new work in progress--WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL. This novel is in part inspired by a suggestion from some of the people I met at the Colgate Writers' Conference last June. (Unfortunately, I will not be attending this year, although I wish I were.) I don't speak openly about my childhood, but I also don't hide it. So when I spent a week with the same people, they had a way of drawing out my past. Upon multiple occasions, they told me my past should be my next novel--that's the story they wanted told. After spending hours on LitD and deeming it complete--at least until an agent loves it--I delved into WoBH.

I'm finding that writing contemporary is much more difficult than writing science fiction. For LitD, it wasn't a real world, so I didn't have to double- and triple-check facts before I committed them to paper. Yes, some of the science I wrote about there is real; but much of it isn't, and that's okay because it's fiction. Now, I find myself constantly checking facts. When, exactly, does this high school music group hold auditions? Is the color of the sign at such-and-such a place really yellow? I'm sure many people wouldn't blame some small inaccuracies, but if I change a school's mascot, per se, there might be issues. But I'm finding it very time consuming.

Also, because it's my second novel, I'm also being much more careful in this first draft. Some sentence structure techniques/rules I learned when writing LitD are now ingrained in me, but others are not. I find that I spend more time making sure that the words I use are the ones I want, even though I know this will ultimately be edited and changed a million times over from the version I write now.

Lastly, because I'm basing this novel in part on how I grew up, it's a mix of fictional scenes and real scenes that have since been fictionalized. Finding a balance here is difficult. Very difficult, indeed.

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Why I didn't sleep well last night

I'm completely wishing this winter over. Winters are so...difficult. They're...cold. Cold. Cold. Cold. Like a shoulder, turned away from me, instead of moving to embrace me.

I had this dream last night. It comes occasionally, but never too lucidly. In the dream, my mother has many children. My brother is still the eldest and I'm right after him, but then there are little kids. Sometimes three or four. Sometimes my sisters are there, too. Sometimes they aren't.
Last night, I was younger--not old enough to leave the house yet, but my brother was his age now. My mother's husband, who was not my father, was in a rage. I remember egging him on. I kept coming back at him and jibing him, making him angrier and angrier. I wanted to push him. 
Eventually, things escalated. Usually when it does in my dreams, I'm in cellar with its fieldstone walls and dirt floor, looking through a window into a sky of nothingness. Last night, when it escalated, all the children and I were in one of the upstairs bedrooms--the one I shared with all my siblings but one in real life. I had a cordless phone and a cell phone, so this was present times, because we only had a corded phone growing up and my parents would have killed us if we tried to use the one gigantic cordless phone. I tried multiple times to call the police, but it would only ring three times and then hang up. My mother's husband had somehow rigged our phones to not be able to call out. My cell phone couldn't even call 9-1-1. I tried calling my best friend from HS's parents house. Very often, she and her parents play a role in my dreams. In real life, she lives in Florida having moved there after college. In the dream, she was in Florida, but I knew her parents still lived up the street. I dialed the number a million times, but it wouldn't go through.
The kids and I resigned ourselves to whatever was coming--something involving gasoline. My mom was downstairs crying and screaming. Her husband was yelling. I took the plastic bag of clothing a neighbor gave us for our youngest sister (one year old)--not my real youngest sister--and started folding the clothes to keep my mind busy. They were in pristine condition. It was like the neighbor's daughter had never worn them. One of my sisters was younger. Maybe 13. She said, "He's our dad now. He's always provided for us." I pushed her down against the bed and pinned her there with my arm. "He has never provided for us," I screamed at her. "These clothes--they're hand-me-downs. Nothing we own is ours. Don't you ever say he provides for us." The one-year-old--she had dark hair and a round face--began to cry, as did the other children.
I grabbed my cell phone and dialed one more number. It had a 617 area code. I don't know who I was calling, but it wasn't my brother, but my brother picked up the phone. I whispered into it and asked him to please call the police. I almost thought he wasn't going to, but then I remembered what we shared when we were younger (because for a moment I was my real age again and things were real) and knew he would. I hung up without waiting for him to answer.
Moments later, he was in the room with me. He smiled at me and said he did it. He called the police this time. I felt closer to him in the dream than I do in real life--like I was 10 and he was 11 again, and we would be best friends forever. 
I looked out the window that was mine as a child, before the cold downstairs bedroom was given to me. Seven police cruisers pulled up in front of the house. Some of them crept into the U driveway, some of them stayed on the street. None of them had lights on. A feeling of peace came over me. And I woke.

It was 2:30am. I didn't fall back asleep last night. 

Except for the fact that the lights weren't on in the cruisers, and there aren't as many kids in my family, and my mother has only recently remarried (to the loveliest man on the planet), and my bedroom really was downstairs--IT was very much like how I remember it happening, and IT was much of what I forgot. The feelings, I mean. 

And the cops. There were a lot of cops. In real life.

This is why the winter needs to end. Because sometimes real life feels like a dream. And sometimes a dream is only an echo of real life. And sometimes the winter isn't just the winter, and sometimes the winter is more than just cold. Sometimes it's cold.

Monday, January 6, 2014

First Five Pages Workshop

Read the first five pages of my WINTER ON BRIMSTONE HILL for January's First Five Pages Workshop. This month's mentor is Geoffrey Girard (Project Cain). Over the course of this month, I get to refine my opening with the help of him and other writers.



On another very cryptic note, I hope to have some good news to share soon.